Arts Resources for the Tri-State is hosting its first Writers Showcase, highlighting the region's writers. This will be a performance based event held quarterly. Their vision for this project is to foster the growth of writers in the field of performing arts and provide venues for the performance of their original works.
The Herald Dispatch newspaper has an article with details on how writers can submit their work. Find the article HERE.
Showing posts with label Performances. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Performances. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Monday, January 28, 2008
African American Heritage Storyteller, Ilene Evans to perform!
(This news courtesy of WV Writers 2nd VP Terry McNemar)
African American Heritage Storyteller, Ilene Evans to perform!
“Voices from the Earth” presents African American Heritage Series Folktales by Storyteller Ilene Evans at the Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library on Saturday, Feb. 16, 2008 at 2 p.m. The free event will be held at Waldomore, the historic mansion next to the library.
During the one-hour concert, Ms. Evans will perform African American Heritage stories, poems, games and songs, with audience participation. Her presentations are energetic and lively, including dancing, singing, dramatic vocal talent, and leave the audience with a feeling of having been a part of the story. Her stories not only tell the tale, but they seek to teach a lesson or at least to inspire the audience to think more about themselves and the world than they normally do on a daily basis.
For more information, contact Gail Marsh, community relations coordinator, at the library at 627-2236.
African American Heritage Storyteller, Ilene Evans to perform!
“Voices from the Earth” presents African American Heritage Series Folktales by Storyteller Ilene Evans at the Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library on Saturday, Feb. 16, 2008 at 2 p.m. The free event will be held at Waldomore, the historic mansion next to the library.
During the one-hour concert, Ms. Evans will perform African American Heritage stories, poems, games and songs, with audience participation. Her presentations are energetic and lively, including dancing, singing, dramatic vocal talent, and leave the audience with a feeling of having been a part of the story. Her stories not only tell the tale, but they seek to teach a lesson or at least to inspire the audience to think more about themselves and the world than they normally do on a daily basis.
For more information, contact Gail Marsh, community relations coordinator, at the library at 627-2236.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Martyrs & Magicians Play Review by Ethan Fischer
======================
CATF Continues: Martyrs & Magicians
by Ethan Fischer for The Shepherdstown Chronicle
c 2007
Darkness Before Delight --- Delmore Schwartz
CATF continues with cool, stunning performances. You have perhaps heard about “I Am Rachel Corrie” and the attendant controversy. Rachel Corrie was a bright young woman from Washington state, who was killed in Gaza trying to help Palestinian families. Her own writings have been adapted by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner to fashion a play.
After a run in England, a production of “I Am Rachel Corrie” was canceled in New York due to protests by big theater subscribers. Interpretations aside, young Rachel worked to the end as a peace activist, a non-violent resister. Naturally the story composed of her words presents the Palestinian perspective of an ongoing tragedy.
Since theater isn’t journalism, plays often give us just one side of history, past or present. The real English King Richard the Third differed from the sly monster Shakespeare makes him. In The Trojan Women, Euripides creates sympathy for the defeated of Troy and skirts the Greeks’ motives for a mythic war. Drama needn’t aim for some imagined news balance. Adroitly directed in the round by Ed Herendeen, and performed by the wonderful Anne Marie Nest, “I Am Rachel Corrie” becomes quite an experience. The Studio Theater audience witnesses a witty gradeschool girl growing up, with discoveries and contributions to make in the wider world. She’s full of mischief and fun at first. But as she engages the audience with her teen dreams, Rachel seems always to be packing, preparing to travel emotionally all over the map. Her parents have encouraged her to explore, so she tells them and us: “I’m sorry I scare you. But I want to write and I want to see. And what would I write about if I only stayed within the doll’s house, the flower-world I grew up in?”
Ms. Nest (poignantly real as the child in last year’s Mr. Marmalade) prowls the stage here with winsome, adolescent zeal. You cannot help loving Rachel’s half-baked brilliance and how she handles, with shy assertiveness, boys and authority figures. Later the grown Corrie, in danger, fends off pleas to come home from Palestine as she defers her desire for romance and family. She’s driven by a dream. First she must help humble people survive.
