Hidden Histories:
A Festival Season of New and Unseen Works

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.

*Hidden Histories is generously supported by

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!  

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
In the Devine Studio Theatre

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.

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Trees and Ghosts

Adapted and Directed by Natsu Onoda, from the Graphic Novels of Osamu Tezuka
WORLD PREMIERE!
Nov. 8 - 10, 14 - 17 at 8 pm; Nov. 11 at 2pm
In the Gonda Theatre

A new multimedia production adapted from three short graphic novels by a Japanese cartoonist Osamu Tezuka, 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.

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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
In the Gonda Theatre

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.

Click on the Icons Below to Listen to Music from the Show.

The Steady State
Black River Falls
I Am a Train

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Stuff Happens

By David Hare
Directed by Derek Goldman
DC PREMIERE
April 10-12, 16-19 at 8 pm; April 13 at 2 pm
In the Gonda Theatre

A dynamic history play that takes as its subject the diplomatic and political build-up to the Iraq War, with familiar characters such as Powell, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush 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 Festival, and numerous interdisciplinary collaborations, music and dance events, residencies and performances as part of our partnerships with Arena Stage, American Opera Theater, and more.

Written & directed by Nadine George-Graves
Puppet Work by Nana Projects Inc.

June 12th at 7PM, June 13th at 8PM, June 14th at 2PM and 8PM, June 15th at 2PM

In the Gonda Theatre

A mash-up of the traditional African legend with the Arabian classic Shahrazad, this indoor/outdoor spectacle re-imagines the legend of Anansi the spider - the classical African Diaspora trickster - using storytelling, puppetry, new media, music and dance. A performance for the whole family!