The Exchange today announced the artists and companies selected to participate in the 2016 Orchard Project summer residency program in Saratoga Springs, NY. Twenty-six artists and ensembles were selected from nearly 800 theatre artists to develop their big, new ideas at the Orchard Project this coming summer.
FIELD GUIDE, a work-in-progress by Rude Mechs, is currently in a second draft performance at the Off Center. Rude Mechs creates new works collaboratively, and with FIELD GUIDE they are actively engaging their audience to get feed back on what works and what doesn't in order to help shape the piece. FIELD GUIDE, commissioned by the Yale Repertory Theatre, is a mash-up of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, stand-up comedy, dance and some frankly uncomfortable direct audience addressing confessions. How much of the direct confessions are fact or fiction we'll never really know. What we do know is this is an excitingly different evening of pure theatricality… an evening that you, as an audience member, are being asked to help define. Along the way during your 90 minute journey the Mechs cover topics from the longest Russian novel written such as intellectualism, spiritualism, sensuality and hedonism. While it is ostensibly an adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov, it really just uses the characters in the briefest Cliff Notes sense. This approach allows the performers to riff on the underlying themes present. There is even an unaccredited moment by Tom Lehrer when Robert S. Fisher performs 'They're Rioting in Africa'. What you are treated to is highly experimental in nature and at moments what ensues is truly magical.
One of the more clearly visible technical aspects of a show for average theatre-goers is the set. What isn't quite as clear is just what goes into the creation of the world the characters inhabit in the play you are seeing. Set design, sometimes called scenic design, is the art of designing and creating the sets used in plays or movies. At times, designing can be as simple as arranging a few pieces of furniture on a stage. That type of set design is not what one things of, however, when one talks to set designer, Lisa Laratta, the subject of this edition of Tech Talk.
Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare is one of his plays that scholars either group with his tragedies or as one of the so-called "problem plays". FIXING TIMON OF ATHENS is part of an on-going attempt by the Rude Mechs to make more accessible and usable pieces of theatre out of the canon of Shakespeare's problem plays. With FIXING TIMON OF ATHENS Kirk Lynn has essentially cleaned-up and streamlined the play into a ten character piece that functions as a modern and timely parable about greed.
Actors Theatre of Louisville Artistic Director Les Waters and Managing Director Jennifer Bielstein are delighted to announce the three ten-minute plays chosen to be performed during the 40th Humana Festival of New American Plays.
Signature Theatre's Board of Trustees announced today the appointment of Paige Evans as Artistic Director beginning July 1, 2016. She succeeds Founding Artistic Director James Houghton, who will step down at the end of June. Ms. Evans comes to Signature Theatre from Lincoln Center Theater, where she has served as Artistic Director of LCT3 since its inception in 2008.
With only 30 audience members per performance, your experience with the Rude Mech's NOW NOW OH NOW begins when you get your tickets. Each audience member must choose from one of six symbols. Your choice will group you into a tribe of five members. You are about to embark on an adventure with people you've never met before. Oh, the places you'll go…
A movement for American theatres to produce only work by women, people of color, artists of varied physical and cognitive abilities, and LBGTQA artists in the 2020-2021 season.
The Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (CAC) announces HOW TO BUILD A FOREST, with performances from October 23-29, 2015.
Rude Mechs served up stirring, evocative theater this past Thursday in the New York Live Arts installation of their esteemed show, Match-Play. Adapted from Deborah Hay's Bessie award-winning dance, “The Match,” the piece infuses Hay's original choreography and score with original text from Rude Mechs' co-founder Kirk Lynn to spark a theatrical study of perception: How does a human being relate to consciousness?
59E59 Theaters welcomes Monk Parrots with the US premiere of the new musical WELCOME TO THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA, book by Luke Landric Leonard; lyrics by Katie Pearl and Mr. Leonard; music by Peter Stopschinski; and directed by Mr. Leonard.
The Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (CAC) announces HOW TO BUILD A FOREST, with performances from October 23-29, 2015.
New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) presents the world premiere of a new play from its acclaimed Company-in-Residence Elevator Repair Service (The Sound and the Fury, The Select, Gatz) -- FONDLY, COLLETTE RICHLAND -- opening tonight, September 28, 2015.
59E59 Theaters welcomes Monk Parrots with the US premiere of the new musical WELCOME TO THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA, book by Luke Landric Leonard; lyrics by Katie Pearl and Mr. Leonard; music by Peter Stopschinski; and directed by Mr. Leonard.
"If life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?" Erma Bombeck, the award-winning humorist and syndicated columnist known for her wry and humorous take on family life, is the subject of the newest project from twin-sister journalists and playwrights Allison Engel and Margaret Engel-the world-premiere drama Erma Bombeck: At Wit's End debuting at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. The Engels reunite with director David Esbjornson (Arena Stage's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) following their collaboration on the smash hit Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, which starred Kathleen Turner in its celebrated 2012 run at Arena Stage.
The Guthrie Theater announced today that Joseph Haj will become its eighth artistic director in July 2015, succeeding Joe Dowling. The announcement by Board Chair Lee Skold and Search Committee Chair Patricia Simmons ends an extensive year-long search.
Today January 9, 2015 in New York City, Obie Award winner David Drake will direct the inaugural reading of the new musical The Beachcomber Boys, with book and lyrics by Myra Slotnick and music by Grammy Award-winning composer Peter Stopschinski, whose contribution to Madeleine George's The Curious Case Of Dr. Watson was nominated for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
On January 9, 2015 in New York City, Obie Award winner David Drake will direct the inaugural reading of the new musical The Beachcomber Boys, with book and lyrics by Myra Slotnick and music by Grammy Award-winning composer Peter Stopschinski, whose contribution to Madeleine George's The Curious Case Of Dr. Watson was nominated for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
The Orchard Project, the eight-year-old program that has served as a starting place for major, award-winning shows that have debuted in theaters across the United States and world, is pulling up roots and transplanting itself to Saratoga Springs, NY this summer. In addition to continuing to serve as a laboratory for theater teams and companies, the Orchard Project will now be able to offer public performances, adding a theatrical component to the vibrant cultural life of Saratoga, which presently provides summer homes to the New York City Ballet, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) has announced the world premiere of a new play from its acclaimed Company-in-Residence Elevator Repair Service (The Sound and the Fury, The Select, Gatz) to premiere in Fall 2015.
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