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Auditions for Production Ensemble 2013! 11/17 2-6PM Kohlberg 115

This year’s play for Production Ensemble will be THREE SISTERS by Anton Chekhov in a new adaptation by Benedict Andrews. It recently premiered in London, where it received stellar reviews. THREE SISTERS will be directed by Richard Hamburger, with a set designed by Assistant Professor Matthew Saunders, costumes designed by Assistant Professor Laila Swanson, and lights designed by James Murphy.

Born and raised amid the culture and excitement of Moscow, the three sisters chafe at the constraints of life in the small provincial backwater town, where they moved with their late father, an army General. Chekhov creates vibrant portraits of a family struggling to fulfill individual dreams through work and love, while facing painful new economic and social realities. Benedict Andrews’ uninhibited new version transposes Chekhov’s nineteenth century classic to contemporary Russia, drawing out the play’s pointed humor and restlessness. This is Chekhov for the 21st century.

All levels of experience are welcome to audition. Freshmen are especially encouraged.

Auditions: Saturday November 17, 2-6pm in Kohlberg 115
Callbacks and further auditions: Sunday November 18, 2-6pm in Kohlberg 115
Additional Audition time and callbacks will be on Monday, November 19 9:30-11:30pm in Kohlberg 115

Sign up for an audition slot on the sign up sheet outside the Department of Theater’s office (LPAC 13)

Please come dressed in shoes and clothing that you can move freely in, and be ready to read one or two scenes from the play. You may pick up the scenes in advance on the shelf outside the Department of Theater’s office (LPAC 13). Feel free to take a look at any translation of THREE SISTERS in the library.

Practical information about the production:
Three Sisters will be performed in Pearson Hall Theater in LPAC on April 5-7, 2013.
Production Ensemble is a one-credit course (Thea 22) and fulfills one of the requirements for the major and minor.

BIOS
Anton Chekhov (1860 –1904) was a major Russian playwright and master of the modern short story. His four final plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard are considered pinnacles in modern drama.

Benedict Andrews is an Australian author, adaptor and director. He was Resident Director of the Sidney Theatre Company and has directed at the English National Opera, the Barbican and the Young Vic in London.

Richard Hamburger served fifteen years as Artistic Director at Dallas Theater Center and is now DTC’s first Artistic Director Emeritus. He has directed a wide range of classic and contemporary plays, including new work by Octavio Solis, Lynn Siefert, Erik Ehn, Eric Overmyer, and Chay Yew, among others. Mr. Hamburger served for five years as Artistic Director of Portland Stage Company. He has directed at Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Portland Center Stage, The Acting Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, California Shakespeare Festival, American Place Theatre, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and Great Lakes Theater Festival, where he served as Associate Director. Mr. Hamburger has written two plays: Memory of Whiteness, produced at the American Place Theatre and Family Face, mounted at the O’Neill Center’s National Playwrights Conference. He was awarded a Rockefeller Grant in playwriting and has held fellowships at the Albee Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Arts. He served on the faculties of the Juilliard Theatre Center and Circle in the Square Theatre School, on numerous panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, and as a panelist for the Whiting Foundation. Mr. Hamburger also directed the critically acclaimed version of THE SOUND OF MUSIC for The Salzburg Marionette Theater which is currently on a world wide tour. Most recently he directed Alan Ayckbourn’s MY WONDERFUL DAY and Sam Shepard’s CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS for Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater.

Katie Van Winkle ’07 in DIONYSUS IN 69 (revisited with the Rude Mechanicals)

Katie van Winkle ’07 will be touring to NYC’s Live Arts with Austin theater company, the Rude Mechanicals.

From Katie: “In 2009, we re-created The Performance Group’s production of Dionysus in 69 , a long-running cult classic from 1968 based on Euripides’ The Bacchae. We trained with environmental/experimental theater exercises from Grotowski and Schechner, and worked with the Brian de Palma D69 film, and the original script published in a casebook–looking at both in great detail, trying to recreate both the exact mise-en-scene and the ever-changing, risky, truly-conditional experience of performers and audience/participators.”

November 6-10 at 8 pm
and November 9 at 10:30 pm

http://www.newyorklivearts.org/event/dionysus_in_69

http://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2009-12-18/930112/

http://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2009-11-27/921516/

 

Kari Olmon’s THE INTENSE FRAGILITY in the Frear on 11/9 and 11/10

The Intense Fragility
Adapted from the diary of Vaslav Nijinsky & the theater of Tennessee Williams
by Kari Olmon
Directed by Walter Bilderback

with Katie Goldman ’14, Danica Harvey ’15, Zack Martin ’13, Meryl Sands ’13, Sam Swift Shuker-Haines ’13 & Kassandra Sparks ’15.

