Horizon 10/08/07

Monday, October 8, 2007
8:00 p.m.
Wright Memorial Theatre

Obie award winner and 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama Rinde Eckert returns to campus in Horizon, a tale of one theologian's crisis of faith. Loosely based on the teachings of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Eckert's character is Reinhart Poole, an unconventional theologian and teacher of ethics at a seminary. Pressured to resign by dogmatic powers within his church, he works all night on his last lecture. He talks with his wife, argues with the ghost of his brother, remembers conversations, and indulges his hobby: writing a comic allegory about two ageless masons who've been building the same church foundation for over a thousand years. This work for three actors (Eckert, Howard Swain, and Middlebury alumnus David Barlow '95) creates a visually brilliant landscape in story, song, and movement. Sponsored by the Middlebury College Performing Arts Series and the Department of Theatre and Dance.

Tickets: $15/12/5. http://go.middlebury.edu/tickets or 802-443-MIDD (6433).

Associated events include:
October 8, Monday
Behind-the-Scenes Lunch and Discussion: Horizon
12:15 p.m., Wright Memorial Theatre
Creator/Writer/Composer Rinde Eckert introduces Horizon and leads a discussion about the evening production, along with members of the cast (including Middlebury alumnus David Barlow '95) who share insights on their work. Lunch is provided. Free

Program:

HORIZON

Created, written and composed by Rinde Eckert
David Schweizer, director
David Barlow, Rinde Eckert, Howard Swain, performers

Alexander V. Nichols, set and lighting designer
Gregory T. Kuhn, sound designer and engineer
Recordings composed and performed by Rinde Eckert
Chad Brown, stage manager
David Barlow, choreographer: Wouldn't it by Something
Painted Image: Horizon 903, September Fields, Lancaster County by Anne Burkholder

Susan Endrizzi, producer
Musical Traditions, Inc., production and tour management
California Artists Management, booking management

HORIZON was co-commissioned by the Lied Center for Performing Arts, a unit of the University of Nebraska; the Mondavi Center at the University of California, Davis; the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland; and Arts & Cultural Programming at Montclair State University, New Jersey.

First performance: October 27, 2005 at the Johnny Carson Theater in Lincoln, Nebraska

First Off-Broadway performance: June 1, 2007 at the New York Theatre Workshop

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OF THE HORIZON

Horizon is, among some other things, a tale of one theologian's crisis of faith, not over his religious convictions, but over the character of his service to those ideals. Reinhart Poole has been asked to leave the seminary where he teaches 'ethics'. His teaching methods are Socratic and exciting, drawing from the Bible surprising insights and provocative questions. It is just these insights and questions that have landed him in trouble with the stolid, self-righteous, or simply ignorant powers of his day.

Reinhart Poole is working on his last lecture. During the night he will talk with his wife Patricia; he will imagine himself teaching; he will recall conversations with his father and mother; and he will speak with the ghost of his brother. Reinhart will wonder if he has the patience and restraint for a ministry outside the classroom. He wonders if he has the talent for the life of a pastor. He fears he has become too accustomed to the control and freedoms of his academic world, his marketplace of Christian ideas within the seminary. This night in the life of Reinhart Poole is a kind of desert he will have to cross; it's a deserted road he has to walk down. Reinhart will also reread a play he is writing in his spare time: a story of two timeless masons endlessly creating and recreating the foundation of a church. "It helps to free my mind" he tells his wife Patricia. And it does.

The stage is simple: some cinderblocks and boards with which the artful masons may build their foundation, chalkboards and desks of the classroom, and a Bible, a notebook, and some index cards. Add to that some architectural drawings and a painted landscape, and the picture is complete.

The horizon in Reinhart's world is metaphysical, even implied by two physical matrices: the earth and the air, the source of our strength (and pain) and the character of our dreams (our desires). From a distance, only, can we appreciate it. "One must step back from it to see it at all," writes Reinhart in his notebook.

The basis for many of the ruminations in Horizon is a modest study of the life and ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr, an influential American theologian and social theorist. But although those familiar with Niebuhr's ideas may see the ghost of them here, one ought not to strain the comparison.

It ought to be acknowledged also that my grandfather Thomas D. Rinde, a Lutheran minister, taught religious history at a seminary in Fremont, Nebraska, also serving as its director for many years. I like to think he would be pleased to find himself implicated here in my imagined teacher Reinhart Poole.

The landscape, the horizon,
the convivial energies of Lincoln where this piece was born,
the Nebraska horizon, the prairie here,
have made me step back and look again. I'm grateful.

- Rinde Eckert

For additional program notes, please contact Events and Residency Manager Allison Coyne Carroll at carroll@middlebury.edu

Artist Biographies:

