The Gritti Politti Summer Performance Festival
Presented by Georgetown University's Theater Program and the StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance
The Theater Program at Georgetown University and the StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance are proud to announce the first GRITTI POLITTI SUMMER PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL. This year's inaugural festival consists of three bold and provocative stagings produced on an intimate scale, which will serve as an introduction to the Washington, DC community of an annual arts festival to be held at the new Royden B. Davis SJ Performing Arts Center at the heart of the Georgetown campus each summer. Here students from Georgetown and beyond will collaborate with leading professional artists and scholars.
"Gritti Politti" is conceived as a vibrant meeting place for work that enacts the convergence between the political and the literary, including premieres of new works, daring adaptations, performance art, solo performance, and bold re-imaginings of classics. In addition to fully realized productions, the festival will be a deeply interactive experience engaging work at all stages of development including readings, developmental workshops, discussions and symposia.
This year's festival opens in the Devine Studio Theatre on Friday, June 9 and Saturday, June 10 at 8pm with PERFORMANCE OF SLEEP IN ONE LONG ACT WITHOUT INTERMISSION. Prepare yourself for this one-of-a-kind, multimedia roller coaster ride that overwhelms your senses. In this performance, you will see performers drawing murals, playing basketball, interrogating a panda, and vivisecting vegetables, all in hopes of understanding the strange metaphorical relationship between sleep and death.
Written and directed by Natsu Onoda, Visiting Professor in the Theater Program, Performance of Sleep in One Long Act Without Intermission is collaboration between Georgetown's Theater Program, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and Live Action Cartoonists' theater company.
Next up in the Gonda Theatre, the festival is excited to present THE SKIN OF OUR TEETHby Thornton Wilder. Directed by Professor Derek Goldman with Visiting Artist Joseph Megel, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, this timeless classic comedy celebrates humanity's resilience, inventiveness, and will to survive. As zany, urgent and relevant today as when it premiered more than sixty years ago, this influential American masterpiece hilariously and poignantly breaks from established conventions as it depicts the life of a quintessential American family in the wake of the numerous wars, natural disasters, and shared struggles that make up our human history. The Skin of our Teeth will be presented June 22-24 at 8pm with stage seating.
The festival will close with DREAM BOY,adapted by Eric Rosen, from the novel by Jim Grimsley. Directed by Joseph Megel with Derek Goldman, the play is a tender and terrifying tale of first love matched against the brutal obstacles of hatred and violence. Set in rural North Carolina, this novel from one of the South's most celebrated writers is a lyrical and thoughtful exploration of first love between Nathan, the new boy in town, and his neighbor Roy. What begins as a simple romance becomes fused with the ghosts of Nathan's past and the gothic figures of the new South.
This workshop staging will feature minimal scenic and lighting design by Robbie Hayes. The cast includes celebrated DC actress and long-time faculty member, Sarah Marshall; along with Georgetown students and recently graduated students.
Dream Boy represents the regional premiere of a work that has been widely acclaimed in previous runs in Chicago (Joseph Jefferson Awards for Best Production and Best New Work) and Chapel Hill, NC (Triangle Theater Award, Independent and News & Observer "Best of the Year"). Dream Boy will be held in the Devine Studio Theatre July 6-8 at 8pm. Note: This production contains adult content and themes.
This fall marked the opening of the Royden B. Davis S.J. Performing Arts Center, the only building in Georgetown's 225-year history designed for arts education, and is home to Georgetown's Theater Program. The mission of the Davis Center is to foster collaboration within the university, across disciplines, and beyond, and the Theater Program is proud to be presenting these works as part of the first "Gritti Politti Performance Summer Festival."
In continuation with the Theater Program's dedication to the development of new work, we are also proud to be hosting workshops of two new plays this June.
NO PAROLE, written and performed by Carlo d'Amore, explores the writer's real life relationship with his very eccentric mother. D'Amore takes the audience on a surreal journey as the story bounces back and forth and he transforms seamlessly from aging mom to gravelly voiced landlord to small child in an almost novelistic narrative. The workshop will culminate in a public reading on Monday, June 5 at 7pm in the Devine Studio Theatre, which is free and open to the public.
From June 13-18 the new play, DOUGLASS WOMEN, will be in development at the Davis Performing Arts Center by the critically acclaimed author of "Voodoo Dream" and "Magic City," Jewell Parker Rhodes, and Joseph Megel. Based on Ms. Rhodes award-winning novel, Douglas Women reimagines the lives of an American hero, Frederick Douglass, and the two women who loved him and lived in his shadow.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Derek Goldman is the Founding Artistic Director of the StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance. In addition to leading the company for 13 years, he has directed Off-Broadway and worked regularly as a director and adapter/playwright with regional theaters such as Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. He is the author of more than 20 professionally produced plays and adaptations, including work published by Samuel French, and he has directed over 50 productions. His work has been honored with Joseph Jefferson awards, Triangle Theatre awards, and Spectator awards, among others. He has also won national recognition as a published scholar on topics such as the politics of adaptation and performance ethnography. Mr. Goldman is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Georgetown University and has a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.
Joseph Megel has spent the last twenty-five years focusing on the direction and development of new works, for theater, film and video. Mr. Megel is co-Artistic Director of StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance and an Associate Artist for The Working Theatre in New York. He served for six years as Artistic Director of Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, and is also co-Executive Producer of Harland's Creek Productions, producer of New York premieres of new plays and developmental producer of screenplays and readings. Mr. Megel has received three DramaLogue awards, a nomination for the NAACP Theatre Award, and an Ovation award nomination. He is currently a visiting artist in Performance Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds a MFA from the University of Southern California.
Natsu Onoda is the co-founder and artistic director of Live Action Cartoonists, with whom she has written and directed numerous productions including Science Fiction, are you my negative space?, and Performance of Sleep in One Long Act Without Intermission. She has been set designer for a number of productions including Romeo and Juliet (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre), Loss of Breath at Theatre X (Milwaukee), and Burnt Rice at Eslite (Taipei). Her scholarly writing on comics have been published in the "International Journal of Comic Arts." She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and a certificate in scenic painting from Yale School of Drama.
StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance is an award-winning socially and politically engaged professional theatre that produces new adaptations of literature for the stage, re-imagined classics, and ensemble-devised performance. Based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and founded in Chicago in 1992, StreetSigns has produced fifty-five productions in its fourteen-year history. Working in partnership with the Department of Communication Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Center is dedicated to the development, presentation, and touring of new literary adaptations, company created theatrical works, innovative new plays, and bold re-imaginings of classics.
Live Action Cartoonists is a Chicago-based performance group. Their mission is to invigorate theatre and comic arts in the United States and beyond, inspiring active dialogues and collaboration between artists and audiences in the fields of theatre and comic arts. LAC creates original performance pieces that combine live-action cartooning (drawing and painting onstage) with other media, such as digital filmmaking and scientific experiments, as well as hosting educational workshops in comics and cartooning for both young and adult audiences.
