Since 2012, OUT LOUD Theatre has grown into an experimental and movement oriented ensemble, rooted in creating visceral and immersive experiences with creative and innovative artists. Located in the heart of Providence, Rhode Island and currently acting as one of The Mathewson Street Collaborative's 2017 Artists in Residence, OUT LOUD announces it's upcoming Season 5: "THAT WAY MADNESS LIES".
Following the lead of a SOLD OUT Season 4 (set to close out it's "Free for All" 3-part series with
Coriolanus this upcoming September 2016), OUT LOUD Theatre looks to create another 3-part series focused towards one expansive theme. While Season 4 aimed our sights at exploring the Public Domain, 2017 is steered toward that of "madness", the mind, and individual mental health.
"Season 5's focus on madness is wonderfully dangerous," says Season 5 Ensemble Member, Anna Stacy. "To me, OUT LOUD's choice to mold this season around this charged topic is bold and delicate."
This 3-part series kicks off in March 2017 with
Peter Weiss's
MARAT/SADE, featuring
Rico Lanni as Jean-Paul Marat and Natasha Cole as
Charlotte Corday. In June, OUT LOUD explores an original adaptation based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 6,000 word short story,
THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, featuring Siobhan LaPorte-Cauley, Ottavia De Luca,
Sarah Leach,
Erika Rethorn, and
Kerry Giorgi, who will rotate roles over the course of its 15 performance run, each playing The Woman and The Wallpaper, respectively. Season 5 concludes with
William Shakespeare's tragedy,
KING LEAR, featuring Alan Hawkridge in the title role in November.
"
Marat/Sade,
The Yellow Wallpaper, and
King Lear all provide road maps to dive deeper and deeper into this Season's overarching concept and exploration of "madness", the mind, and our individual mental health," says Artistic Director, Kira Hawkridge. "We begin the season in a facility occupied by varying patients with
Marat/Sade. The world is expansive. We are experiencing a play within a play. The actors are existing in two parallel worlds at any given point - one of the patient, one of character, one of the historical revolution that they are retelling, and one of the actual revolution that is being manufactured around them, through them.
The Yellow Wallpaper closes in, focusing our scope to one "room" - one set of specific circumstances. Five women experiencing a collective and terrifying evolution that cycles round and round on an endless loop. And we end the Season with
King Lear, inside of one individual mind and the way that particular mind sees and experiences the world around them."
"To have Kira bring the mental to physical is going to be both challenging as well as empowering," says Season 5 Ensemble Member,
Rico Lanni. "These issues are often hidden or left to lofty discussion, but to see each person's complex mental journey embodied in a tangible form is very exciting."
"We are exploring mental illness, and that is a multi-faceted subject, which almost all of us have been affected by," says Season 5 Ensemble Member, David Nando Rodgers. "It comes in many shapes and sizes, and is treated well or poorly. I predict we will have mental health discussions that are sometimes considered taboo, not just onstage and in rehearsal, but hopefully, also, with the audiences."
"In life, each individual's perception and experience of the world is unique and incommunicable, especially when those perceptions fall outside of societal norms," says Season 5 Ensemble Member, Beth Alianiello. "In theatre, through words, movement, sound, silence, light and darkness it feels like the potential exists for actors and audience alike to experience a reality outside their own. Season 5 explores characters who are trapped by their minds or emboldened by them, who are broken and changed by their thoughts. I'm excited to explore their alternate realities."
"Our ensemble is ready to dive into the boundless potential and utter magic of our mental capacity and the individual internal worlds that we all inhabit," says Hawkridge. "We are eager to create experiences through varying lenses - questioning, challenging, and interfacing with the unknowable."