Inevitably, as with Greek Tragedy, the audience endures change as a fate foretold plays out. After the play the “The Peace Cafe,” held Under the Tent, moved us toward conversational catharsis.
Anne Marie Nest and her parents joined our sub-group. In a measure of this artist’s transformative powers, she had to identify herself as the actor just seen in I Am Rachel Corrie. Nest stressed the “heart connection” (over the political) in preparing her part. Soon various viewpoints mingled with love in the warm, unwounded air.
* * *
Another meditation on the Middle East occurs in Jason Grote’s play 1001, directed too by Herendeen. Historians say 1001 was an interesting year, but Grote’s script trades history for narrative entropy. Here The Arabian Nights and Scheherazade meet Jorge Luis Borges and Sue Grafton, among others. For chaotic completeness the playwright might have thrown into the melange Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, famed for stories within stories within stories.
Yes, chapters of our lives can interweave, grow convoluted, but 1001’s script never gets traction on the road of reflection or reverie. Program notes say the playwright intended a “trunk show”--presumably something like close-up magic, not big stage illusions. But big stage illusions come, smoke and mirrors held up to the unnatural at Shepherd’s Frank Center. Most memorably, a genie (Ariel Shafir) rises upstage to grant wishes. We can only wish that Mr. Grote’s work to layer reality with mystery might have jelled. As it is, only sound and fury meld. But gorgeous brides lose their heads and an ancient Arab potentate (Jonathan C. Kaplan) becomes a Jewish gentleman before our eyes. Erotic plots abound and bellies dance. This magic carpet ride proves Grote a magic carpetsweeper.
There is no intermission and characters multiply.
Giving some moral grounding in varied roles (including Borges, author of
the classic “Garden of Forking Paths”) is solid actor Marc Damon Johnson. As
Scheherazade, Zabryna Guevara succeeds in seeming old and new, though her tales
give way to tech titillations by sound and lighting designers Sharath Patel
and D. M. Wood respectively. Margaret McKowen’s costumes stir wonder, confer a
timeless childhood.
Indeed 1001 works for something different, a Postmodern past, stereotypes reborn to enchantment.
The Contemporary American Theater Festival, now in its 17th season, does enchant and spin off artistic riches (like Goose Route Dance) across Shepherdstown through July 29th. Next year perhaps local playwrights may appear. CATF is on the map whose cutting edges etch vast themes--through lives playing out in a our places.
CATF Continues: Martyrs & Magicians
by Ethan Fischer for The Shepherdstown Chronicle
c 2007
Darkness Before Delight --- Delmore Schwartz
CATF continues with cool, stunning performances. You have perhaps heard about “I Am Rachel Corrie” and the attendant controversy. Rachel Corrie was a bright young woman from Washington state, who was killed in Gaza trying to help Palestinian families. Her own writings have been adapted by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner to fashion a play.
After a run in England, a production of “I Am Rachel Corrie” was canceled in New York due to protests by big theater subscribers. Interpretations aside, young Rachel worked to the end as a peace activist, a non-violent resister. Naturally the story composed of her words presents the Palestinian perspective of an ongoing tragedy.
Since theater isn’t journalism, plays often give us just one side of history, past or present. The real English King Richard the Third differed from the sly monster Shakespeare makes him. In The Trojan Women, Euripides creates sympathy for the defeated of Troy and skirts the Greeks’ motives for a mythic war. Drama needn’t aim for some imagined news balance. Adroitly directed in the round by Ed Herendeen, and performed by the wonderful Anne Marie Nest, “I Am Rachel Corrie” becomes quite an experience. The Studio Theater audience witnesses a witty gradeschool girl growing up, with discoveries and contributions to make in the wider world. She’s full of mischief and fun at first. But as she engages the audience with her teen dreams, Rachel seems always to be packing, preparing to travel emotionally all over the map. Her parents have encouraged her to explore, so she tells them and us: “I’m sorry I scare you. But I want to write and I want to see. And what would I write about if I only stayed within the doll’s house, the flower-world I grew up in?”
Ms. Nest (poignantly real as the child in last year’s Mr. Marmalade) prowls the stage here with winsome, adolescent zeal. You cannot help loving Rachel’s half-baked brilliance and how she handles, with shy assertiveness, boys and authority figures. Later the grown Corrie, in danger, fends off pleas to come home from Palestine as she defers her desire for romance and family. She’s driven by a dream. First she must help humble people survive.
Inevitably, as with Greek Tragedy, the audience endures change as a fate foretold plays out. After the play the “The Peace Cafe,” held Under the Tent, moved us toward conversational catharsis.
Anne Marie Nest and her parents joined our sub-group. In a measure of this artist’s transformative powers, she had to identify herself as the actor just seen in I Am Rachel Corrie. Nest stressed the “heart connection” (over the political) in preparing her part. Soon various viewpoints mingled with love in the warm, unwounded air.
* * *
Another meditation on the Middle East occurs in Jason Grote’s play 1001, directed too by Herendeen. Historians say 1001 was an interesting year, but Grote’s script trades history for narrative entropy. Here The Arabian Nights and Scheherazade meet Jorge Luis Borges and Sue Grafton, among others. For chaotic completeness the playwright might have thrown into the melange Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, famed for stories within stories within stories.
Yes, chapters of our lives can interweave, grow convoluted, but 1001’s script never gets traction on the road of reflection or reverie. Program notes say the playwright intended a “trunk show”--presumably something like close-up magic, not big stage illusions. But big stage illusions come, smoke and mirrors held up to the unnatural at Shepherd’s Frank Center. Most memorably, a genie (Ariel Shafir) rises upstage to grant wishes. We can only wish that Mr. Grote’s work to layer reality with mystery might have jelled. As it is, only sound and fury meld. But gorgeous brides lose their heads and an ancient Arab potentate (Jonathan C. Kaplan) becomes a Jewish gentleman before our eyes. Erotic plots abound and bellies dance. This magic carpet ride proves Grote a magic carpetsweeper.
There is no intermission and characters multiply.
Giving some moral grounding in varied roles (including Borges, author of
the classic “Garden of Forking Paths”) is solid actor Marc Damon Johnson. As
Scheherazade, Zabryna Guevara succeeds in seeming old and new, though her tales
give way to tech titillations by sound and lighting designers Sharath Patel
and D. M. Wood respectively. Margaret McKowen’s costumes stir wonder, confer a
timeless childhood.
Indeed 1001 works for something different, a Postmodern past, stereotypes reborn to enchantment.
The Contemporary American Theater Festival, now in its 17th season, does enchant and spin off artistic riches (like Goose Route Dance) across Shepherdstown through July 29th. Next year perhaps local playwrights may appear. CATF is on the map whose cutting edges etch vast themes--through lives playing out in a our places.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Terror of the Tug
On August 1, 1921, Matewan's Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers were shot to death at the Welch Court House. This “assassination” was part of the coal mining wars that had been going on in WV for over a decade. These murders followed the shoot out in Matewan in May, 1920 between the coal company's Baldwin-Felts agents and the coal miners. The murder of these miner's martyrs led to the Battle of Blair mountain and continuing conflicts as the miners tried to organize the UMW.
These dramatic events are portrayed in McArts outdoor drama,"Terror of the Tug" Written by Jean Battlo.
The playwright and cast of "Terror of the Tug" were briefly filmed for an upcoming History Channel Documentary.
A member of the Institute of Outdoor Drama(UNC) since 2005: it will be directed by Benny Mills and stars John and Maria Cox as Sid and Jessie Hatfield For more information go to mcartswv.com.
Showtime: July 27-28, August 3-4, 8pm (with a special 3pm reenactment at the Welch Court House: August 4 only) at the McArts Amphitheater, located at Mount View: Rt. 52; Between Welch and Kimball.
Admission: $10.00
Contact: (304)585-7959 alvinc@citlink.net
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