Ripe Time and New Dramatists Present 'SHAPE SHIFTING: ANTIGONE IN ACTION' 11/10

Ripe Time and New Dramatists will present "Shape Shifting: Antigone In Action," an evening of new work created in response to what makes Antigone necessary today. The event is on Monday, November 10 at 7 pm at New Dramatists.  Admission is free.

Ripe Time's next production is FIRE THROWS, a re-imagining of Sophocles's Antigone premiering in February 2009. Through video projection, live music, and Balinese dance-inspired staging, FIRE THROWS explodes this classic text into a cutting-edge meditation on desire, drive, and what's at stake in breaking the rules. Ripe Time's reworking of classic and contemporary texts honor the source material while radicalizing the visual and physical palette on which to tell the characters' story.

The Shape Shifting event on November 10th will feature short pieces created by a diverse array of artists and activists across disciplines in response to Sophocles' Antigone. To discuss these issues from multiple points of view, Ripe Time commissioned more then half-a-dozen contemporary cutting edge artists to rediscover the roots of rebellion and protest in this classic text. Just days after our national election, these artistic responses illuminate Antigone in compelling, unique ways and catalyze conversation about the relevance and necessity of this play today. 

The participants in Shape Shifting: Antigone in Action include Obie and Bessie-award winning artist and activist Marty Pottenger, playwright, performer and Alpert Award winner Daniel Alexander Jones, Obie-winning playwright and actress Juliana Francis-Kelly, choreographer Dawn Akemi Saito, and an installation created by designers Susan Zeeman Rogers, Katie Down and Obie-winner Tyler Micoleau, and more. Discussions to follow the presentations with the artists will be moderated by Ripe Time Artistic Director Rachel Dickstein and Emily Morse, Director of Artistic Development at New Dramatists.

Shape Shifting is an annual salon co-conceived by Rachel Dickstein and Emily Morse. It exemplifies Ripe Time's longstanding interest in creating a dialogue around issues of adaptation with other contemporary artists who approach this challenge in different ways.  Last year, the salon series was launched with "Shape Shifting: Contemporary Women Playwrights Re-Imagine Homer, Shakespeare, and Chekhov," a series of readings and conversations with award-winning women playwrights Caridad Svich, Chiori Miyagawa, Melissa James Gibson, Ellen McLaughlin, Karen Hartman, Morgan Jenness and Rachel Dickstein exploring the politics and aesthetics of adaptation.  This collaboration with New Dramatists continues Ripe Time's Exchange series, a program committed to promoting conversation about form and craft in Contemporary Theatre-making.

This event is free, open to the public, and held at New Dramatists, 424 West 44th Street between 9th and 10th avenues. Reservations required. For reservations call (212) 757-6960. For more information call (718) 622-3650.  Program is subject to change.

Ripe Time is devoted to producing ensemble driven theatre infused with rich language, visual power and physical rigor. We are an off-Broadway theater company critically acclaimed for its own adaptations, breathing theatrical life into classic novels and stories. We create performance that pulls from both dance and theatre and ranges from company-created original works, to new adaptations of novels, stories and classic plays. Recent productions include Betrothed (based on texts by Jhumpa Lahiri, Anton Chekhov and S. Ansky) and Innocents (based on Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.) For more information on the company, please see www.ripetime.org.

 New Dramatists is an artistic home and creative laboratory for the development of talented, professional playwrights. We support our resident playwrights through free, seven-year residencies, providing access to an array of programs and services, primarily space and time to grow as artists in the company of some of their most gifted peers. www.newdramatists.org. This unique organization has fostered the work of over 600 playwrights early in their careers, including: Robert Anderson, Kia Corthron, Nilo Cruz, Horton Foote, Maria Irene Fornes, John Guare, David Lindsay-Abaire, Eduardo Machado, Donald Margulies, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori  Parks, John Patrick Shanley, Paula Vogel, Mac Wellman, August Wilson, Lanford Wilson, Doug Wright, and many more. For more information see www.newdramatists.org

 

 

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