2014-2015 Davis Center Season

The Georgetown University Theater and Performance Studies Program’s 2014-15 features three shows: three faculty-directed mainstage productions: In the Red and Brown Water (a co-production with Black Theatre Ensemble), the world premiere of On the Origin of Species: A Nautical Melodrama, and the area premiere of Slow Falling Bird, as well as a special staged reading world premiere of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. An array of special events features visiting companies and leading professional guest artists, student-written and directed work, and much more.

Order your Flex Pass — good for three tickets to any combination of the Theater & Performance Studies Program mainstage productions at the Davis Performing Arts Center. Flex Passes are just $40 for the general public, $30 for faculty/staff/alumni/senior, and $15 for Georgetown University students. Read more about our Flex Pass in Flexible Ticket Packages Session.

Join the ranks of Flex Pass members and purchase now:

Thursday-Saturday, October 9-11 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, October 12 at 2 p.m.
Thursday and Friday, October 16 and 17 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, October 18 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.

CO-PRODUCED BY GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY THEATER & PERFORMANCE STUDIES PROGRAM AND BLACK THEATER ENSEMBLE

In the Red and Brown Water

By Tarell Alvin McCraney
Directed by Prof. Isaiah Matthew Wooden (COL ‘04)

How far will Oya, a fast and beautiful young athlete, go to make a mark in the world? From MacArthur Fellowship recipient Tarell McCraney comes this timely and haunting work of extraordinary theatrical poetry, part of McCraney’s celebrated Brother/Sister Trilogy. Taking place in the “distant present” of mythical San Pere, Louisiana, the play weaves ancient Yoruba tradition into the tale of a contemporary African-American community in the Louisiana housing projects. In the Red and Brown Water is an intoxicating story that charts a young girl’s decision at a crossroads, her journey into womanhood, and her subsequent fall into the murky waters of life.

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE
FRIDAY/SATURDAY EVENING: $18 GENERAL | $15 FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, SENIOR | $10 STUDENT
ALL OTHER PERFORMANCES: $15 GENERAL | $12 FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, SENIOR | $7 STUDENT

Thursday, November 6-8 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, November 9 at 2 p.m.
Thursday and Friday, November 13 and 14 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, November 15 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY THEATER & PERFORMANCE STUDIES PROGRAM
WORLD PREMIERE

On the Origin of Species: A Nautical Melodrama

Adapted and directed by Prof. Natsu Onoda Power
From the book by Charles Darwin

All aboard! From the wild imagination of adapter, director and designer Natsu Onoda Power comes this thrilling and unlikely theatrical take on one of the most influential books of all time, Darwin’s articulation of the foundation of evolutionary biology. On the Origin of Species is a science-show-meets-nautical-melodrama adaptation of Charles Darwin’s writings-all taking place on his ship, The Beagle. The ensemble cast will query our struggle for existence through scenes, songs, movement, animation, and other theatrical transmutations. Do you have what it takes to survive?!

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE
FRIDAY/SATURDAY EVENING: $18 GENERAL | $15 FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, SENIOR | $10 STUDENT
ALL OTHER PERFORMANCES: $15 GENERAL | $12 FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, SENIOR | $8 STUDENT

Friday and Saturday, February 6 and 7 at 8 p.m.

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY THEATER & PERFORMANCE STUDIES PROGRAM

A staged reading
The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey recounts the story of one religious man’s quest to determine why God allows disasters to occur. In 1714 in Lima, Peru, Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk, witnesses the collapse of a bridge woven by the Incas that has stood for over a century, killing the five people who were crossing it. He then embarks on a six-year-long quest to determine whether it was divine intervention or happenstance that led to the deaths of the five victims. Featuring Georgetown students alongside leading professional actors, this workshop presentation of a world premiere adaptation of one of the great achievements in American literature, by acclaimed director and playwright Derek Goldman, is a hauntingly beautiful exploration into the meaning of life and of death, and the paradoxes of faith and reason, full of humane tenderness, humor, and heartbreak.

