2010-2011 Theater and Performance Studies Season
A Season Named Desire
The 2010-11 A Season Named Desire featured four faculty-directed mainstage productions, as well as an array of special events including visiting international companies and leading professional guest artists, student-written and directed work, and much more. The centerpiece of the seasonwas the Tenn Cent Fest, a deep and sustained celebration of the work and legacy of Tennessee Williams on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. Running throughout the Spring semester and produced in partnership with our friends in the American Studies Program and Arena Stage, the Festival focused on the extraordinary legacy of the work and life of this infinitely complex and indelible American writer—and on those who influenced him and whom he has influenced. A Season Named Desire offers an explosion of riches, diverse in form, content, and style.
Throughout the year we engaged work that explored and embodied desire in all its forms, bringing to the fore issues of sexuality, violence and trauma, race and justice, history and the American South, and tolerance. As we explored a remarkable array of plays, fiction, poetry, film scripts, memoirs and letters, the theme of desire emerged in our season not only as content—an expression of our wishes and dreams, yearnings and appetites—but also as a living acknowledgement of the legacy of a writer who inspires us to experiment and take risks, to find new expressive forms, and to not settle for the tried and true.
Thursday-Saturday, October 14-16, 2010 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 2 p.m.
Wednesday-Saturday, October 20-23, 2010 at 8 p.m.
Blood Wedding
By Federico García Lorca
Based on the translation by Langston Hughes
Directed by Professor Nadia Mahdi
In this elemental reimagining of a classic tragedy, new love is celebrated, an old passion is rekindled, and lovers desperately flee through a moonlit forest where supernatural forces vie for control. Lorca’s sensuous and deeply conflicted exploration of desire, rebellion, and retribution comes to life in this ensemble-driven production based on the Langston Hughes translation.
DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE
Thursday-Saturday, February 24-26 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, February 27 at 2 p.m.
Thursday-Saturday, March 17-19 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 20 at 2 p.m.
Wednesday-Sunday, March 23-27 (times TBA due to festival programming)
The Glass Menagerie Project
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Professor Derek Goldman
This fresh re-envisioning of Williams’ legendary masterpiece, his most autobiographical play, is presented as part of our Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival. Featuring an artistic team comprised of Georgetown students, young alumni,
and faculty, including Professor Sarah Marshall as Amanda Wingfield, the production of this haunting memory play, filled with fragility and stifled yearning, is the centerpiece of The Glass Menagerie Project. The project’s diverse range of events will include readings, adapted work from Williams’ fiction (including Portrait of a Girl in Glass), letters, screenplays, and memoirs, as well as an interactive multimedia installation which uses the scenic world of The Glass Menagerie as an embodied, sensory window into Williams’ life and work. The production and surrounding events are presented at Georgetown and then in May at the new Mead Center for American Theater as part of GU’s partnership with Arena Stage.
DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE
Tenn Cent Fest is produced in partnership with Georgetown’s American Studies Program and C74.
Thursday-Saturday, April 7-9, 2011 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, April 10, 2011 at 2 p.m.
Thursday and Friday, April 14 and 15, 2011 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 2 and 8 p.m.
Suddenly Last Summer
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Professor Maya E. Roth
This riveting American gothic classic unfolds as a shocking mystery, probing the haunting death of a poet visiting Europe with his cousin, a young woman now charged as being insane. Creative and destructive forces collide in Williams’ controversial, expressionistic play which probes the violence of human nature and homophobia with charismatic characters and poetic force. Presented as part of our Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival (Tenn Cent Fest) and, at selected
performances, paired with resonant performance excerpts from playwright Adrienne Kennedy and from Williams’ own writings on memory and yearning.
DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE
Tenn Cent Fest is produced in partnership with Georgetown’s American Studies Program and C74.
July 27-30, 2011 (Times TBA)
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Based on the book by Michael Pollan
Written, Conceived, and Directed by Natsu Onoda Power
Professor Natsu Onoda Power (Madness & Civilization, Trees and Ghosts) once again brings her singular vision
as an adapter, director and designer to transform a powerful non-fiction text into an unconventional and memorable performative event. This ensemble-based stage adaptation of Michael Pollan’s best-selling book moves from the corn fields of Iowa, to a small organic farm in Virginia, to America’s dinner tables, grocery stores, and fast-food emporiums. The production engages the question: “What should we have for dinner?” — a quandary which Pollan says has confronted us since man discovered fire, and the answer to which may well determine our very survival as a species.
DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE
Read about the expansive Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival.