Tonight marks the first performance of Chautauqua Theater Company’s In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), and with it, the beginning of another theatrical
Chautauqua Institution’s commitment to the arts doesn’t stop at the professional level. On June 20, local students gathered in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall for a performance of 10 short plays written
Andrew Borba According to Andrew Borba, serving as artistic director of the Chautauqua Theater Company isn’t so different from directing a Shakespeare show. This season,
Plays take audiences out of their daily realities and place them in other worlds for small snippets of time. Playwright Michael Golamco’s “Build” does just that, but drops audiences into a world with which they aren’t necessarily familiar: the world of technology, artificial intelligence and virtual identities.
“Build” opens at 8 p.m. Saturday at Bratton Theater as the second new play in Chautauqua Theater Company’s 2011 New Play Workshop Festival.
From now until July 31, Chautauqua Theater Company will be busy with the 2011 New Play Workshop Festival. In addition to the three new plays in this year’s NPW Festival, CTC, in conjunction with the Writers’ Center, is commissioning a play for the first time.
The recipient of the Chautauqua Play Commission is playwright Kate Fodor. While Fodor is the first recipient of the Commission, this is not her first time in Chautauqua. Fodor already has brought two of her plays to CTC to be workshopped in NPW Festivals in the past.
Playwright Michael Mitnick sat down at his kitchen table late one evening in September 2009 to experiment with a few pages of a play he intended to use as his senior thesis. He finished the next morning with the entire first act of what would later become “Elijah” and would earn him a place in Chautauqua Theater Company’s 2011 New Play Workshop Festival.
The play opens at 8 p.m. tonight in Bratton Theater as the first of three new plays making their debut in this season’s festival.
The playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote plays to share his message with a large number of people, an idea that seems old-fashioned in the age of new media.
But what if Shaw still chose to write plays in the midst of the 21st century?
“Is there something about the experience of live theater that actually is capable of creating more effective and profound change than sitting in front of a television or watching a movie? And I think the answer is probably yes,” Ethan McSweeny said.
Light is a part of everyone’s daily life, regardless of age, religion or location.
Noah Craft sees the beauty and inspiration in this universality of light. This is what led him to enter and become a finalist in the Philips 2011 Light World Tour, a competition that allows one person with a passion for lighting to travel for three months finding new lighting inspirations.
Along with performing finished Anton Chekhov and William Shakespeare productions, Chautauqua Theater Company keeps busy taking an active role in new play development. This will be evident beginning July 21 with the start of the New Play Workshop Festival.
The good news is that Chautauqua Theater Company is staging Anton Chekhov’s 1901 “Three Sisters,” one of the greatest plays ever written, through July 17. Further, good reports can be made of the chosen translation: by the late Slavic academic-turned-actor Paul Schmidt, it renders Chekhov’s then-contemporary idiom (the play is set in a stultifying provincial city in 1900) into plausible, listenable and unstilted American English, with only a few questionable decisions.
Actors and instructors will be on the spot in front of audience members at today’s Brown Bag lunch as they work through Shakespearean text with no prior rehearsal.
This week’s Brown Bag lunch, which begins at 12:15 p.m. today at Bratton Theater, will be led by Associate Artistic Director Andrew Borba and Peter Francis James.
Those who love Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” understand that as time passes, the world we know fades into the past. In time, we ourselves will be gone, and no one will remember our faces or even our voices. The good news is that through the indelible impact we have on others, eventually, our lives will take on meaning, and the world will be a better place.
At least, that is the famous prophecy made by Ólga, the oldest of the three sisters, in the final moments of Chekhov’s play.
Audience members wanting a historical look at and deeper understanding of Chautauqua Theater Company’s production of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” have to look no further than tonight’s “’fore-Play: ‘Three Sisters.’”
Artistic Associate Claire Karpen will be leading the conversation.
Decommissioned nuclear reactors and flying chairs are not typically the first things that come to mind in a production of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” but this is what awaits those who attend today’s Bratton Behind the Scenes. The event, which will focus on Chautauqua Theater Company’s current production of “Three Sisters,” begins at 2:15 p.m. at Bratton Theater. The program will last approximately 45 minutes.
Masks, clown noses and a silly show are scheduled to take place at 10:30 p.m. Saturday at the Chautauqua Theater Company’s Late Night Mask Show. The show will take place outside rehearsal shacks 64 and 65.
Although it falls during Week Two programming dates, the show will take on the theme from Week Three, which is “American Intelligence: Technology, Espionage and Alliances,” said Artistic Director Vivienne Benesch.