Please join us tomorrow, Wednesday, for Rashida Shaw‘s In Theory lecture: Introducing Theatrical Postmodernism: Mabou Mines DollHouse. The lecture will be in Downey House 113 at 4:15.
Theater
Auditions for THEA183: Directed Experiences in Acting 9/12
Students of the class will perform in scenes directed by students from THEA281 Directing I with Prof. Yuri Kordonsky. You will work with a student director on your scene and present it every other week on Friday afternoon. This .5 course is not a regular acting class and therefore is not a substitute for either Acting I or Acting II. There is no in-class teaching or training; your learning process in this class will come from the practical work with Directing I students outside the class and in-class presentations. At the same time, this class is a great way to become familiar with the Theater department and participate in its acting program.
No prior acting experience is necessary, all years and levels of experience are welcome. Please, keep in mind that approximately 6-8 hours rehearsal time per week is required.
Auditions will be held on Wednesday, September 12 from 7-9:30 p.m. in the Jones Room, Theater and Dance Studios. Please, sign up and prepare 1-2 minute monologue (memorization is mandatory). Registration for the course will be done through Drop/Add after the auditions. I will contact you with the results the next day after the auditions, on Thursday, September 13. If you are cast in a scene, you should add an enrollment request in your electronic portfolio.
Auditions slots are limited; sign up early!
Feel free to contact Prof. Yuri Kordonsky by phone or by e-mail if you have any questions at ykordonsky@wesleyan.edu or 860-685-3032.
Playwriting Conference and Events — 2/23-26
The Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, the Center for African American Studies, the Center for the Arts, the Theater Department, the Writing Program, and Yale School of Drama have joined forces to present a week of events that highlight the art of playwriting. The series of talks, performances, and readings culminate in Wesleyan’s first conference on playwriting pedagogy and creative processes. Though the conference is closed to participants, all events are open to the public and several are free—so please help us spread the word!
Best,
Claudia (Theater Department)
Friday to Sunday, February 24-26
Playwriting Conference:
Contemporary Conventions, Cultural Innovations, Playful Traditions
The Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life
Conference curators: Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento (Theater Department) and Ken Prestininzi (Yale School of Drama).
International guests: Brazilian playwright Newton Moreno and theater scholar Alberto Tibaji.
Participants: Migdalia Cruz (NO Passport), Erik Ehn (Brown University), Marcus Gardley (Hartford Stage, Brown University), Quiara Alegría Hudes (Wesleyan University, In the Heights), Elizabeth Jackson (Wesleyan University), Matthew Maguire (New Dramatists, Fordham University), Deb Margolin (New Dramatists, Yale University), Charlotte Meehan (Wheaton College), Frank Pugliese (Yale University), Lucy Thurber (New Dramatists, Sarah Lawrence College), Wesleyan undergraduate playwriting students and members of Captain Partridge, graduate playwriting students from Brown University and Yale School of Drama.
Events calendar:
Monday, February 20
7pm: screening of Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment, CFA Hall. FREE
“Cultural images of black America are tweaked, pulled and twisted like Silly Putty in this subversive, seriously funny new theater piece by the adventurous playwright Young Jean Lee… Ms. Lee sets you thinking about how we unconsciously process experience — at the theater, or in life — through the filter of racial perspective, and how hard it can be to see the world truly in something other than black and white.”
— Charles Isherwood, New York Times
http://youngjeanlee.org/the_shipment
Tuesday, February 21
8pm: an evening talk with Young Jean Lee, Memorial Chapel. FREE
Korean-born and Brooklyn-based playwright and director Young Jean Lee’s works deal with issues such as gender identity and race in unpredictable, inventive and humorous ways. A 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, Ms. Lee founded her own theater company in 2003, swiftly becoming one of this country’s most influential voices in experimental theater.
Thursday, February 23
8pm: An Evening of Spoken Word with Javon Johnson at Crowell Concert Hall
Spoken word/slam poet Javon Johnson merges the sharp criticism of critical race and gender theory with comedy, lyricism and hip-hop rhyme schemes to discuss the power of words, communication and performance. Mr. Johnson has appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and BET’s Lyric Cafe, and co-wrote the poetic narration for Showtime’s basketball documentary Crossover.
Friday, February 24, 8pm
Good Goods by Christina Anderson, directed by Tina Landau. Yale Repertory Theatre.
Saturday, February 25
7pm & 10pm: SPILL, co-created by Leigh Fondakowski and Reeva Wortel
Fayerweather Beckham Hall
A collaboration between writer Leigh Fondakowski (The Laramie Project, The People’s Temple, I Think I Like Girls) and visual artist Reeva Wortel (American Portrait Project), SPILL is a new play and installation that explores the true human and environmental cost of oil. SPILL is based in part on interviews with people from the Gulf Coast of southern Louisiana in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of April 2010, the largest environmental disaster in United States history.
Sunday, February 26
2pm & 7pm: SPILL, co-created by Leigh Fondakowski and Reeva Wortel
Fayerweather Beckham Hall
Theater Faculty Production: The Great God Brown, directed by Y. Kordonskiy — 11/16-19
The Theater Department would like to invite you to attend our faculty production of The Great God Brown this coming week.
Here is the link to the short promo clip created by Allyn Wilkinson (New Media Lab):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yICTm_cvw40
The Great God Brown by Eugene O’Neill
Directed by Yuriy Kordonskiy
Designed by Jack Carr, Marcela Oteiza, and Leslie Weinberg
Wednesday, November 16 through Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8pm
Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 2pm & 8pm
CFA Theater
Tickets are available by phone (860-685-3355) or online at http://purchase.tickets.com/buy/TicketPurchase?orgid=24317
CFA link: http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/events.html#theater
In his experimental play The Great God Brown (1926), Eugene O’Neill explores the elements of expressionistic theater through the use of multiple masks that create a dramatic clash between the public and private personas of the characters. The rivalry between Billy Brown, a successful but mediocre architect, and Dion Anthony, a talented but dissolute artist; their love for the same woman, Margaret; and the conflict between their exterior and interior lives create a tale of loneliness, suffering, a search for identity and an everlasting quest for the meaning of life.
