Production Ensemble 2010
This year’s play for Production Ensemble will be Divided Together by Girish Karnad, directed by Assistant Professor Erin B. Mee, with sets and costumes designed by Assistant Professor Laila Swanson, lights designed by James Murphy, and original music composed by Dan Perelstein ’09.
Divided Together is a play with songs that centers on a young woman in love with her brainy husband’s sexy best friend. When their heads are switched, the central question of the play becomes: which man is her husband, the one with his head, or the one with his body? Divided Together is a surreal love story about the head/body divide (in its many manifestations), about the quest for perfection, and about the need to accept people for who they really are.
All levels and kinds of experience are welcome. Freshmen are especially encouraged to audition. The only prerequisite is Acting I or FYS Solo Performance. The play includes songs, dances, and puppets, which means there will be opportunities for singing and dancing, although there are also non-singing and non-dancing roles. There are also roles for people who enjoy improv comedy, and for people who enjoy spoken word.
Auditions: Thursday October 29, 4-10pm in Kohlberg 115
Call-Backs and further auditions: Friday October 30, 6-10 pm in Frear Ensemble Theatre
Sign up for an audition slot on the sign-up sheet outside the Theatre Department office (LPAC 13).
For the audition, please come dressed to do some movement work and a few group exercises, and be ready to read one or two scenes from the play.
Practical Information about the production:
Divided Together will be performed in the Frear theatre on March 26, 27 and 28
Production Ensemble is a one-credit course (THEA 22), and fulfills one of the requirements for the major and minor.
Girish Karnad is one of India’s most important modern playwrights. His plays are produced at major theatres and colleges all over India, as well as in theatres abroad. His plays, in addition to Hayavadana (Divided Together), which he wrote in 1971, include Yayati (named for a character from the Mahabharata; 1961), Tughlaq (about Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq; 1964), Naga-Mandala (Play with a Cobra; 1988), Tale-Danda (Death by Beheading; 1989), Agni Mattu Male (The Fire and the Rain; 1993), The Dreams of Tipu Sultan (1997), Bali, The Sacrifice (2000), Flowers (2004), and Broken Images (2005). Karnad has also translated a number of plays, including his own, into English and directed his translation of Badal Sircar’s Ebong Indrojit in 1970 at the Museum Theatre in Chennai with the Madras Players. His numerous awards include a Homi Bhabha fellowship, the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya Award, the Padma Shri, the Padma Bushan, and the Bharatiya Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary award.
Erin B. Mee has directed in some of this country’s leading theatres including New York Theatre Workshop (First Love), the Joseph Papp Public Theatre (The Imperialists), the Magic Theatre in San Francisco (First Love and Requiem for the Dead), and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis (Troilus and Cressida). She has also directed in more experimental theatres such as HERE (Paul Schmidt’s ‘translation’ of Timon of Athens), The Ontological at St. Mark’s (Ottayan and Divided Together), SoHo Rep, and HOME for Contemporary Theatre and Art (plays by Charles Mee, Mac Wellman, and Donna DiNovelli). In addition, she has directed two productions in India with Sopanam, one of India’s leading theatre companies. Her book The Theatre of Roots: Redirecting the Modern Indian Stage was published in 2009 by Seagull Books and Palgrave-McMillan (part of the Enactments series edited by Richard Schechner). Her articles on Indian theatre have appeared in TDR, Theater Journal, Performing Arts Journal, Seagull Theatre Quarterly, and American Theatre Magazine; and in books on the playwrights Girish Karnad and Mahesh Dattani. She is the editor of DramaContemporary: India, a collection of modern Indian plays published in the United States by Johns Hopkins University Press and in India by Oxford University Press.