Join us for the world premiere of A Third Way at Actor’s Express between October 3rd - 27th. Buy your tickets here.
Nico and Matt’s marriage is on shaky ground. When they decide to open their relationship, they test the boundaries of love, sex, intimacy and fidelity. Will they discover a new way to strengthen their bond…or will three become too much of a crowd?
May 10, 2024
The best stories are not just one story at all, but many. From one perspective, Prisontown is a ghost story. From another, it’s a story about small-town America. Or a story about reckoning with race and history. Or a story about immigration. Or a story about injustice. I grew up in a town in the midwest not unlike Lumpkin. So for me, this play immediately struck a nerve about the way we think about the people we grew up with, or really anyone who took a different path than we did or has a different viewpoint about the world. Regardless of your particular flavor of politics, there is no denying that this has been a remarkably divisive period of history. It has been helpful for me to be reminded through the stories in this play that in reality, we are often separated by mere moments. One right turn rather than a left. One circumstance or choice that took us this way rather than that one. If I had stayed in my hometown, how might I be different? That me would still fundamentally be the same person in many ways, but also one with a different lens, a different way of seeing. Maybe in the end that’s the only way we ever get close to something like the truth--with enough different lenses that something more than any one perspective finally comes into focus: a perspective that includes seeing all of us.
Photo by Casey Gardner Ford shows cast members of The Little Prince as they journey through the universe.
December 8, 2023
This beautiful story has endured for 80 years in the imaginations of young and old alike, and I’m so grateful you’ve joined us to be part of our retelling of it. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book is exquisite, yet there’s something especially powerful about telling this story in the theatre, where we get to experience in real time what Fox means when he says “the thing that is essential is invisible to the eye.” For me, the invisible communion of audience and storyteller is very much a part of what is essential--the human connection and collective witnessing we are about to do here are transformative acts.
I think many of us can sympathize with what the Aviator means by feeling misunderstood. What happens when we realize that we are the grown-ups? Everyone becomes that eventually, if we’re lucky. What does it mean, then, that “grown-up” is so often synonymous with compromise, with burden, with not being able to hear the music any more?
What does it take to pull us out of the desert and allow the music to reach us? I think we all can find our own version of The Little Prince appearing and reminding us who we are. Maybe it’s in a sunset, maybe it’s in a piece of art that moves you, maybe it’s in a connection with another person. This holiday season, no matter how you celebrate moving from the darkness into the light, I hope you are able to connect to the part of yourself that can always hear the music, and I hope that we, in telling this story with you and for you, are one small reminder that in fact, you could hear it all along.
Maybe the thing we most have in common as adults is that we all were once children who had to navigate the tricky waters of growing up. I think the story of Peter Pan captivates us because really we still carry that child-version of ourselves within--along with all the other versions of us we gather along the way. Peter and the Starcatcher is about so many things, not the least of which are: Pirates and Magic, Loyalty and Friendship, Bravery and Love. But this is also a story about identity. Who are we when we leave one path, one version of ourselves, behind us for another? Who are the people throughout our lives who most shape us into the best version of ourselves? What does it mean to say goodbye to the fellow travelers who are by our sides for a season and change us forever?
You’ll notice that in our production, we have three company members who have the unique ability to keep us grounded in the idea that this is a story about growing up. It was important to us that we include young people in telling this story because, as Peter fervently reminds us, it’s all too easy for grown-ups to forget. Our younger cast members brought a perspective to our work that we couldn’t authentically bring in any other way, and we hope that as you experience the story, some of that insight is shared with you too. The style of theatre we are using in this play--story theatre--allows the narrators to both be a part of the story and the tellers of the story, creating a reflection of our own experience as audience members on the stage, and it only makes sense that some of those narrators would also be children.
Of course, using a chorus of narrators like this is as old as storytelling and theatre itself. We know about it best from the Greeks, but I feel confident that humans did something similar with words, shadows, a drum, and a piece of fabric long, long before then, and I am very certain that there are children quite nearby right this very moment creating a world that only they can see, believing in things that only they can know, and weaving a world that we can only hope to glimpse. The narrator chorus reminds us that we are all in this together. We are a community experiencing a story: children and grown-ups, pirates and sailors, alligators and mermaids alike. What an honor it is to share this particular story with you today.
Read the below article from the City Lights Staff team at Wabe:
“As the effects of climate change command our attention in real life, the crisis has also become a subject for creative self-expression. “Our Sacred World: An Opera with Dance” is a fantasy based on reality, written as a love letter to Mother Earth. Amy Leventhal created the libretto and composed the music for “Our Sacred World,” which will be performed on Saturday, Jan. 21, in the Cole Auditorium of the Fine Arts Building at Georgia State University Perimeter College.
Amy Leventhal joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom along with stage director Lauren Morris to talk about the opera and the opportunity it presents for a conversation about climate.
