Production and Auditions Info for the Fall 2020 Production
"The Okada Project"
Director: Mallory Catlett, mcatlett@brynmawr.edu
Performance Ensemble/Advanced Performance Ensemble
“The Mainstage Theater Production” (reimagined for this semester)
This course is usually centered on the production of a play.
In taking up the challenge of making theater during a pandemic, we’re not going to make a conventional production this semester, but we will be working collaboratively on a series of scenes and events that we will document using a variety of means and will share with (live and online) audiences, as that is possible. We’re excited to have this opportunity to work collaboratively and closely with students to create an ensemble of performer/creator/documentors.
Project Description
"The Okada Project" will explore several texts by Japanese playwright and director Toshiki Okada from a variety of angles and approaches. We want to take the opportunity that social distancing offers us to question and explore performance and design across platforms. What are the component parts of theater? How do they operate separately and in concert to communicate? Can we become more conscious of how our senses operate and integrate in the communication of meaning?
"The Okada Project" will not be leading to one finished production/play but a variety of iterations and actions both live and recorded. Without the pressure of a final production we can focus on the exploration of the material—sonically, visually, energetically, technologically, representationally. Always asking “what’s another way we can do this?” And then doing it. And then doing it again.
To step into this inquiry we need a team of students who share an interest in these questions, with a variety of passions—for performing (singing, dancing, acting, music-playing, puppetry), designing (costumes, sets, toy theater), documenting (photo, video, sound, journalism), editing, projecting, streaming and object making.
We need to students who want to:
- Do more than one thing in the process
- Explore high and low tech solutions to performative problems
- Memorize text and speak it as well as render it visually and/or sonically
- Document the work of others, then re-edit into some altogether different
- Think about scale, make miniatures and show things at a great distance
- Talk about access and find ways to disseminate what is being created
Rehearsals for the semester project, which will respond to several short works by the contemporary Japanese playwright Toshiki Okada, will be held between 6 and 9 p.m. (Bryn Mawr time) and Saturday from 1-5 p.m. (Not all participants will be called to all rehearsals.)
- Read about director Mallory Catlett here: mailtomailto:mward2@brynmawr.edu
- Read about playwright Toshiki Okada here: mailtomailto:mward2@brynmawr.edu
- Read about Maiko Matsushima here: mailtomailto:mward2@brynmawr.edu
This course is hybrid, meaning that participants may be in person at Bryn Mawr or collaborating from elsewhere. While the experience of doing this work online will not be exactly the same as doing it in person, we are anxious to engage interested participants where they are and as they are.
Admission to the course is by “audition,” which, this semester, will be conducted before the semester begins. There will be an Information Session on Monday, Aug. 17, at 11 a.m. (via Zoom) before the audition to give students a chance to ask questions and to meet our guest director, Mallory Catlett. Students will also have a chance to hear about and ask questions about other Theater Program offerings at that time. Register online for the information session.
The audition for the project will occur on Tuesday, Aug. 18. Register online for auditions. You will be assigned a time slots between 3 and 7 p.m. This will also happen via Zoom.
Students participating in this semester’s project are expected to take it for credit. First-time participants should register for ARTT 253, Performance Ensemble, for .5 credits. Students who have taken Performance Ensemble (or have done other college level theater work and have the consent of the instructor) can register for either Performance Ensemble or for ARTT 353 Advanced Performance Ensemble.
Collaborative work on the project is expected to finish by Thanksgiving break.
If you have questions, email (director) Mallory Catlett (mcatlett@brynmawr.edu) or (designer) Maiko Matsushima (mailtomailto:mcatlett@brynmawr.edu).