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Mary Baldwin’s featured events a n d gu e s t app e a r a n c e s
M B C T H E A TRE
Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman Fletcher Collins Theatre in Deming Fine Arts Center Directed by Doreen Bechtol, MFA ’12 Company Manager and Director of Training, Shakespeare and Performance February 11–15, 2015 Tickets: 540-887-7189 or www.mbc.edu/arts/theatre A contemporary retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this award-winning play features archetypal characters who undergo extra-ordinary transformations. Bechtol, a skilled practitioner of physical theater, talks about her vision for the production: In 2002, I saw Metamorphoses’ Broadway debut a month before I moved to Staunton to join the resident acting troupe at the American Shakespeare Center. Composed of beautifully evocative images, that production resonated with me, perhaps because of my movement background and love for theatrical spectacle, yet also because the production opened against the backdrop of 9/11 and stood in contrast to the devastation. At that time audiences in New York needed some sort of emotional catharsis, and what better play to find release than in Metamorphoses? As its name implies, the primary theme in Metamorphoses is transformation and the majority of the action takes place within a shallow pool of water, which makes theatrical use of that element’s changeable nature. While we may not be able to recreate a pool inside the black box theatre (... in February, mind you), I hope to re-imagine how we might use water in provocative ways that speak to, or help spur, a character’s transformation. In addition, I am also excited to potentially work with multimedia such as projection, and I never tire of exploring my first love in the theatre: igniting and cultivating the performer’s body, voice, and imagination through live performance — all of which requires supreme acts of transformation.
2014-15
Selected Campus Guests
concert: “global rhythms” Srinivas Krishnan, Spencer Center artist-in-residence visiting faculty Shiny John Vairamon, chemistry professor Chennai, India Lecture: “Adventures of a Public Scientist” Gregory Petsko, Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar Carpenter Lecture in Health Care Administration Sarah Friebert, MD Broman Concert Yael Weiss, piano Doenges Lecture: “The Possibility of Fiction” Angie Cruz, novelist Hunt Gallery Exhibition Passing Strange: New Work by Adria Arch Firestone Lecture in Contemporary Art Josef Bolf, painter
BOLDLYBALDWIN
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