In January of 1919, celebrated Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky gives his final ballet performance and begins the diary that will chronicle his descent into madness. In 1936 St. Louis, Rose Williams – beloved sister to renowned playwright Tennessee Williams – discovers Nijinsky’s diary and dreams of escaping into his world. Separated by every possible spatial, temporal, and social barrier, the virtuosic dancer and the secluded sister have one thing in common: both are suspected of a peculiar and precocious dementia that terrifies and repulses their families who will do anything – anything – to contain them. A play about desire, madness, and the legacy of art, The Intense Fragility imagines an encounter outside the slipstream of history that brings two people together in the realm of the subjunctive where anything is possible and fantasy becomes reality.
We welcome you to a staged reading of this piece in the
LPAC Frear Theater
11/9 and 11/10
7PM

ALL-ONE! a new play by Sophia Naylor 11/16 and 11/18

In Sophia Naylor’s Honors thesis project, a young heroine called Kate has returned with two friends to the rolling green hills of Ireland where she first realized she saw what others didn’t see: a world colored by synesthesia (the crossing of senses). Meanwhile, the ancient fairies living underneath Kate’s hovel struggle to keep the earth, battered by its human population, from tearing itself apart at the seams. In the face of destruction and disorder on a grand scale, Kate and the fairies strive to at least be remembered for their attempt to keep back entropy.
A staged reading will take place in the LPAC Frear Theater Friday, November 16 and Sunday, November 18 at 7PM.

Written by Sophia Naylor ’13. Directed by Jill Harrison with James Magruder (Dramaturg).

Kyle Abraham.in.Motion at Swarthmore 11/6 – 11/11

The Department of Music and Dance at Swarthmore College and the William J. Cooper Foundation present Kyle Abraham’s PAVEMENT on Friday November 9, 2012 at 8PM in the Lang Performing Arts Center’s Pearson-Hall Theater.  Abraham’s latest piece of work, PAVEMENT, pays homage to the bold, 1990’s backward-jeans-and-high-top-fade era in hip-hop, while examining a culture with a history plagued by discrimination, genocide, and a constant quest for a way out.

Inspired by John Singleton’s groundbreaking film Boyz N The Hood (1991) and essays of W.E.B DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Abraham’s PAVEMENT tells the story of a group of friends struggling to stay together while their community is being torn apart.  Set in the historically black neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, PAVEMENT depicts scenes of violence, love, male bonding, arrests, physical and emotional pain, all combined with sound bites from the film and operatic music.

Kyle Abraham — the 2012 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient and 2010 Bessie Award-winning choreographer — first discovered his love of performance at the Civic Light Opera Academy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He then went on to receive his BFA from SUNY Purchase and MFA from New York University Tisch School for the Arts. Abraham has collaborated with David Dorfman Dance, Mimi Garrard Dance Theater, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and is currently choreographing for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion will also be involved in several residency activities during the week with Swarthmore students and the public.  These activities include a screening and discussion of Singleton’s film Boyz N the Hood on November 6 at 7PM, a Lecture/Demonstration on November 7 at 7PM, a Dance as Identity workshop on November 11 at 1PM.

For further information about these events, contact Tara Webb at 610-328-8260 or lpacevents@swarthmore.edu. The performance is free and open to the public without reservations.

 

 

Kyle Abraham.in.Motion at Swarthmore 11/6 – 11/11

The Department of Music and Dance at Swarthmore College and the William J. Cooper Foundation present Kyle Abraham’s PAVEMENT on Friday November 9, 2012 at 8PM in the Lang Performing Arts Center’s Pearson-Hall Theater.  Abraham’s latest piece of work, PAVEMENT, pays homage to the bold, 1990’s backward-jeans-and-high-top-fade era in hip-hop, while examining a culture with a history plagued by discrimination, genocide, and a constant quest for a way out.

Inspired by John Singleton’s groundbreaking film Boyz N The Hood (1991) and essays of W.E.B DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Abraham’s PAVEMENT tells the story of a group of friends struggling to stay together while their community is being torn apart.  Set in the historically black neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, PAVEMENT depicts scenes of violence, love, male bonding, arrests, physical and emotional pain, all combined with sound bites from the film and operatic music.

Kyle Abraham — the 2012 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient and 2010 Bessie Award-winning choreographer — first discovered his love of performance at the Civic Light Opera Academy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He then went on to receive his BFA from SUNY Purchase and MFA from New York University Tisch School for the Arts. Abraham has collaborated with David Dorfman Dance, Mimi Garrard Dance Theater, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and is currently choreographing for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion will also be involved in several residency activities during the week with Swarthmore students and the public.  These activities include a screening and discussion of Singleton’s film Boyz N the Hood on November 6 at 7PM, a Lecture/Demonstration on November 7 at 7PM, a Dance as Identity workshop on November 11 at 1PM.

For further information about these events, contact Tara Webb at 610-328-8260 or lpacevents@swarthmore.edu. The performance is free and open to the public without reservations.