Heroes and villains of the climate crisis, anthropomorphized:
“Mother Earth shows up at the beginning, and she’s a little annoyed, and then… she becomes a bit enraged. She doesn’t understand why humans aren’t valuing her, so she’s one of the main characters, but she also talks about everything she provides for humans. It’s quite a list of wonderful things, as we all know, living on our planet,” Leventhal recounted. “We also have a character named Big Money, who Mother Earth devises a plan, and Big Money devises a plan, and their plans intertwine, and that’s part of the plot of the opera. So Big Money has a cohort named Mine Mine Mine, and Mother Earth has a creature she has created called Little Tree, and she also has Climate Change, who works for her.”
“I had a dream about a character named Tyrannicus, and I was going to write a ballet about Tyrannicus, and Tyrannicus is a character in this opera,” said Levanthal. “He’s part of the ‘Dance of White Men’ and the ‘Dance of Bullying.’ But it became clear to me that he wasn’t the main focus, and then when I wrote the libretto, I could see everything on stage. I often, when I listen to music… I have kind of a movie running in my head, often with sound, and so I was envisioning the dances, and the dances evolved out of the libretto and the music and the singing. I knew that I wanted dance, movement, as part of the music. I think movement and music are totally interlinked.”
On taking on the job of directing dance in the midst of opera:
“It’s my job to create an environment where everyone in the room can do what they do best in the whole world, and in this case, that’s for these beautiful artists to sing… it’s for [choreographer Scott] Douglas’s company of dancers to make shapes, and move, and push the limits of what human form can do,” said Morris. “So some of that job of creating an environment is simply logistical, making sure that everyone can get where they need to be, when they need to be there…some of it is, I would say a lot of it, actually, is allowing them the freedom to really step into that, and to be able to create in the most free and fantastical ways that they can.”
How opera can bring the concerns and questions of humanity to center stage:
“I think people love stories. I think it’s innate in all of us. We like to sit around the campfire, and I believe that opera has it all,” said Leventhal. “It has the story. It has amazing singers. In this case, the Full Radius Dance Company will be performing eight dances within the opera, and I think opera, as a medium, its music is so emotional, and it bypasses words, in a way. Even though there are words in opera, it goes right to the heart, and I think people can really feel a story as well as see it and experience it.”
“The planet’s going to outlive us. It’s about whether humans can continue on the planet and all the species that we share the planet with,” Levanthal reflected. “I think, yes, [there is] lots of hope, and in the opera, getting people who have money and power to fall in love with Mother Earth, and also to provide Mother Earth with as much loving care as we possibly can in our individual ways. And yes, I think within the opera, there’s a lot of hope, there’s a lot of humor. And by the way, I based Climate Change on Lady Gaga.”
https://www.wabe.org/our-sacred-world-an-opera-with-dance-offers-hopeful-introspection-on-climate-change/
An ongoing international collaboration with team members from Mexico, Canada, and the United States:
THE GAME OF CARDENIO questions how and why to defend classical theater in the face of our awareness of gender violence.
Using a theatrical structure inspired by board games and based on the body/dance as the axis of the scene, we will explore new ways of staging the classics. The “search” of Cardenio, Shakespeare 's lost work inspired by episodes from Cervantes ' Don Quixote , will be the guiding thread of this adventure.
Counterpoint Player and Efe Tres Teatro are two companies committed to finding 21st century perspectives in classic dramatic texts. Through contemporary theater techniques we explore the way in which the problems of the 16th century are relevant today. When working with the classics, we seek to find ourselves in them .
With THE GAME OF CARDENIO we can continue these explorations: our goal is to maintain “friendship” with classic texts while confronting the undeniable gender violence they contain. Since CARDENIO is a lost text based on episodes from Don Quixote, we have absolute freedom in exploration, because we do not have the “obligation” to adhere to an "original text." In parallel, it also invites us to explore the similarities between the colonial legacies of Mexico, the United States and Canada, through the intersection between British and Spanish classics.
This project represents a first for everyone in different ways: working with an international team, working in different languages and working with dance/movement as the main language of communication with the audience. We wish to push our artistic practices by creating with these new collaborators and the influences and techniques that each one brings to the process. We also aim to showcase the work beyond local stages to reach both national and international audiences.
We plan to experiment with board game mechanics to include the audience in our journey to find the lost text. Both board games and video games are in a stage of reinvention, pushing the boundaries of narrative structures allowing players to be an active participant in the process of story development in ways that are rare in theater. That is why we see THE GAME OF CARDENIO as an opportunity to be an active part in the search for new theatricalities. Interaction with the public will make the experience more dynamic and fun. At the same time, viewers are involved in questioning how to confront gender violence.
In 2019, Lauren Morris directed Code Noir: Les Aventures du Premier Conte de Monte Cristo at Theatre de Reve. Fast forward to 2022, Lauren reunited with the team to turn the play into a film format as a way to navigate the ever-changing landscape of Covid-era programming. The limited release film premiered in March at the Southwest Arts Center.
Code Noir' shares the story of the first Black French general. You've probably heard of the novel "The Count of Monte Cristo," but have you heard of the first Black French general who inspired it? General Alex Dumas was the son of an enslaved Black woman and a white Frenchman, born in Sainte-Domingue, now known as Haiti. He later became the first person of color in the French military to be appointed brigadier-general, divisional-general and general-in-chief of a French army. Dumas' story is the subject of Théâtre du Rêve's new film "Code Noir: the Adventures of the First Count of Monte Cristo."
