Archive of 2015-2016 THEATER AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES SEASON

MAKING NEW WORLDS: The 10th Anniversary Season
at the Davis Performing Arts Center

Thursday and Friday, November 12 and 13 at 8 p.m. Saturday, November 14 at 4 p.m.
Sunday, November 15 at 2 p.m.
Thursday-Saturday, November 19-21 at 8 p.m.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY THEATER & PERFORMANCE STUDIES PROGRAM

WORLD PREMIERE
War with the Newts

On a small island west of Sumatra, Captain Jan van Toch discovers an unusual species of intelligent newts, who multiply quickly and can be trained to use tools – a convenient new source of cheap labor for underwater engineering projects. But what happens when they learn to speak our languages, demand their rights, and build not only dams but also bombs? This world premiere adaptation of War with the Newts, Karel Čapek’s satirical 1939 science fiction classic, is a literary “mockumentary,” incorporating fictional newspaper articles and scientific reports.  The production promises to showcase Onoda Power’s “nifty visual tricks” and “delightfully unexpected” (Washington Post) solutions for the stage. This production is offered in conjunction with the Embassy of the Czech Republic’s Mutual Inspirations Festival and with the Davis Performing Arts Center’s 10th Anniversary Celebration. 

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 | $7 STUDENT

Thursday-Saturday, April 14-16 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, April 17 at 2 p.m.
Thursday-Saturday, April 21-23 at 8 p.m.
CO-PRODUCED BY GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY THEATER & PERFORMANCE STUDIES PROGRAM AND BLACK THEATER ENSEMBLE

Twelfth Night, or What You Will

By William Shakespeare
Directed by Maya E. Roth

A new take on Shakespeare’s classic comedy Twelfth Night. Expect high theatricality and a hint of Carnivale in this tale of twins separated at sea, gender-bending love triangles, mistaken identity, midnight revelry, and loss that transforms like a dream. Fall into this play’s exquisite fantasia… Featuring close collaboration with faculty and students, including Artist-in-Residence Debra Kim Sivigny. This production serves as the finale for Making New Worlds: The 10th Anniversary Season at the Davis Performing Arts Center.
The April 21 performance will be sign-interpreted.

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 | $7 STUDENT

Thursday, December 3 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, December 5 at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY THEATER & PERFORMANCE STUDIES PROGRAM IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE LABORATORY FOR GLOBAL PERFORMANCE AND POLITICS’ MYRIAD VOICES: A CROSS-CULTURAL PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

A workshop reading
Noura: A Re-Imagining of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Award-winning Iraqi-American playwright and performer Heather Raffo​ (9 Parts of Desire)​ reimagines and reframes Ibsen’s iconic play from a Middle Eastern perspective. Her contemporary characters, a family of Iraqi immigrants, grapple with past and present shames as they try to reconcile their relationship to their identity and to each other. This workshop reading will be developed in a residency by Raffo at Georgetown, where she will work with professional collaborators, scholars, faculty, and students.

This event is presented by Georgetown’s Theater & Performance Studies Program in conjunction with the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics’ Myriad Voices: A Cross-Cultural Performance Festival, and as part of the Georgetown/Arena Stage/Ammerman Family Partnership.

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

January 2016 (Date/time TBA)

Showing of Chekhov Scenes with Advanced Students

The Georgetown University Theater & Performance Studies Program is excited to welcome internationally renowned guest artist Joe Dowling back to campus for the third time, now for an intensive residency culminating in this public showing of scenes. Launching a two-year initiative, Dowling, recently retired artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, MN (from 1995 to 2015), will serve as the Kenyon Family Distinguished Artist-in-Residence, working closely with Georgetown theater students in conjunction with the Georgetown University/Arena Stage/Ammerman Family Partnership.

As the Guthrie Theater’s Artistic Director, Joe Dowling directed 51 Guthrie productions and cultivated relationships with an extensive roster of esteemed artists including Angela Bassett, David Esbjornson, John Guare, T.R. Knight, Ethan McSweeny, Arthur Miller, Marsha Norman, Lisa Peterson, Mark Rylance and Courtney B. Vance, among others. His directorial credits include work on Broadway as well as many prominent theaters in the U.S., England, and Ireland. Prior to the Guthrie, Mr. Dowling served as artistic director for the Irish Theatre Company, the Abbey Theatre – where he founded the Young Abbey, Ireland’s first theater-in-education group – and The Gaiety Theatre where he founded the Gaiety School of Acting, Ireland’s premier drama school.

Under Dowling’s leadership, two actor training programs were created: the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater B.F.A. Actor Training Program and A Guthrie Experience for Actors in Training. The Guthrie’s partnership with The Acting Company of New York affords young actors an opportunity to perform classics on tour. Additionally, in 2001 Dowling developed the WorldStage Series, which has hosted more than a dozen companies including the Royal Shakespeare Company with Sir Ian McKellen in King Lear, Kneehigh Theatre with Brief Encounter and Tristan & Yseult under the direction of Emma Rice, and Druid Theatre Company with its production of DruidSynge directed by Garry Hynes.

Additional updates on this residency to be posted here.

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE

Friday, February 12 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, February 13 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY THEATER & PERFORMANCE STUDIES PROGRAM

Senior Thesis Production
Grayspace

Grayspace (n.): Fractures in our social consciousness, areas of society left undefined or left forgotten, 
the place where invisible life teems below the surface.

Written and performed by TPST Major Mar J. Cox (COL 16), this senior thesis project shines a light on the missing voices and narratives that take place in the frayed and cracked parts of our society. Whom do we not see? Why? A transwoman takes the D6 nearly every Sunday. A waiter smiles when a toddler compliments his skirt. A homeless artist accepts pepperoni pizza donations as payment for his company, but never for his cardboard artwork. This living project, inspired by interviews and leading to a multi-character performance work, suggests the only way we will know is if we listen to the Voices of the Invisible. A work-in-progress, Grayspace is based on yearlong ethnographic research in Washington, DC.

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

Theater Special Events

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 10th ANNIVERSARY EVENTS — NOV. 14

Saturday, November 14 at 2 p.m.

NAVIGATING THE WORLD
Roundtable with TPST Alumni

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE
FREE

Saturday, November 14 at 8 p.m.

(D)PAC TO THE FUTURE
Alumni Cabaret and Tributes

Hold onto your seats, we are sending you (D)PAC to the future! This cabaret-style event features a reunion gathering of our alumni from the first 10 years of the Davis Performing Arts Center. Our distinguished, diversely talented, and multifaceted alums will reprise highlights from early TPST seasons, pay tributes to their college memories, and present new visions, including scenes, songs, dance, and more. This event is offered in conjunction with the ticketed 4 p.m. performance of War with the Newts. Come ready to reminisce about the past, celebrate the present, and imagine the future!

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE
FREE

Monday, September 7 at 8 p.m.

PAGE-TO-STAGE FESTIVAL AT THE KENNEDY CENTER
A staged reading
Pandemopium
By Connor Rohan (COL ‘16)
Directed by Prof. Maya E. Roth

A small opium poppy farm straddles the base of a mountain in Afghanistan’s rural Kandahar Province. Under threat of destruction by a rootin’-tootin’ Afghan Lieutenant, landowner Ashraf Amini’s poppies can only be saved with the resurrection of a dead Talib and opium trafficker; with the Taliban demanding a harvest, Ashraf has no choice but to transform a seemingly impossible problem. Fast-paced, complex, and thrilling, this startling play dramatizes the impossible situation of an opium farmer squeezed between the Afghan Army and the Taliban. Winner of the Donn. B. Murphy One-Acts Award, Pandemopium fuses drama and comedy, poetry and politics. Developed in Georgetown University’s Hope Playwriting Seminar, taught by Christine Evans.

JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, TERRACE GALLERY
FREE
Visit kennedy-center.org for details.

Thursday, October 8 at 6 p.m.

Preview: War with the Newts
Part of the Mutual Inspirations Festival

Prof. Natsu Onoda Power and students involved in her world premiere adaptation at Georgetown of Karel Čapek’s War with the Newts will present a sneak preview at the Czech Embassy. The Mutual Inspirations Festival this year celebrates the 125th anniversary of the birth of Czech author Čapek.

EMBASSY OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC
Visit mutualinspirations.org for details.

Written by Ping Chong and Sara Zatz, with Ryan Conarro in collaboration with the performers: Tiffany Yasmin Abdelghani, Ferdous Dehqan, Kadin Herring, Amir Khafagy and Maha Syed
Directed by Ping Chong

Beyond Sacred is an interview-based theatre production exploring the diverse experiences of Muslim communities within New York City. The five cast members vary in many ways, but share the common experience of coming of age in a post-9/11 NYC at a time of increasing Islamophobia. Participants come from a mix of of cultural and ethnic backgrounds and include young men and women that reflect a wide range of Muslim identities, including those who have converted to Islam, those who were raised Muslim, but have since left the faith, those who identify as “culturally” Muslim, and those who are observant on a daily basis. Beyond Sacred is part of Ping Chong + Company’s Undesirable Elements project, an oral history theater project exploring issues of culture, identity, and difference in the lives of individuals in specific communities. The goal of Beyond Sacred is to use theater and personal testimony to foster greater understanding among Muslim and non-Muslim communities in New York and beyond. The New York Times called Beyond Sacred “…an exercise in empathy, not polemics: a lesson in human understanding, drawn from real lives.”

DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, GONDA THEATRE
$18 general | $15 faculty, staff, alumni | $5 student

View an archive of past Theater and Performance Studies Seasons.