1001

Welcome back to our show and class schedule, everyone. Our next show is tomorrow, Thursday November 1 at 8pm. We'll be seeing P73's production of 1001 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center. Afterward, we'll have a brief discussion with the playwright, Jason Grote.

What do you know about the book One Thousand and One Arabian Nights? Who are the main characters in the narrative frame? What are some of the oft-told stories in it? How can a free adaptation of this classic speak to the present as it examines the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, gender inequality, the way we exoticize and criminalize the other, the way we use stories and the way stories use us?

Grote has set up several web interfaces that allow audiences to keep expanding their experience of the play. I've included a few myself. Here are some to start you off:

An overview of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights by A.S. Byatt
Enter The Story: the alternate reality of the play with links to character blogs and the 1001 Wiki
Grote's website

The Nagelberg Theatre at the Baruch Performing Arts Center is located at 55 Lexington Avenue (between Lexington Avenue and 3rd Avenue, with the entrance on 25th Street). To get there, you can take the 6 train to 23rd St, walk north on Lexington, and then take a right on 25th. The theatre is on your right.

On Friday, we'll discuss The Receptionist and hear from guest speaker Adam Feldman. Click on his name to read more of his reviews in Time Out. Your assignment due the subsequent class, November 9th, is a 500 word review of either 1001 or The Receptionist.

See you all tomorrow and Friday!

beyond the comics

Great to see you all on Friday!
I mentioned two graphic novels that touched on similar themes as The Overwhelming. Just wanted to drop them on here, in case you were interested in checking them out....

NOTES FOR A WAR STORY (2007)
by GIPI

War changes everything.

When war comes, it doesn’t just change your food, your clothes, and your home. It changes your beliefs, your dreams, and your understanding of the world. Swept up in a war he never thought would happen, Giuliano begins to question what he’s fighting for—if he’s even fighting for anything.

Gipi’s pencil and watercolor art is forceful, realistic, and evocative—the ideal medium for this important and honest graphic novel.

MAUS (written from 1973 t0 final publication in 1991)
by art spiegelman

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and acclaimed as "the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust "(The Wall Street Journal). The first volume introduces readers to Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and history itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive. Tragic and comic by turns, it attains a new complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium.


~eric

The Receptionist

Our next outing is the Manhattan Theatre Club production of The Receptionist. By Adam Bock, the play is a comedy--with implications. Bock's writing style is intentionally inarticulate, leaving more space for actors (and audience) to determine a line's meaning. However, this technique also creates a challenge for actors as the short lines remove the opportunity to think once they have begun speaking. The play runs an hour and ten minutes.

See what you can find out about Bock's work before we attend the show.

9 students will be seeing the play on Friday October 19th at 8pm after class. 5 students will see it on Sunday October 21st at 7pm with Eric Ost. MTC's City Center is on West 55th St between 6th and 7th Aves.

You can take the N/R/Q to 57th St to get there (exit at the back of the station at 55th and walk east a half block), or the E/V to Fifth Avenue/53rd St (walk north on Fifth and west a block and a half on 55th), or the F to 57th (walk south on 6th two blocks then west on 55th), or the B/D to 7th Ave (you can figure that one out).

See you on Friday! Don't forget to email your review of The Overwhelming to me at eisadavis@hotmail.com by the morning of the 19th, and bring in a hard copy to class. And for those of you who didn't see The Overwhelming, please write a review of Scarcity or of a play you have seen in the past.

1st Class Details!

When and where to meet tomorrow....
You'll be meeting tomorrow in the lobby of The PUBLIC THEATER at 425 Lafayette Street at 4:20 sharp! The workshop will be from 4:30 pm until 6:30 pm. (That’s your Friday schedule).

The best way to get to The Public Theater is to take the 6 train to Astor Place and walk South on Lafayette Street. You’ll see the flags on the front of the theater on your left that say “The Public Theater.” Can’t miss’em. You could also take the N,Q,R or W train to 8th Street/ New York University and walk East to Lafayette Street and then South. OR you could take the B,D,F or V train to Broadway/Lafayette Street and walk North up Lafayette. Their website is here: http://www.publictheater.org/tickets/index.php

Try your best to be there at 4:20, as you are going to meet Eisa in the lobby then head up as a group to the conference room.

The first show is immediately following class! (And it's going to be a late one, ending around 9:30pm)
Scroll down to see Eisa's post about the show. It will be at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre Laura Pels Theatre at 111 West 46th Street (between 6th & 7th Aves). You will all head up to the theater immediately following class.

Eisa Davis is your instructor. She will give you her contact information when you arrive. Call if you have trouble finding the Public Theater. Text if, for whatever reason, you are going to be late. And don't forget to include your name!

Make sure to bring a few dollar$ to grab something on the way over to the show after class. And don’t forget to bring a pen and a notebook!

Enjoy
~eric

The Overwhelming

The first Theatre TRaC outing is on Friday October 12th at 730pm, immediately after our first class at the Public. We will be attending the Roundabout's production of The Overwhelming by JT Rogers, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. The writer and one of the actors will be joining us for a brief discussion after the performance.

The play takes place in 1994, at the outset of the Rwandan genocide. For background information on the conflict that killed an estimated 800,000 people in 100 days, read this summary article from the BBC.

Today, the genocide in Darfur, as well as the documented deaths of at least 75,000 Iraqi civilians, beg us to revisit the conditions that give way to mass murder. For more information on genocide intervention, click here.

As you think about the play, you may wish to consider the difficulty of representing the causes of genocide on stage and the ways the production approaches that challenge. Also, you may wish to think about point of view and from which perspectives the play delivers its information.

Write a 500 word response to / review of the play, due October 19th. Please email your response to eisadavis@hotmail.com by the morning of the 19th, and bring a hard copy in to class.

Welcome

Welcome to TheatreTRaC, and our class blog. By checking in here frequently, you can stay up to date on all outings, assignments, in class exercises, handouts, and supplemental materials. You'll also be able to continue and deepen conversations from class, as well as start entirely new ones. Please feel free to share information or ideas from your experience, research, or imagination as they pertain to issues covered in our class or evoked by performances. Also, let this forum spark one on one conversations with your classmates and me, as virtual interaction is never a substitute for actual dialogue.

I'll edit this post to include our syllabus and a handout covering the basics of reviewing plays.