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UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies 2015–2016 Season
EXPANDING IDEAS THROUGH PERFORMING ARTS TO BUILD COMMUNITIES, SOLVE PROBLEMS AND CREATE A LIFE OF MEANING
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Nicole McClam photo by Zachary Z. Handler
photo by Mike Ciesielski
The UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) continues its groundbreaking use of art to prompt dialogue and foster understanding of issues relevant to today’s world. These issues can be complex and provocative, even controversial. Encompassing an extraordinary range of ideas explored through performance, TDPS boldly tackles issues of race and gender, class struggle and sexual violence, politics and religion, humanity and mortality.
TDPS’s 2015–2016 season culminates with New Visions/New Voices in collaboration with The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A partnership among seven organizations in four countries, since its inception in 1991 the program has assisted in the development of nearly 100 new plays and musicals. This year as a partner in New Visions/New Voices, TDPS will host international playwrights and performing arts administrators in intensive rehearsals and staged readings of new plays, performed and developed by TDPS students at The Clarice. TDPS students will work as actors, dramaturgs, stage managers and production assistants alongside directors and staff from The John F. Kennedy Center at UMD, and then move to The Kennedy Center for continued development and collaboration with professional actors.
Leigh Wilson Smiley Director, UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Megan Morse Jans photo by Zachary Z. Handler
INTIMATE APPAREL
By Lynn Nottage
Jennifer Nelson, director
OCTOBER 9–17, 2015 See website for times Kay Theatre $25 Public / $20 NextLEVEL / $10 Student/Youth
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage explores the strength of the human spirit through the story of Esther, an African American seamstress in New York in 1905 when social and class lines were clearly drawn and seemingly impassible. Directed by Helen Hayes Award nominee Jennifer Nelson.
FALL MFA DANCE THESIS CONCERT
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2015 . 7:30PM FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 . 7:30PM Dance Theatre $25 Public / $20 NextLEVEL / $10 Student/Youth SLEEPING MIND
By Sinclair Ogaga Emoghene
Sleeping Mind is a creation of the surreal environment of the human mind that occurs while a person is going through an episode of sleep paralysis/nighttime disturbance. This project is a conscious attempt to positively engage with forms of paralysis through dance, art and installation. Not all that happens in such a world is bad or negative. We fantasize about things that become real in different, wonderful ways.
OCTAVIA’S BROOD: RIDING THE OX HOME
By Meghan Abadoo
Octavia’s Brood exposes the Kensho, or essence, of a Black woman. It sings, weeps, wonders, saunters and hollers in elation. It leaps through time, landing in the antebellum South of the mid-1800s and an unknown date in an unknown place of a foreseen future. It imagines a world in which women of color are warriors, prophets and presidents. Inspired by the characters of storytellers and racial justice activists Harriet Tubman Davis and Octavia Butler, it asks you to imagine this world too.
TARTUFFE
By Molière Translated by Richard Wilbur
Lee Mikeska Gardner, director
NOVEMBER 6–14, 2015 See website for times Kogod Theatre $25 Public / $20 NextLEVEL / $10 Student/Youth
First performed in 1669, Tartuffe is one of the most famous theatrical comedies by Molière. The School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies explores how Molière’s portrait of corruption mirrors contemporary themes in religion, politics and extremism, as relevant in the 17th century as today.
UMD FACULTY DANCE CONCERT
MOVING PERSPECTIVES
Adriane Fang, director
NOVEMBER 12–14, 2015 See website for times Dance Theatre $25 Public / $20 NextLEVEL / $10 Student/Youth
Moving Perspectives brings together the eloquent and provoking work of dance faculty members Alvin Mayes, Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig, plus a new work by an exciting guest choreographer. Through gesture and verse, meaning through motion, this collection of dances will captivate and inspire!
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
By William Shakespeare
Matthew R. Wilson, director
FEBRUARY 12–20, 2016 See website for times Kogod Theatre $25 Public / $20 NextLEVEL / $10 Student/Youth
The classic love tale of Troilus and Cressida set in the Trojan War is re-envisioned to feature students cast as icons, and a homecoming atmosphere where everything is about TONIGHT, TONIGHT, TONIGHT.
BALTIMORE
Big Ten New Play Initiative By Kirsten Greenidge
Leslie Felbain, director
FEBRUARY 26 – MARCH 5, 2016 See website for times Kay Theatre $25 Public / $20 NextLEVEL / $10 Student/Youth
Baltimore by Kirsten Greenidge is a contemporary story about the loss of innocence and the coming of age of a student forced to encounter the social ramifications of difference and her own cultural relevance. Baltimore is a Big Ten Theatre Consortium’s New Play Initiative for women playwrights.
SPRING MFA DANCE THESIS CONCERT
THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2016 . 7:30PM FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2016 . 7:30PM Kogod Theatre $25 Public / $20 NextLEVEL / $10 Student/Youth LETTERS TO THE DEAD-GHOST STORIES
By Julia Smith
Letters to the Dead-Ghost Stories is a collection of portraits exploring what it means to live and dance after half a life. Themes of love, beauty, grief and nostalgia emerge as Smith and her fellow artists depict characters wrestling with the complexities of intimate relationships, impermanence and mortality. The dances draw inspiration from the music and poetry of Chopin, Debussy, Charles Trenet, Scriabin, Richter, John Keats, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, W.B Yeats and Robert Lowell.
BALANCING SPIRIT AND SINEW
By Curtis Stedge
Balancing Spirit and Sinew is a gritty and macabre crosscultural survey of magical justice, in our shared mythology, that places the human collective on trial, as it explores the testimony that lies at the very depths of the human soul.
NEW VISIONS/NEW VOICES
A New Play Festival presented in collaboration with The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Scot Reese, director
APRIL 29–30, 2016 See website for times Kogod Theatre Free, No Ticket Required
The University of Maryland partners with The Kennedy Center’s 25th anniversary New Visions/New Voices festival. Playwrights and producers from South Africa, Korea and India collaborate with TDPS students on their plays written for young audiences. Readings of these new theatrical works will be held at UMD, followed by a development period at The John F. Kennedy Center with professional actors and directors.
UMOVES UNDERGRADUATE DANCE CONCERT
Patrik Widrig, director
MAY 6–8, 2016 See website for times Dance Theatre $25 Public / $20 NextLEVEL / $10 Student/Youth
The School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies presents a concert featuring emerging dance artists. The program includes original works created and/or performed by undergraduate students majoring in dance as they are finding their choreographic voice and vision, plus new works developed throughout the year by guest choreographers.
HELEN HUANG BOOK photo by Jared Schaubert
WHAT’S NOW WITH THE UMD SCHOOL OF TDPS
Helen Huang, Professor of Costume Design in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, was recently honored with an invitation to present her work at the Costume at the Turn of the Century 1990–2015 exhibit at the A. A. Bakhrushin Museum in Moscow, Russia June/July 2015. Huang was recognized for costume design work on The Monkey King for The Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, which received the respected 2005 IVEY Award; and Measure for Pleasure, a comedy by playwright David Grimm, for the Woolly Mammoth Theatre. This year, Huang along with adjunct professor Kelsey Hunt (MFA in Costume Design ’14) published Elizabethan Costume Design and Construction, a book chronicling the process of designing Elizabethan costumes. 13
