2019-2020 Theater and Performance Studies Season

Dreams of Crossing: 
Climates, Borders, Acts

2019-20 season at the Davis Performing Arts Center

Flex Pass available for three tickets to any combination of the priced shows in the GU Theater & Performance Studies Program season: On the Lawn, An Acorn, and The Rover. (Tickets to readings as part of the FREE Borders and Their Shadows: A Festival of Plays on International Themes reserved separately.)

September 19-22, 2019
Programs with International Artists and Scholars offered with play readings

Borders and Their Shadows:
A Festival of Plays on International Themes

Curated by Prof. Christine Evans

This Festival features free Concert Readings of new plays by women writing across borders, offering imaginative entry points to the cascading human and social consequences of forced migration. Readings feature guest artists from five countries, students, faculty and alumni.

FESTIVAL WEEKEND | Forums with International Artists & Scholars interact with Play Readings
September 19-22, 2019

Play-readings only
September 26-28, 2019
Events include the following:

Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 7:30 p.m.*
Friday, September 27, 2019 at 8 p.m.

American Triage

By Marisela Treviño Orta

Teens Lalo and Fatima struggle to keep their family and faith intact when their parents are deported after immigration raids sweep through their city. But when Lalo turns to his guardian angel for help he sets into motion events that threaten to further fracture his family.

* Preshow Forum on 9/19 6-6:45, followed by refreshments in lobby; Post-Show Talk with Playwright & Director

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE
FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED
 

Friday, September 20, 2019 at 7:30pm **
Thurs, September 26, 2019 at 8pm

Tomorrow Will Take Care of Itself

By Stefanie Zadravec

Set on Australia’s prison island, Nauru, where asylum-seekers are detained indefinitely. Young aid workers are drawn into a complex web of present need and past history and politics, as Afghan and Iraqi refugees fight for dignity and sanity amidst the haunting of the island by spirits.

** Preshow Forum on 9/20 6-6:45, followed by refreshments in lobby; Post-Show Talk with Playwright & Director

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE
FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 3pm ***
Saturday, September 28, 2019 at 8pm

Torgus and Snow

By Christine Evans

A talking vacuum cleaner, a child-turned-machine, and malevolent trolls interweave in a Nordic fever-dream inspired by Sweden’s “apathetic children” – young refugees who fall into coma-like states when faced with deportation.

*** Preshow Forum with the Embassy of Sweden on 9/21 2-2:45 in Gonda followed by refreshments in lobby; Post-Show Talk at 5:30 in Devine with the Playwright & Director, leading into Light Dinner, and next performance.

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE
FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 7:15 p.m.****
Sunday, September 22, 2019 at 2 p.m.*****

The Woman Who Turned into a Tree

By Lisa Langseth
Directed by Hilkka-Liisa Iivanainen
Performed by Julia Kwamya

Dafne, a night club hostess, does everything to hide her working-class roots. When she is forced to move to a deserted suburb next to a forest, a tree outside her window begins to talk to her. Funny and tragic, this mythic story of loneliness asks what happens when you have lost contact with your innermost self and reach the outskirts of reality… for better or worse.

This performance, first brought to the US by the Bergman Studio and Swedish Arts Council, features NY-based Ghanian-Ugandan-American solo performer Julia Kwamya. Festival events and guest artists for The Woman Who Turned Into a Tree are possible through the generosity of the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Finland’s National Council for the Performing Arts, the Embassy of Sweden and the Swedish Arts Council, and the Georgetown-Arena Stage Partnership.

**** Conversation with Scandinavian Artistic Team, followed by Desserts in Lobby.
***** All Playwrights in Conversation 2:45pm-3:45pm, with Closing Festival Reception

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE
FREE, REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Thursday and Friday, November 7 and 8, 2019 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, November 9, 2019 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Thursday-Saturday, November, 2019 14-16 at 8 p.m.

On the Lawn

A new work
Directed by Guest Artists Caitlin Cassidy (SFS’ 11) and Geoff Kanick, Artistic Directors of LubDub Theater Co.

Spend a day in the life of the American lawn. LubDub Theatre Company’s On the Lawn, a new hybrid performance-in-development, explores the roots of this most peculiar American invention. Music, illusion, and movement trace the lawn’s origins in early modern Europe’s “outdoor carpets” through the present-day eco-politics of “freedom lawns” and #droughtshaming. On The Lawn assembles performers and audience on common ground to examine the complex connections between ourselves, our neighbors, and our plants. TPST’s Home Season in the Davis Center is pleased to further the development of this new work —and our mission—through a DC-area workshop performance that engages more than two dozen Georgetown students in collaboration with the alumni guest artists who started LubDub, a NYC-based hybrid physical theatre company animating stories of science, magic, and myth…

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

Wednesday-Friday, January 29-31, 2020 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, February 1, 2020 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.

An Acorn

By Caridad Svich
Directed by Eliza Palter (COL ’20)
Advised by Professor Maya E. Roth
A Senior Thesis Project

Propelled by the threat of environmental catastrophe, one traveler leaves home in search of their voice, lost in the rubble of a battered world. This journey takes us through the wreckage of time and history in pursuit of the memory of what earth once was… Haunting, surprising, and poignant: in the face of irreversible environmental damage, An Acorn uncovers a small kernel of hope. Originally commissioned by the American Blues Theater in Chicago, this highly poetic play by a leading Latinx writer, directed by a double major in TPST and Anthropology, activates creative collaboration for a talented team of student artists at Georgetown. Come imagine change…

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE
$12 GENERAL, $10 FACULTY/STAFF, $8 STUDENT

Please note: Due to the COVID-19 crisis and out of concern for public health, all Georgetown University Department of Performing Arts events are canceled through the end of the spring 2020 semester, while academic courses continue online. Therefore, the TPST production of The Rover will not be held as scheduled March 26-April 4.

Thursday-Saturday, March 26-28, 2020 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 29, 2020 at 2 p.m.
Thursday, April 2-4, 2020 at 8 p.m.

The Rover

By Aphra Behn
Directed and with Adaptations by Prof. Maya E. Roth

Festive and bold, this Restoration comedy by the first professional female playwright (a British spy!) explores gender, class and cultural crossings with wit. Set during Carnivale in Venice, as Spanish and Italian revelers cross paths with English cads seeking money and mates, this proto-feminist play is full of music, masks and bold windows on diverse double standards, as characters duel (and desire) their rights. Our adaptation stages a poetic space inspired by the Silk Road, where cultures cross, as do past and present, pop and high cultures, dreams and audacity.

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

Ticketholders for “The Rover” have the following options:

1. Donating the value of the ticket to the Georgetown University Department of Performing Arts as a tax-deductible contribution to the program in this challenging time. 

2. Requesting a refund of the ticket cost and associated fees.

For either option, just e-mail callagyboxoffice@georgetown.edu with your preference for ticket donation or refund, your full name, the name of the event(s) for which you purchased, and the best way to contact you. An associate will be in touch with you as soon as possible to assist.

View an archive of past Theater and Performance Studies Seasons.