Read more here.
In Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, a Connecticut Women for Life meeting is interrupted by a young mother who needs help. Elsewhere in history, a group of wealthy Londoners write a dictionary of slang so they can speak the unspeakable in front of their wives and daughters, and a New England tea party devolves into an intervention when the lady of the house must fire the indiscreet help. By mocking the myriad ways in which coded language is used to harm women, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is a satire that illuminates the connection between white supremacy and the abortion "debate" in the United States.
L to R: Kelsey Johnson, Josh Coomer, Adam Tran, Kim Egan, Daniel Martin. Photo by Courtney Remley.
Welcome back to the theatre! This production felt like a homecoming for me for so many reasons—home to Indianapolis where I was born, home to this community of artists who helped shape me as an early-career artist, and of course, back home to the theatre after a very long year away. And what a theatre we came home to! We were so lucky to perform in the brand new Taggart Memorial Amphitheatre in Riverside Park--a true honor to make art in this beautiful and powerful space. As we thought of what play would best celebrate the opening of the Taggart, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was the clear choice. Full of love and magic and silliness and exquisite poetry, it really is a celebration in itself, and I believe our production felt that way to the audience. I think no small part of that was some of the choices and small changes we made to bring this story to life in a way that begins to examine some qualities that are not worth celebrating in this play—or really any play that is over 400 years old. There are a number of things contained in this text that we now understand to be harmful or perpetuate stereotypes, so we have worked hard to make choices that create a world of Midsummer where all kinds of humans (and fairies!) will feel at home. Of course, the real miracle of Shakespeare is that it is chock full of beauty and truth about the human experience—ALL humans’ experience. The universality and immediate relevance of this writing always takes my breath away, and it’s my sincerest wish that everyone gets to have that revelation, no matter who they are.
Something about this play that really comes forward for me when I read it today is how different the Athenians are at the beginning of the play versus the end. Especially given what we have all been through in the last year—perhaps we collectively understand more than we ever have what it means to have an experience that changes our worldview forever. As the play progresses, the rigid nature of Athens gives way to the free impulses of Fairy World in the woods. By the end of the play, the lessons of the woods have begun to influence the unyielding rules of Athens. Theseus and Hippolyta have evolved their understanding of each other. Theseus makes the choice to change the rules so that the young lovers can marry who they like. We go on a journey together and come full circle a little wiser and a lot more compassionate. That is my hope every time we go to the theatre together, and that is my hope for us tonight as we gather again as a community after a very hard year. Let us celebrate that we have come through these particular woods, at least for now, and revel together in what beauty and magic we can find on the other side.
https://jayharveyupstage.blogspot.com/2021/07/of-imagination-all-compact-indy-shakes.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR3_VPmgTxI669ixERs6om8M9ith_J98__2VyV208DF5BUygc58JeOFpQ0M
“Love is always harder,” Della says. As I’ve worked on this play, I’ve been forced to look at how often, when confronted with someone who has drastically different political views than me, my first instinct is…well, the opposite of love. It is indeed much easier if I can dismiss them as someone who is not worthy of my understanding—someone whose views are so wrong, unjust or bigoted that there is zero value in me trying to comprehend where they’re coming from. But we all know deep down that it’s never that clear cut. What happens if that person with the infuriating politics is your neighbor who also is dependable and kind, or your best friend from high school, or your mom? One of my favorite things about The Cake is that it’s so clear that Della is good to her core. She’s doing her very best to do what she has been taught is right. Maybe you disagree with what she’s been taught; I certainly do, but I can’t deny that her striving to “follow the directions” makes sense to me. I, too, am trying to do the right thing, based on the values I hold dear.
I grew up in a town in southeastern Indiana that was 1.48 sq miles with a population of 1,688. I know plenty of Dellas and Tims, and they know me in ways that someone I met in adulthood never can. Despite that, after I moved away for college and then on to the “big city,” I developed a disdain and cool condescension for the people with whom I grew up. I’m rather ashamed to say that it’s only in recent years that I’ve realized that my assumption of small minds and small hearts in the people who hosted my slumber parties, saw me through my awkward adolescence and stood next to me at my graduation is more of a reflection of me than it is of them. People aren’t so simple. They can hold many truths at once, and my view of them, ironically, has at times been as bigoted as the views for which I was condemning them.
The thing about love is that it can exist in spite of all logical divisions. Real love requires us to embrace someone’s brokenness as much as their brilliance, and it allows space for mistakes and messiness and ultimately, if we’re lucky, growth. Della’s right, it’s far from easy; but isn’t that the point? Della quotes the I Corinthians verses on love in the play, but she stops short of a few verses that seem to resonate awfully loudly at this moment in our very polarized world: “Love does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
The Cake is full of love, in all of its complexities, contradictions, comforts, and hopes. To me, that’s maybe just the medicine we all need right now.