Production Archive: 2019-2020

Break, Burn, Build 2019: Fall Performance Experiments

Saturday, October 5, 2019
3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Strider Theater

The Colby College Department of Theater and Dance presents a short program of new works (run time: approx. 50 min). Break, Burn, Build is a mixed evening of performance that features the full range of performance research created in the Department of Theater and Dance – including theater, dance, design, and hybrid Dance Theater. First-Year students and Theater and Dance majors and minors will share the stage in both student and faculty-directed new works.

Developed in a short period, these projects highlight collaboration, experimentalism, and inquiry-based creative research. The evening celebrates the opportunity to share those processes on stage.

FRENCH HIP HOP PERFORMANCE: Compagnie Dyptik

Dans L’Engrenage

Tuesday, October 8, 2019
7:00 p.m.
Strider Theater

Finding your place, precarious as it may be. You fight for it. Fight to keep it. Beyond the inner workings of society. Beyond conventions. Beyond the common good. Beyond individual liberties. You play around the rules to keep going. Even to the point of transgression. Even if it means doing wrong. Even if those put upon rise up. They believe in something better. They are committed. In the face of all opposition. Against all odds. Single-handedly. They fight. At strength’s end, still they build. Something different. Differently. A foundation for the new. For their sake. To exist. Caught in the gears, they combine. Blend in with the crowd. Again. For how long?

Dyptik was founded in 2012 by choreographers Mehdi Meghari and Souhail Marchiche. The company is based in Saint-Etienne, France and has the support of the city of Saint-Etienne, the DRAC, the region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, and the Loire department.

https://www.dyptik.com/en/creations/dans-lengrenage/

Moving Target Master Class “GUT Motives”

Wendy and the Neckbeards

Written by Kari Bentley-Quinn, Guest Directed by Kevin R. Free

Thursday, November 14, and Friday, November 15, 2019
7:30 p.m.

Saturday, November 16, 2019
2:00 p.m.
Strider Theater

Wendy, a 17-year-old plus-sized, body-positive makeup artist with her own YouTube channel, is having her life exploded by internet trolls. In the meantime, Jess discovers that her long-term boyfriend Chad spends his time harassing young women on the internet to “blow off steam”. From here, the two stories converge in a hilarious and insightful examination of the current era of internet harassment, toxic masculinity, and the cycle of abuse towards women in America.

This play by Kari Bentley-Quinn will be directed by guest artist, Kevin R. Free, a multidisciplinary artist whose work as a voice actor and theater maker has been showcased many places, including Portland Stage (Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill and The Last Five Years); Off-Broadway (Bellomy in The Fantasticks); on audiobooks (Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries), and of course, on the internet (Desert Bluffs, Welcome To Night Vale).

PLEASE NOTE: the play content reflects current teenage angst, culture, and language and therefore may be unsettling for some audience members.

WORDS MOVE — MUSIC MOVES

A Recitation of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets by John Farrell and a Performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132 by the DaPonte String Quartet.

Tuesday, February 11, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Strider Theater

This unique program — a recitation from memory of T. S. Eliot’s poetic masterwork together with a performance of the Beethoven string quartet that inspired Eliot’s poem — offers audiences a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience in close succession the crowning artistic achievements of these peerless masters.

John Farrell will perform T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets on Tuesday, February 11 at 7 p.m. in the Strider Theater, Runnals Building, Colby College in Waterville. With rarely granted permission of the T. S. Eliot Estate, John committed to memory the 886 lines of Four Quartets and now tours internationally with his recitation of Eliot’s epic poem. An unquestioned masterpiece of 20th-century literature, Four Quartets is a complex, deeply moving meditation on time, memory, and human striving toward the divine.

Eliot completed Four Quartets in 1941, as Britain slid into the abyss of World War II, and he feared that civilization itself might perish in the coming years. Writing at the height of his artistic powers, Eliot packed into Four Quartets a summation of his views on poetry and art, on mystical experience, and on humankind’s relationship to history and time.

John’s recitation of Four Quartets affords audiences an opportunity to immerse themselves in these gorgeous lines of poetry, spoken from memory, and renew their understanding of one of the 20th century’s most exceptional poets.

He will be joined by the DaPonte String Quartet who will be performing Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132, alternating recited verse and music.

www.pressherald.com/2020/01/12/t-s-eliots-four-quartets-is-all-in-this-performers-head/

https://www.fourquartets.org/words-move-music-moves

www.daponte.org/

This event is co-sponsored by Colby College Department of English, Department of Music, Department of Religious Studies, and the Cultural Events Committee.

Words Move — Music Moves is free and open to the public. Tickets are available through the “Buy Tickets” button below, or at the door prior to the performance. Because this performance is in high demand, advance tickets are recommended.

Master Class: The Demidov Acting Technique with Andrei Malaev-Babelis

Thursday, March 12, 2020
11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Smith Acting Studio, Runnals 2nd Floor. Lunch to follow. Open to everyone

Professor Andrei Malaev-Babelis is one of the leading experts on Russian theater and acting techniques, and the current Head of Acting and Professor of Theater and Florida State University. His Master Class will introduce students to core tenants of Russian acting and is appropriate for all levels and experiences.