Student theater performances to watch out for this semester

From opera to film, students discuss plans for coming theater season

BY RYA VALLABHANENI ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR

With shopping period over and spring weather quickly approaching, student groups on campus are ramping up their programming — rehearsals and practices are being slotted into students’ schedules, and many groups are working toward a major semesterly goal. Brown’s many theater groups are no exception.

Student theater at Brown typically boasts an impressive variety of performances, ranging from operas to table reads to full-out Broadway musicals. While each group shares a love for the stage, all are planning unique productions to showcase what they do best.

Theater Arts and Performance Studies Department

The Theater Arts and Performance Studies Department will focus its attention on its annual “Writing is Live” festival this spring.

According to Communications and Audience Services Manager

Brianne Shaw, the festival features new, in-progress plays written by playwrights in the u niversity’s MFA program. The festival also includes a night of readings — u ndergrad u nderground — showcasing excerpts from plays written by undergraduates.

The festival will take place in two parts: “Part 1 features readings from first-year MFA playwrights, staged readings from second-year MFA playwrights and u ndergrad u nderground,” Shaw wrote in an email to The Herald. Part 2 will feature fullscale productions from the program’s third-year playwrights.

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Part 1 is scheduled for Feb. 9-12 and Part 2’s shows will take place March 15-19. All performances will occur in Leeds Theatre.

Rites and Reason Theatre

Rites and Reason Theatre, established in 1970, seeks “to express the cultural, social and ideological concerns of the African Diaspora,” according to the Department of Africana Studies website.

They will begin their season with “Flipping the Script,” an event series offered in conjunction with the Department of Africana Studies. The series was “conceived, cu - rated and moderated by Africana Studies graduate students” Melaine Ferdinand-King GS and zuri arman GS, Stage and Production Manager Kathy Moyer wrote in an email to The Herald.

The series, which kicked off Feb. 10, will focus on the history of Black community theater in Rhode Island.

On April 7 and 8, Rites and Reason will also host WORD!’s Spring Showcase. According to their Instagram, WORD! is “Brown/RISD’s spoken word/slam poetry group working to amplify the unheard and illuminate the unseen.”

To close out its season, Rites and