Audition Wednesday for open Theater Acting Course
Audition for Directed Experiences in Acting (THEA183). This is a half credit class that requires no papers, no reading, and no tests: just acting.
Actors who are cast will work with the students of Directing 1, and at the end of the semester you will present a scene. All levels of experience are welcome. Froshies: it’s a great opportunity for you to meet some people in the theater department whether or not you’re considering being a major, and it’s the only class for actors this semester. Everybody else: it’s a totally low pressure way to try out acting whether or not you’ve ever done it before and get some credit for it!
The class meets on Fridays from 1:10 to 4 p.m., and there will be 6-8 hours per week of outside rehearsal. You will be contacted the day after auditions and informed if you are cast, and then you should submit an enrollment request for the class and it will be approved.
Auditions will be Wednesday from 7 to 11 p.m. in the theater studios. For the audition, please prepare a 1-2 minute monologue (memorized, preferably written before 1970). Sign up on the call board in the theater studios.
Earth Day & COE Students and Faculty! Panel and Performances, Fri., April 22
Come experience the College of the Environment’s inaugural think-tank on the topic: Vulnerability of Social, Economic and Natural Systems to Environmental Stress. Reports by Bryan Bannon (College of the Environment), Jeremy Isard (College of Social Studies), Helen Poulos (College of the Environment), Dana Royer (Earth And Environmental Sciences), Phoebe Stonebraker (Biology) and Gary Yohe (Economics) with an introduction by College of the Environment Director Barry Chernoff.
Featuring an excerpt of the CFA commissioned music performance Dear Mother Earth: An Environmental Oratorio by Glenn McClure and a multi-media performance Fascinating! Her Resilience by Gina Athena Ulysse (Anthropology) in collaboration with audio sculpturist Val-Inc.
Free admission with a reception at intermission.
Co-sponsored by the College of the Environment and Center for the Arts with suppport from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
http://www.wesleyan.edu/coe
http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa
860-685-3355
Carib Week: Art Exhibit & Theater: Girls! Girls? Girls. — 3/28
A celebration of Caribbean Heritage and Culture: “FROM WHENCE WE CAME”
There is a common ground that holds together the diverse populations of the region. The West Indies is home to various ancestral roots which all contribute to a very complex and heterogeneous space. People of the Caribbean are very connected to one another through their shared experience of relocation and post-colonial recovery. In our celebration we hope to highlight the multiplicity that helps to make the region what it is today.
Please join us in our celebration. There is a week-long schedule of events, beginning with
West Indian Student Art Exhibit Opening: A display of artwork representing diversity within the West Indies, Usdan Cafe
Monday, March 28, 2011
Girls! Girls? Girls. A One-Woman Show by Marjuan Canady
Canady transforms herself into ten diverse characters, capturing the voices and concerns of black women worldwide. Her characters range from the “booty fashion mogul Sara Baartman to Black Woman News Anchor, Beverly Brushetta and the hottest rapper in the game, 40 Ounce. This satire explores how we have looked at black women in the past and in the present. It is a funny yet frightening future. Co-sponsored by Ujamaa.
Downey House 7 p.m.
Second Stage Play “Shadows” Thurs., 2/24-Sat., 2/26
See “Shadow,” a new play presented by Second Stage! A dissident poet and his family are being shadowed by a young Gestapo agent in
1933 Nazi Germany. The Nazi agent is also a budding poet, and the two men develop a close friendship. But when Nazi thugs destroy the dissidents’ life and kill everyone he loves, will the agent risk everything to help his friend seek revenge?
The show goes up this Thursday through Saturday (February 24th, 25th, and 26th) in the ’92 Theater. Shows start at 8pm each day, with an additional matinee performance at 3pm on Saturday. Tickets are available at the box office (for free!).
Most of the cast is from the class of ’13, including: Paulie Lowther, Noah Schlesinger, Danielle Springer, Evan Hazelett, Amara Davila, Tim Wolock, Maddie McEntire, Bryce Hollingsworth, Elizabeth Rudy, and Sam Korda. Written and directed by Michael Steves ’13.
Go 2013!!
The Vagina Monologues — 2/11 and 2/12
Come see The Vagina Monologues, Feb. 11 and 12!
The Vagina Monologues, by Eve Ensler (pictured), is co-directed by two members of the Class of 2013–Alanna Greco and Julia Black as well as Emily Steck ’12–and among its stars are five more members from the sophomore class! The play at the ’92 Theater is a Wesleyan tradition–full of sexy moans, hilarious anecdotes, and heartwarming stories. It is not to be missed!
Tickets are $4 at the box office. Proceeds from tickets will go to SHOFCO–Shining Hope for Communities!
Sophomore-directed Play: Sense & Sensibility 12/9, 10 & 11
Want a way to celebrate the end of classes?
Come to Second Stage’s production of Sense and Sensibility, a play about two sisters left practically impoverished by their father’s death who must find balance between cold sense and wayward sensibility so that they both might find true love. Prepare for romance, intrigue and laughter as you enjoy this play directed by Jelisa Adair ’13 and Amara Davila ’13 and adapted to the stage by Jim Fay.
Tickets are available on the day of the performance from the box office–December 9-11, 8 p.m., ’92 Patricelli Theater.