It's not just you: most people fear and loathe the idea of "audience participation." "Why do I fear audience participation so much?" writes Bruce Dessau in the UK e-magazine Beyond the Joke. "Maybe it's genetic. My daughter won't even go to a show which includes, as she calls it 'AP'. ...I guess it's about control. About being in command of what is happening." Even those who are comfortable in front of a large group quake at the thought of suddenly being thrust into the spotlight. As a recent article in The Cut noted, "An audience-participation situation ... eliminates that preparation … [Read more...]
“Courageous, honest, funny” show about Native stereotypes and identity, April 19
HANOVER, NH—A Portland, Ore.-based performance artist mingles drag, Disney and pointed commentary about ethnic stereotypes in his hilarious, irreverent show, Looking for Tiger Lily, at the Warner Bentley Theater of the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, on Thursday, April 19, 7 and 9:30 pm. Anthony Hudson reckons with his own mixed Native and European heritage in this solo autobiographical show. Incorporating video, Broadway belting and a bit of Power Point, Hudson performs in part in his queer drag clown persona “Carla Rossi” as he recounts his Native father’s activism as … [Read more...]
“War and Peace,” Gob Squad-style: Tolstoy would approve, says scholar
By John Kopper, Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College What can Tolstoy's War and Peace, set among the aristocracy and armed forces of 19th-century Russia, tell us about today? The Hop asked John Kopper, a Dartmouth professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, to ruminate on that general topic for an essay for the playbill for Gob Squad Collective's War and Peace, April 6 & 7 at the Hop. Kopper has spent his career teaching and writing about not only modern Russian writers but such 19th-century giants as Tolstoy and Gogol. On Wednesdays at 4 pm, you might … [Read more...]
European theater renegades gleefully mash up song, talk, fashion and Tolstoy
Channeling both Tolstoy and the best cocktail conversation ever, European theater renegades Gob Squad present War and Peace, a mashup of song, talk, and fashion that makes for a gleeful, heady experience. The show takes place Friday and Saturday, April 6 and 7, at 8 pm, in The Moore Theater of the Hopkins Center for the Arts. A sell-out hit at New York’s Under the Radar Festival, this UK- and Germany-based collective uses Tolstoy’s epic as a launch pad for a gleeful, audience-interactive experience. Reenacting the high-society party that opens War and Peace, the cast selects audience … [Read more...]
From Hitler and Stalin to Charlottesville and “alternative facts”: “1984” cast does its homework
Every theatrical production involves a lot of research, and the Dartmouth Department of Theater’s production of 1984 (February 16-25 in The Moore Theater) is no different. Theater professor Peter Hackett ’75 is directing an original adaptation of a radio play based on the famous novel, also incorporating passages from the 2017 New York Times #1 bestseller On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by historian Timothy Snyder. During rehearsals, students always have access to copies of both the novel and Snyder's book. The dramaturgy has involved more than books, however. In … [Read more...]
The visual opulence of Teatro Sur’s “Inutiles”
Photos courtesy of Teatro Sur, Santiago, Chile Spanish colonial rulers in South America reaped untold riches from the natural resources of this "New World" while imposing the suffocating Renaissance materialism of the Old World. Teatro Sur underscores this reality - and the wealth inequities that persist to today - in the stage design of its show Inútiles (Useless), which has its US premiere at the Hop on January 5 and 6. The show's Art Director, Jorge Zambrano, has worked with noted South American and European stage directors since the 1980s and more recently had branched out to film, … [Read more...]
Theater in Chile: Always an act of resistance
Those who have followed the pre-Jackie work of Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain know that political resistance has always been driven by words. In his 2012 film No, a young ad executive uses advertising pitches to motivate people to vote "no" on an assumed-to-be meaningless referendum and oust longtime dictator Augusto Pinochet. His Neruda (2016) is a portrait of a poet whose work had such an Orpheus-like influence on the Chilean people that the government needed to hunt him down. Chilean theater also has a powerful ability to influence the public in ways that Americans might find hard to … [Read more...]
Making CABARET: The Stage Manager
This term, the Dartmouth Theater Department is presenting Cabaret as the mainstage production. Throughout the term, I will be interviewing various members of the immense team that are making this show possible. Having already presented some of the leads at the face of the show, it is now time to turn our attention backstage. First up is Maya Frost-Belansky ’20, the stage manager for this production. What exactly does a Stage Manager do? Overall, stage managers (SMs) are responsible for supporting the director’s artistic vision. To do this, SMs liaise between the various technical … [Read more...]
MAKING CABARET: THE ACTORS DIVE IN
This term, Dartmouth’s mainstage production is Cabaret, a 1966 Broadway musical set in 1931 Berlin. The show takes place in a nightclub called the Kit Kat club, and the play is told by the Master of Ceremonies. Two plots of romance emerge. One is between Sally Bowles, a cabaret singer, and Cliff Bradshaw, a young American writer. The other is a forbidden romance between Fraulein Schneider, a German boarding house owner, and Herr Schultz, a Jewish fruit vendor. The musical, which you may know from its recent revival starring Alan Cumming and Emma Stone on Broadway, is deeply political. It … [Read more...]
Antigone in Ferguson: Exploring long-standing issues with the help of theater and discussion
On the weekend of September 16-17 in St. Louis, MO, demonstrators and protesters took to the streets after the acquittal of former police officer Jason Stockley was announced. Stockley was tried for the deadly shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith, a 24-year-old black man, that took place in 2011. A group of St. Louis activists, police officers and community members were not on the scene in that city, however, but in Hanover, NH. Theater of War Productions brought Antigone in Ferguson to The Moore Theater of the Hopkins Center for the Arts on September 15 and 16. The event included gospel songs, … [Read more...]
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