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE
FREE, BUT TICKETED

Thursday-Saturday, March 26-28 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 29 at 2 p.m.
Wednesday-Saturday, April 8-11 at 8 p.m.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY THEATER & PERFORMANCE STUDIES PROGRAM

Slow Falling Bird

By Christine Evans
Directed by Rosalba Clemente

Conceived on the boat of an asylum seeker, Fish Child hovers above the Woomera Immigration Detention Centre in the Australian desert, reluctant to be born. Her mother becomes enmeshed in an increasingly deadly struggle with a prison guard, bargaining for her child’s future. Slow Falling Bird explores the brutal realities confronting those who arrive unbidden in Australia’s waters and the warping social and mental conditions on both sides of the wire, asking what kind of new life, and new society, can be born into such barren surroundings. By turns bleak and darkly comical, this play takes place against the wider background of a world with tightly patrolled borders and an increase of ‘non-citizens’ without rights. Part of the 2014-15 Georgetown University Theater & Performance Studies Program’s “Where We’re From: A Season of Origins and Migrations.” Written by acclaimed Australian-born playwright and Theater & Performance Studies Program faculty member Prof. Christine Evans, Slow Falling Bird is directed by Evans’ long-time collaborator from Australia, Guest Artist Rosalba Clemente, Head of Acting at Flinders University Drama Centre.

THEATER SPECIAL EVENTS

The Chocolate Chess Pie of Amory

Saturday, August 30 at 3:30 p.m.
Page-to-Stage Festival at the Kennedy Center
A staged reading

By Lizzie Brevard (COL ’14)
Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Hog Frog”
Directed by Prof. Maya E. Roth
Featuring Prof. Susan Lynskey with GU students and alumni
It’s August 1955 in Amory, Mississippi, a time and place where “The higher the hair, the closer to God!” means something. Yet the women of the community are planning more than just sweet potato casserole and their Momma’s fried chicken for Sunday lunch after church. With vengeance on their minds and “Bless her heart!” on their lips, these Southern ladies are deliciously audacious. Written by a recent Georgetown University alumna and incubated in the “Writing Stage Adaptation” class taught by Christine Evans, this laugh-out-loud comedy is filled with satiric wit, heart, and gospel music. It suggests all these good Southern women need for revenge is to introduce the threat of scandal and to bake a delicious chocolate chess pie.
JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
FREE

Also as part of the festival, look for ABG’s performance of Prof. Christine Evans’ GALILEE, which takes place amidst the collision of competing economic and ecological forces in a small Australian coastal town on the Great Barrier Reef. As the sea temperatures rise and the world’s first hybrid blackfin sharks appear, biology student Carol, her entrepreneur mother Mardy, and the old-time diver Jimmy struggle with their own decisions—fight, flee, or adapt to the changing environment. Check kennedy-center.org for details.

No Mas

Monday, November 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Georgetown University Campus Ministry and Department Of Performing Arts

Directed by Professor Maya E. Roth

A reading involving students, faculty, and Jesuits about violence and equity in El Salvador.

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE
FREE

25th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution

Monday, November 17 at 4 p.m.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY THEATER & PERFORMANCE STUDIES PROGRAM

In honor of the peaceful protests that stirred Czech Democracy 25 years ago during the Velvet Revolution, Georgetown faculty and students will join with members of the Czech community for an interactive procession and site-specific performance tribute at HAVEL PLACE. Look for a flower installation at Healy Circle and join our procession to Alumni Square, where we will share a performance enactment of the late playwright-dissident President Vaclav Havel’s inspired words from a generation ago and snapshots of their legacy now. The Winner of an essay contest, jointly sponsored by the Czech Embassy and Georgetown, will be named. Distinguished guests will pay homage to peaceful activism.

Meet at HEALY CIRCLE, outside Healy Building. Procession to Havel Place, in Alumni Square.

FREE

Georgetown University/Arena Stage/Ammerman Family Partnership

Now in its ninth year, our unique partnership with Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, made possible by the generosity of the Ammerman Family, highlights our shared commitment to the development of new work and a new generation of artists and administrators, to community engagement, and to deepening dialogue on vital issues in the field through co-productions, festivals, frequent collaborations on developmental workshops and readings, national convenings, residencies, and more.

Work developed through the partnership has led to productions such as Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations on Broadway, The Glass Menagerie Project as part of the Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival, and collaboration on festivals celebrating Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, and most recently, Eugene O’Neill; apprenticeships and observerships for Georgetown students and alumni with Arena Stage; and more. Partnership highlights from the past season included the symposium Playing with the Past, (W)righting the Future, featuring leading artists and scholars including Daniel Beaty, Lydia Diamond, Dominique Morriseau, Robert O’Hara, and many others, hosted by Professor Soyica Colbert.

