At Emory University, three Atlanta playwrights took a new look at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with modern scientific research. They each contributed to a single show that’s being performed at the Atlanta Science Festival.
Listen to the interview with playwrights Neely Gossett and Edith Freni here.
Emory College senior Cameron Frostbaum is using his honors thesis research to introduce local audiences to microtheatre, which began in Spain and features short plays performed for small groups in flexible spaces.
Read the article here.
Theater Emory alum, Chris Salter, talked with Emory Magazine about his new instillation In Search of Expo 67 and how Theater at Emory changed his life plan as an undergraduate.
Read the article here.
Atlanta—In describing her creative process writing “Frankenstein,” Mary Shelley referred to the story as the “spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.” Theater Emory’s “Midnight Pillow,” running September 21 through October 1, brings thirteen women and transgender writers together to explore Shelley’s enigmatic depiction of the artistic method in a collaborative work created and directed by Emory alumna Park Krausen.
“Midnight Pillow,” invites audiences into the bedroom as eight performers bring to life the linked writings of Fanny Britt, Shelia Callaghan, Andrea Cohen, Léonore Confino, Lauren Gunderson, Maria Headley, Cristin König, Nathalie Mason Fleury, Scott Turner Schofield, Awoye Timpo, Naomi Wallace, Madhuri Shekar and Marisa Wegrzyn. This is the first production in Theater Emory’s 2017-2018 season that in part responds to the 200th anniversary of “Frankenstein.”
Krausen, the driving force behind the project, commissioned writers from all over the world to construct monologues, scenes and short plays that consider the questions “What happens when you are in the act of birthing or creating? What happens when you refuse to create? What keeps you up at night or rumbles in that liminal space between dreams and consciousness? What happens when your creation betrays you or you it?”
“I create dialogue between divergent art forms and take the opportunity to invite everyone to play—the often represented and often underrepresented,” says Krausen about her creative process. After a decade serving as producing artistic director of Théâtre du Rêve, she describes her relatively new life as a theater director and the opportunity to work with Theater Emory as “daunting and exciting.”
“I am thrilled to be returning to my alma mater where the idea of experiential learning, the exchange between students and professionals, is paramount.”
Theater Emory presents “Midnight Pillow” September 21-23, 27-30 at 7:30 p.m.; September 24 and October 1 at 2 p.m in the Theater Lab of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. Tickets are $18 general admission, $14 discount category members, $12 industry and non-Emory students, $6 Emory students and are available through the Arts at Emory Box Office online or at 404-727-5050. For additional information on Theater Emory’s 2017-2018 season, visit theater.emory.edu.
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Theater Emory, the professional company in residence at Emory University, produces a wide range of drama, from classics to new works. Liberal arts undergraduates work with professional directors, actors, designers, playwrights, dramaturgs, choreographers, composers, music directors and stage managers.
In 1938, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart premiered a musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors,” the first American musical comedy based on a Shakespeare play. This raucous farce,Rodgers and Hart’s “The Boys from Syracuse,” kicks of Theater Emory’s season-long celebration of the Bard September 22 – October 2 in the Theater Lab of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.
Read the press release in full here.
Theater Emory presents its 2016-2017 season, “Shakespeare Through Many Lenses” in tandem with the Folger Library’s touring exhibition “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare,” on display in Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum November 5 – December 11, 2016.
“When we heard that the First Folio would be coming to Emory, we decided to focus our season on Shakespeare’s work,” explains artistic director Janice Akers. “We saw this as an opportunity to put our distinctive stamp on the Shakespeare celebration and include a variety of voices, cultures, performance styles, and new work.”
Read the press release in full here.
This is the Place Where Your Body Belongs: Performing Home
A workshop led by Joanna Russo and Phil Cramer of NEW NOISE, a critically acclaimed New Orleans theater ensemble currently in residence at Serenbe. Introduction by Malina Rodriguez, Theater Emory’s Technical Theater Coordinator and Co-Founder of The Lucky Penny.
Theater Emory recently teamed up with The Lucky Penny to present a physical theater workshop to the local community. This is the Place Where Your Body Belongs: Performing Home
with NEW NOISE of New Orleans, explored some of the methods that NEW NOISE uses in devising original multi-disciplinary work. Through the medium of performance, participants asked themselves and each other one of the questions at the heart of NEW NOISE’s show Oxblood: Is there a place where your body belongs?
NEW NOISE’s Oxblood is currently being developed and presented in the Atlanta metro area as part of a 2016 Project Residency with AIR Serenbe. See it in performance July 22-24, 2016 at 6pm, at Deer Hollow at Serenbe.
We asked for feedback from two of the workshop participants who are rising seniors at Emory. Here’s how they described their experience:
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I wasn’t too sure what to expect, I wasn’t completely sure what I signed up for, and I definitely wasn’t sure how physical my body could get, but come Saturday July 15th, I was set to take part in a two-hour physical theater workshop led by the innovative NEW NOISE of Louisiana.
I was pretty nervous as I rushed in chomping my last couple bites of lunch. The workshop began with a physical warmup reminiscent of Gaga dancing, then swiftly transitioned in to a non-stop workshop that would have moments introducing completely in-body theatrical techniques, then moments that were a physical fruition of subconscious writing on deep thought questions such as “Where is home?” and “Where does your body belong?”
Throughout the workshop, a heart of collaboration between the various disciplines of performance art was extremely clear. Being a true and blue liberal arts student who loves blurring the lines in which we confine the different medias of art, this was my jam and butter! The room was filled with artists with various backgrounds from dance to theater and spoken word artist to those who speak solely with their bodies. We would work in teams combining these backgrounds to improvised skits that blended into improvised movements that blended into improvised writing, allowing me to see the variety of natural performance from the artists in the room. As a student with a background in stage acting, I soaked in all the various media and artist’s techniques that pushed my ideas of what theatrical performance could be.
The two hours went by in a blur, I honestly left wishing we had a full day to play! Alas, I will have to suffice by further supporting the NEW NOISE troupe in their performance of Oxblood at Serenbe this weekend, July 22nd-24th! I am extremely thankful for being able to take part in their workshop and would love to see more!
Dalyla McGee
Class of 2017
Anthropology and Human Biology Major
Theater Studies Minor
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The NEW NOISE Workshop was, at first, simultaneously very new and familiar territory to me. As a dancer, I often do not use my voice as a vehicle of expression in performance. My instinct is my body. So, naturally, I was slightly anxious about an experimental theater workshop. With Joanna’s encouraging and clear direction, that anxiety melted away as the layers of physical mediums in art began to overlap. The intrinsic similarities between art forms opened up an endless universe of loosened possibilities; no right, no wrong, just speak with your body, speak with your voice. Prompts for creative writing exercises like “describe home to you” or “where does your body belong?” lent themselves to deep-seeded realities brought to light in a myriad of qualities: playful, dark, poignant, tense, sexy, cheerful, surprising or hilarious movement phrases, to name a few. These movement phrases, supported by a vocalization and embodiment of the words written, emphasized that the mover, the speaker, and the creator are one and the same to me. It was a very powerful experience that I am very thankful to have had! Not to mention the fresh opportunity to embody an exhausted book, a creeping chicken, and a devouring automatic vacuum cleaner…
Clara Schulstad Guyton
Class of 2017
Dance and Movement Studies Major
English Major
