We’ve started rehearsals at HERE for our CultureMart show, You Are Dead. You Are Here. . It’s exciting to see other artistic responses to war in NY right now that also eschew the earnest and journalistic approach that often frames theatre about “real things”.
One is Haroun Farocki’s show at MOMA, Images of War (At A Distance)
and the other is Pure War/ The Madness of the Day at TheaterLab (just til Saturday this week).
I’m looking forward to the next step in building YOU ARE DEAD. YOU ARE HERE. with my collaborators Joseph Megel and Jared Mezzocchi. We’ll be putting up the first act of the show, with full media, at HERE’s CultureMart in January 24th and 25th, 8:30 p.m.–more on that soon. Here’s our teaser trailer:
New Teaser: You Are Dead. You Are Here. from JaredMezzocchi on Vimeo.
Meanwhile, check out media designer Jared’s work and process in his blog, where he writes about his recent design process on A Child Shall Lead Them: The Night of the Hunter.
Friday’s reading in L.A. should be exciting! A quick preview from our last workshop:
Come along if you’re in town, and please RSVP here.
Here’s a rough edit of the work we’ve been doing on YOU ARE DEAD. YOU ARE HERE. (a ghost story for the digital war age).
This is a 3 minute video trailer of a staged reading at UNC Chapel Hill (with multi-media).
Media design by Jared Mezzochi, direction by Joseph Megel, script by Christine Evans. Performed by Jeri-Lynne Schulke, Trevor Johnson and Marie Garlock. Huge thanks to Skip Rizzo and team at the Institute for Creative Technologies for giving us access to their Virtual Iraq software to use in this work-in-progress.
In The Archive and The Repertoire, Diana Taylor makes the excellent point that what’s archived (as distinct from in rep or on stage) remains in historical memory and accessible to wider audiences across space and time. This is one of the reasons we decided to anthologize the work of the 2008-2010 Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab.
A shout-out to my amazing co-editor (and book producer) Alexis Clements for getting these lovely books out into the world, and to all the writers for their plays. If you’re teaching contemporary plays and looking for more robust representation of women playwrights, these two anthologies are a good starting point.
Trojan Barbie had a great opening night on Friday at Playbox. And we sold out of the Samuel French edition of the play in 10 minutes! The promenade staging really works well for this play–great choice Stewart! It was interesting to see what the pressure of an audience swirling around and through did to the world of the play. In a way, it made more sense of the collage, collision structure of the world—it felt like being in a camp where events piled on top of one another, and the audience having to move to see the next events felt very organic—that their energy was a part of what was going on. Playbox have some beautiful photos— I’ll post them when/ if I can get copies.
And I was so proud of the young performers! Continue reading
All things Irish… I recently discovered (via my Aunt) that my great-grandmother Bessie Hallinan was a bounty migrant from Clare in Ireland to Australia and married a bigamist Norwegian sea-captain! I’ve been digging into my Irish roots because I have a new play with an Irish character that’s being read at the Irish Rep in New York this month.
So, if you happen to be in New York, please come to the reading of my newest play, CAN’T COMPLAIN, at the Irish Rep. Friday, February 18th, 3 p.m. The full Irish Rep reading details are here:
It’s a funny play about sad things, with a ripping role for an older actress, a midnight visit by the Devil, and a ghost story at the center. Here’s the synopsis:
In Can’t Complain, Rita hates being confined in a hospital, where her daughter Maureen has placed her for assessment after a small stroke. She plots her escape with the help of her elderly Irish room-mate Iris, her granddaughter Jansis, and her cat’s new best friend, the Devil. Rita battles her present situation–until a riotous party night with Iris and the Devil collapses her escape plan and brings her face to face with the remains of her past.
If you’re in San Francisco, go and see Rob Melrose’s gorgeous, 3-actor production of The Tempest. It runs through Dec 19. I don’t often feel a sense of wonder in the theatre–though I live in hope– but by the end of this magically protean production (and play) I was transported. The production uses a spare set which echoes a swimming pool and a psychiatrist’s office to invoke all the dreams and storms of this play. The contemporary staging creates resonance between the four centuries-old dreamscape of the play’s text and modernist understandings of how magic and shape-shifting move across the mind, through projection, dream, desire and fantasy. And the three actors do a fantastic job of shape-shifting, which suits the modern view the play presents of character as multiple personae within the psyche.
The Cutting Ball is on Taylor St. in the Tenderloin, a rough part of town where the homeless live. I’ve spent a fair bit of time there (having done a show in that very theatre, a tiny black box) but after seeing The Tempest, noticed for the first time as I walked back up the street that the dirty asphalt of the sidewalk glittered full of green stars. (And no, Virginia, that wasn’t after a cocktail). It’s that kind of show.
Coincidentally, I came across this the same day– which evokes a similar dreamscape.
Cutting Ball does seriously smart, detailed, elegant, and thought-provoking work that’s also (to my eye) rivetingly sensuous and entertaining. Go see The Tempest, it’s gorgeous.
I’m excited to be working on two projects this year that explore the dreaming of war in very different ways.
One is The Underpass (a ghost story for the digital war age)–We are in residence at Georgetown’s Department of Performing Arts with this project in November.
I’m also thrilled to be working with Playbox Theatre in Warwick, U.K., who have a truly expansive view of the role of theatre in the lives of young people. Their 2011-12 season ends with my play Trojan Barbie, and here is what their artistic director has to say about the season (scroll down for Trojan Barbie references):
writing.performance 