Community Engagement
Audition Notice and Workshop opportunity
Tri-C Presents at Cuyahoga Community College is producing a reading of the new work; The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later by Moises Kaufman and The Tectonic Theatre Company directed by Dr. Brian Bethune, Dean of Creative Arts.
In the ten years since the Tectonic Theatre Company told the story of the brutal murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, Artistic Director Moises Kaufman and other company members wondered what changes affected Laramie, Wyoming since the incident brought hate crimes legislation to national attention. In a continuing effort to explore this tragedy and its effects on societal norms, the Tectonic Theatre Company revisits Laramie and many of the people portrayed in the original play. This seminal event features the Cleveland premiere of a live reading of this stunning piece by local actors – one of 100 taking place across the country – with an introduction via the internet by playwright Moises Kaufman and a pre show discussion with local members of PFLAG, LGBT Center, and Equality Ohio.
We are looking for 4 men and 4 women to read multi roles.
Auditions date:
Tuesday September 8, 2009
6:00-9:00 p.m.
Tri-C Metropolitan Campus
Please contact Laura Kendall at 216-987-4193 or tri-cpresents@tri-c.edu to sign up for an audition time. You will be sent an email to confirm your slot. The time commitment is 2– 3 rehearsals and the final performance. The rehearsal dates will be the week and weekend prior to the reading.
Readings will be provided, or you may present a contemporary monologue.
Performance:
Monday, October 12, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
Pilgrim Congregational Church of Christ in Tremont
2592 W 14th St., Cleveland
Tri-C Presents, a division of Tri-C Creative Arts, is a premier performing arts series in Northeast Ohio, showcasing arts and cultural performances including Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland, Showtime at High Noon, The Song is You!, and the Classical Piano Recital Series. Cuyahoga Community College Center for Creative Arts presents significant contemporary artistic programs of the highest quality for its diverse multicultural audiences. These experiences are designed to stimulate, enlighten, educate and mutually enrich the artists and the community. A variety of free performances, workshops, and residencies are offered throughout the season to complement our wide array of Performing Arts programs held at the Tri-C campuses, Playhouse Square and other locations around the city. Visit www.tricpresents.com for more information.
Workshop: Moment Work with Tectonic Theatre member, Greg Pierotti – October 8 & 9, 2009
Moment work is a method for both writing and analyzing performance, which was developed by Moises Kaufman and the members of Tectonic Theater Project. The common model for making theater in the united states is the one in which a playwright goes into a room over a period of months or years and creates a text. That play is then handed off to a director who in three and a half weeks with a group of actors and designers presents the text to the public, often without the writers input. The job of the theater artists is to interpret the text and make it believable. Moment work is a response to this somewhat limiting model of making theater.
In moment work, we create performance from the ground up using all the elements of the stage at once. The emphasis is on creating theatrical, rather than realistic, performance. In level one of Tectonic's "moment work workshops" the ensemble creates a list of the elements of the stage and, through a series of exercises that build in complexity, uses all these elements together to create moments rather than using all the elements of the stage to simply support a text. A moment is defined as a unit of theatrical time and can be as short and simple as a five second gesture, or as long and complex as a moment from "The Laramie Project." We also learn how to analyze the contents of moments to learn more about what is effective story telling.
In level two of the workshops, we begin to look at structure, narrative, and context. The ensemble continues to create discreet moments and starts to look at how to structure these "units of theatrical time" into a complete event. We examine how the moments speak to each other, how the content of moments informs structure, as well as how the development of structure in a piece begins to inform content so that moments need to be reconsidered and redesigned. We take a close look at narrative and context and ask questions like: How does narrative get created without text? How does moment A play when it comes before moment B? What changes within the moment or about the story we are telling when it is placed after moment B. What happens when they play side by side. Attempts are made at creating a fully structured piece.
October 8 & 9
6:00-9:00 p.m. both nights
Tri-C Metropolitan Campus
The class is limited to 16 participants
To sign up for the workshop please contact Laura Kendall at 216-987-4193 or tricpresents@tri-c.edu
*No cost for participation - if you need to cancel, please give 24 hours notice.
Must be 18 years old to participate.
Greg Pierotti is a writer, actor, teacher and has been a member of Tectonic Theater Project for 13 years. He is an associate writer of The Laramie Project, and was a writer on the teleplay adapted for HBO (emmy and GLAAD award nominations). He has performed the The Laramie Project, at Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Denver Center, and The Union Square Theater in NY. He is the head writer of The People’s Temple, for which he and the playwright Leigh Fondakowski, along with their other collaborators, received the Will Glickman Award for best New American play. He performed The People’s Temple at Berekely Repertory Theater, Perseverance Theater, and The Guthrie. As a writer/actor he has developed and/or performed original and classical work at Arena Stage, Hartford Stage, The Magic, The Atlantic Theatre Company, The Sundance Theatre Lab in Utah, New York Theatre Workshop, and the NYTW summer writer’s lab at Dartmouth. Most recently he is collaborating on and epilogue to The Laramie Project, which revisits the town ten years after the murder of Matthew Shepard. Greg is one of four master teachers of moment work technique – a technique of writing performance developed by Moises Kaufman and Tectonic Theater Project. He has taught this work at high schools and colleges around the country and in Naropa University’s MFA for contemporary performance.
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