Arena partnership activities in the coming season include an on-campus developmental residency workshop including curricular links, as well as Beyond Fiddler: The Other Facets of Tevye-A Special Evening with Theodore Bikel at Arena Stage. Bikel, the legendary actor who played Tevye in more than 2,000 performances, will share his perspective on Tevye and the literary world of Sholom Aleichem in an onstage conversation with Georgetown University Professor and best-selling author Deborah Tannen. Check performingarts.georgetown.edu for updates on these and other partnership events.

MYRIAD VOICES

MYRIAD VOICES is made possible in part by a grant from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP); Building Bridges: Campus Community Engagement Grants Program, a component of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. The festival is also presented in collaboration with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, Bridges of Understanding, and the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies.

VOICES UNHEARD — The ‘Syria: Trojan Women’ Summit

Friday, September 19 at 7:30 p.m.

(Cancelled:
Previously scheduled for Thursday, September 18 at 7:30 p.m. and Friday and Saturday, September 19 and 20 at 8 p.m.)
Syria: The Trojan Women
Re-interpreted by a group of Syrian women forced to flee their homes, who now live as refugees in Amman, The Trojan Women weaves the individual experiences of these women in a 21st-century conflict into Euripides’ 2500-year-old text.

After its December 2013 premiere in Amman, Jordan to international acclaim, this project has its North American premiere at the Davis Center. Georgetown is honored to host these extraordinary women in residency for two weeks for these historic performances and for a wide range of special forums with leading experts, from Georgetown’s campus to Capitol Hill. This event is part of the Myriad Voices Festival, which over two years brings together artists whose work engages with Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, the U.S and more, with scholars, policymakers, faculty, and students across the disciplines.

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE

$20 GENERAL | $15 FACULTY, STAFF, ALUMNI, SENIOR | $10 STUDENT

Amrika Chalo (Destination: U.S.A.)

Friday and Saturday, January 23 and 24 at 8 p.m.

By Shahid Nadeem

With Ajoka Theatre, Pakistan

Written and directed by Pakistan’s leading theater artist Shahid Nadeem from Lahore’s Ajoka Theatre, this hilarious send-up of U.S.-Pakistani relations set in the Visa Office at the US Embassy in Islamabad explodes stereotypes through satire. This workshop production will feature Pakistani artists from Ajoka Theatre as well as guest U.S. professionals and advanced students. This event is part of the Myriad Voices Festival, which over two years brings together artists whose work engages with Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, the U.S and more, with scholars, policymakers, faculty, and students across the disciplines.

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE

$15 General | $12 Faculty, Staff, alumni, senior | $5 student

DAH Teatar

Monday, March 30 at 8 p.m.

The Quivering of the Rose
Following a powerful 2010 residency of workshops and performances at Georgetown, Belgrade-based DAH (meaning “breath”) Teatar returns for a one-night-only performance of The Quivering of the Rose at the Davis Performing Arts Center. Known for its acutely personal yet profoundly political performances, DAH has been praised by the New York Times for the “poignant intensity” of its work. A duet piece excerpted from a larger ensemble work called The Presence of Absence, “The Quivering of the Rose” gives voice to the pain and constant presence of absence endured by families of the missing — those lost to ethnic and political conflict, crime and misfortune, and to the unknown and undefined. Accessing the stories of the missing in DAH’s native Serbia and around the world, the performance frames the language of loss in a global context.

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE

FREE, BUT TICKETED.

Generation (Wh)Y: Global Voices On Stage

Friday, April 17 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Saturday, April 18 at 2 p.m., 7 p.m., and 9 p.m.

This immersive theatrical experience of innovative multi-media performances is the result of year-long dialogue and encounters between Georgetown students and youth from Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Qatar, and Iraq, among other countries. Using intimate live performances as well as web-based technology and social media platforms, this theatrical event will move through multiple spaces in the Davis Performing Arts Center exploring real experiences from global voices and the poetry of everyday life.

Generation (Wh)Y is a multidimensional portrait of today celebrating the perspectives, hopes, and stories of hundreds of young people from around the world, and is the third event in Myriad Voices: A Cross-Cultural Performance Festival.

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER