Hidden Histories
A Festival Season of New and Unseen Works
2007-08
The 2007 - 2008 Theatrical Season at the Davis Performing Arts Center
Professor Derek Goldman
Georgetown University’s Program in the Performing Arts is proud to welcome Professor Derek Goldman to his new twin roles as Artistic Director of the Davis Performing Arts Center and Director of the College’s Theater and Performance Studies Program.
Derek Goldman is an Associate Professor of Theater and Performance Studies and the Founding Artistic Director of the StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance, an acclaimed, socially-engaged professional theater company founded in Chicago in 1992, and now based in Chapel Hill, NC. He has extensive professional credits as both a director and an adapter/playwright, including celebrated work Off-Broadway, with his own company, and with other major regional theaters such as Steppenwolf in Chicago. This Fall he is directing As You Like It at the Folger Theater. Under Goldman's leadership, StreetSigns has produced 57 productions, and been the recipient of numerous awards and honors. Recent adapting/directing credits include his adaptation of Studs Terkel's Will the Circle Be Unbroken which premiered in a concert reading at Steppenwolf and was remounted in at Chicago's Millennium Park for an audience of 10,000 with an all-star cast including Garrison Keillor. Most recently it was presented by Playmakers Rep and StreetSigns with David Strathairn. He directed the long-running Off-Broadway and internationally touring hit Sholom Aleichem -- Now You're Talking, and co-authored Haymarket Eight (with Jessica Thebus) which premiered at Steppenwolf and is published by Samuel French. Other credits as writer/adapter and director include his adaptation of Agee's A Death in the Family (Jefferson Citation for best new work), Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Spectator Award), Turn of the Screw, Kaddish for Allen Ginsberg, Three Men in a Boat, Divine Days, Written on the Body, and Right as Rain, his award-winning play about Anne Frank and the Holocaust, which toured nationally for three years, and was further developed in a recent workshop at Georgetown in 2007. Other professional directing highlights include his Jefferson Award-winning Hamlet, the American premiere of Cixous' modern epic The Perjured City, The Seagull, Brecht's Antigone, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, DeLillo's Mao II, The Fever, Lorca's The Public, Tales of the Lost Formicans, Twilight: Los Angeles: 1992, the hit comedies Night of the Mime and Lovely Letters, and numerous Beckett plays. In New York, he is currently developing the jazz musical My Swan: The Passions of F. Scott Fitzgerald with acclaimed recording artist Nancy Harrow. He received his Ph. D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and his scholarly work on performance ethnography and the politics and poetics of adaptation has been published in numerous journals as well as The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies. Since his arrival at Georgetown in 2005, he has directed the DC premiere of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, The Winter's Tale, The Skin of Our Teeth, Dream Boy (with Joseph Megel) and next year he will stage the area premiere of David Hare's Stuff Happens in conjunction with a research-intensive Ensemble Performance course. He teaches courses in areas such as adaptation and performance of literature, directing, comedy, Shakespeare, and political theater.
The 2007-2008 Theatrical Season:
The 2007-2008 Season, Hidden Histories: a Festival Season of New and Unseen Works, embraces the Theater and Performance Studies Program’s commitment to the development of new work. Each of the four works chosen deals explicitly with the relationship between history "writ large" and its more microcosmic, personal, and psychic reverberations.
Fabulation, or the
Re-Education of Undine
By Lynn Nottage
Directed by Isaiah Wooden
DC PREMIERE!
Nov. 1-2 at 8 pm; Nov. 3 at 2 pm and 8 pm; Nov. 4 at 2 ..pm
Presented in Collaboration with Black Theatre Ensemble
A sharp and riotously comic satire, this urban parable is about the dangers of disingenuous self-creation. Undine Barnes Calles is living her version of the American Dream until her husband disappears with her fortune. Bankrupt and pregnant, she is forced to confront the past she tried desperately to kill. Fashioned with dynamic theatricality and surprising warmth, this contemporary tale of comeuppance promises to transport audiences with humor and humanity.
Trees and Ghosts
Adapted and Directed by Natsu Onoda, from the Graphic Novels of Tezuka Osamu
WORLD PREMIERE!
Nov. 8 - 10, 14 - 17 at 8 pm; Nov. 11 at 2pm
A new multimedia production adapted from three short graphic novels by a Japanese cartoonist Tezuka Osamu, who is considered the inventor of manga (contemporary Japanese comics). Spirits, elements of nature and memories of World War II haunt each of the stories that make up this highly visual production which employs interactive video, live on-stage drawing, and live taiko drums.
Wisconsin Death Trip
Directed by Tim Raphael
Adapted by Jeffrey Berkson and Tim Raphael from the book by Michael Lesy
Lyrics by Jeffrey Berkson and Tim Raphael, Music by Jeffrey Berkson
WORLD PREMIERE!
Jan 31- Feb. 2, Feb. 6-9 at 8 pm; Feb. 3 at 2 pm
A new chamber opera adaptation of cultural historian Michael Lesy’s genre-defying classic. Composed from local history and gossip, newspaper accounts and photographs, asylum records and contemporary fiction, Lesy’s hallucinogenic text chronicles the decline of a rural Wisconsin county during the Great Depression of the 1890s. Employing American roots music to shift back and forth in time between the 1890 and the 1980s, the piece tells the story of a trailer park denizen living in the margins of Reagan’s America, haunted by the nineteenth century ghosts of Black River Falls.
Stuff Happens
By David Hare
Directed by Derek Goldman
DC PREMIERE
April 10-12, 16-19 at 8 pm; April 13 at 2 pm
A dynamic history play that takes as its subject the diplomatic and political build-up to the Iraqi War, with familiar characters such as Colin, Condi, Cheney, Rummy, and Dubya himself. Combining documentary-style transcripts with Hare's imaginings of conversations that took place behind closed doors, Stuff Happens examines the dynamic between private, hidden histories and the grand and more visible currents of our own contemporary history.
Summer 2008
Next year's season will also include the return of the Gritti Politti Summer Performance Festiva, and numerous interdisciplinary collaborations, music and dance events, residencies and performances as part of our partnerships with Arena Stage, American Opera Theater, and more.
JUST ANNOUNCED!
.Anansi the Story King
. Adapted and directed by Nadine George-Graves
..WORLD PREMIERE!
This new production will be an indoor/outdoor spectacle that re-imagines the legend of Anansi the spider, the classical African Diaspora trickster, using puppetry, new media, music and dance. A mash-up of the traditional African legend with the Arabian classic, Shahrazad, it is a performance for the whole family, a magical tale recounting Anansi's attempts to prove he is king of all stories, while Sheri the firefly tries to outspin Anansi's yarns and escape his powerful web.
* Note all titles are subject to change and contingent upon final licensing of performance rights.
Theater Community Season Subscription at the Davis Center
A great new adventure in subscriptions: You'll see one show from the Mask & Bauble Season, one show from the Nomadic Theatre Season, A collaboration with Black Theatre Ensemble and the entire Theater & Performance Studies Season--all will take place in the Davis Arts Center; a total of 6 GREAT shows all at 25% off the single ticket price! This subscription package includes:
Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (DC Premiere)
Theater Program & Black Theatre Ensemble Collaboration
Trees & Ghosts (World Premiere)
Theater Program
The House of Blue Leaves (by GU Alum, John Guare)
Nomadic Theatre
Wisconsin Death Trip (World Premiere)
Theater Program
Black Comedy
Mask & Bauble Dramatic Society
Stuff Happens (DC Premiere)
Theater Program
Not sure which evenings to attend? Subscribers get free exchanges! Don't miss this amazing season and a chance to save and guarantee your seats!!
Theater and Performance Studies Program Subscription
Subscribe to our Hidden Histories series, and you receive seats to all four of our exciting premiere productions at 25% off the regular ticket price. It's like getting one show free!
Plus, as a subscriber you enjoy complete flexibility, with unlimited exchange privileges at no cost. In addition, as a subscriber, you will receive special privileges throughout the year at the Davis Center, including priority invitations to a wide range of events, including special receptions, workshops, readings, residencies, lectures and master classes with many of the nation's leading artists, and performances as part of our partnership with Arena Stage, our Festival of Interfaith Arts, and much more. Subscribe now!