RINDE ECKERT, finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, is a composer, writer, performer and director. His Opera / New Music Theatre productions have toured throughout America, and to major festivals in Europe and Asia. He began his career as a writer/performer in the 1980s, writing librettos for composer Paul Dresher. Working subsequently with choreographers Margaret Jenkins and Sarah Shelton Mann, Eckert began composing dance scores, including the evening-length Woman, Window, Square for The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. With the creation of his homage to Dante The Gardening of Thomas D in 1992, performed on tour in America and France, Eckert began composing and performing his own music/theater pieces. Recent work includes the Obie Award winning And God Created Great Whales (2001) produced by The Foundry Theatre; Highway Ulysses (2003) and Orpheus X (2006), both produced and commissioned by American Repertory Theatre; Horizon, a play with music and song (2005); and An Idiot Divine, an evening of two one-act solo operas. He wrote the libretto and sings in Steven Mackey's oratorio Dream House, wrote and directed Sound Stage by Paul Dresher for the chamber ensemble Zeitgeist, and wrote and narrated the spoken text of Sandhills Reunion, a concert and recording with composer Jerry Granelli. Eckert has composed three CD's of songs: Finding My Way Home, Do The Day Over, and Story In Story Out. Performance engagements in 2007 include Slow Fire with Paul Dresher / San Francisco; lead singer in Alternate Visions, a techno-opera / Montreal; Dream House with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project / Boston; An Idiot Divine / Fort Worth; Orpheus X / Scotland's Edinburgh International Festival, and Horizon / on a national tour. Rinde Eckert's work has been produced by ART, The Foundry Theatre, Center Stage in Baltimore, Culture Project, Dobama Theatre Company and Berkeley Repertory Theater, and has been directed by Robert Woodruff, Tony Taccone, Richard ET White, Ellen McLaughlin and David Schweizer. He has received two Critics Circle Awards and two Isadora Duncan Awards in San Francisco, an Obie Award and two Drama Desk Award Nominations in New York, and Boston's Eliot Norton Award for Best Production by a Large Resident Company. He received the 2005 Marc Blitzstein Award given by The American Academy of Arts and Letters to a lyricist / librettist, and in 2007 became a Guggenheim Fellow and was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Orpheus X. Rinde Eckert has taught at Princeton University and is the 2008 Granada Artist-in-Residence at the University of California at Davis. He lives in New York with his wife, Ellen McLaughlin, the playwright and actress.

DAVID SCHWEIZER, director, has been directing and developing new theater, performance and opera works for the last thirty years - beginning with his New York debut at Lincoln Center with a radical version of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and spanning his return to Lincoln Center last season for his debut with New York City Opera with Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's The Mines of Sulphur. He lives in both New York City and Los Angeles where he has worked extensively with the Actor's Gang (Richard Howard's adaptation of Oscar Wild'e Salome) the Mark Taper Forum (Lisa Loomer's The Waiting Room) the Geffen (Sandra Tsing Loh's Sugar Plum Fairy) and LATC (The Joni Mitchell Project, Thomas Babe's Demon Wine, Marlane Meyer's Kingfish). Recent New York work includes Zak Berkman's Beauty on the Vine, Charles L. Mee's Wintertime, William Hamilton's White Chocolate, Anton Dudley's Getting Home, Mike Albo's My Price Point, Mark Campbell's Songs from an Unmade Bed and Rinde Eckert's OBIE AWARD-winning work, And God Created Great Whales which also toured extensively in this country and in Europe. His many international residencies include Prague, Stockholm, London, Lisbon, Toga Village-Japan, and Warsaw where his version of Peer Gynt is still running. Collaborations with other experimental companies: Mabou Mines (It's a Man's World by Greg Mehrten), Theatre X (Michel Foucault's A History of Sexuality) and Modern Artists Company (Plato's Symposium). Some notable opera work: Thomas Ades' Powder Her Face (Long Beach Opera), Stephen Hartke/ Philip Littell's The Greater Good (Glimmerglass) and Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio (Houston Grand Opera). His work has been seen at major American regional theaters including Yale Rep, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Children's Theater Company, The Huntington, Arena Stage, Trinity Rep, The Magic, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and several shows for Center Stage Baltimore, most recently Lynn Nottage's Crumbs from the Table of Joy and Rodgers and Hart's The Boys from Syracuse.

DAVID BARLOW ('95), performer, has appeared in a series of premieres this past year including Horizon, Carl Hancock Rux's Mycenaean at BAM, Chuck Mee's A Perfect Wedding at NYU, the original comedy Perfect Harmony at the New York Fringe Festival. and Bauerntheater, a new work in collaboration with UNESCO and the Biorama Projekt in Brandenburg, Germany. New York credits include: Saved (dir. Robert Woodruff) and Andorra (dir. Liviu Ciulei) at Theater For A New Audience, Romola and Nijinski (dir. David Levine) at Primary Stages, The Seagull (dir. Michael Barakiva) at The Blue Heron, and Smashing (dir. Trip Cullman) with the Play Company. Regional credits include: King Lear at Kansas City Rep, On the Jump at Arena Stage, A Number at the Adirondack Theater Festival, and This is Our Youth at Philadelphia Theater Co. David is a member of the Mad Dog Company directed by Phil Soltanoff with whom he co-created To Whom It May Concern, Lemnation, and Strange Attractors at the Williamstown Theater Festival. He has performed at both the Avignon and Belgrade International Theater Festivals. David is a graduate of Middlebury College and received his MFA from NYU.

HOWARD SWAIN, performer, has lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirty years and has appeared in over two hundred stage productions, including work at The American Conservatory Theater: (The Seagull, St. Joan, A Lie Of The Mind, The Learned Ladies), at Berkeley Repertory Theatre: (The Pillowman, Execution of Justice, The Tooth Of Crime, Our Country's Good), and San Jose Repertory Theatre: (A Christmas Story, The Baby Dance, Sideman, The Matchmaker). Other theatre performances include work with The Magic Theatre: (Shakespeare the Sadist, The Red Snake), The Eureka Theatre: (Vinegar Tom, A Mad World My Masters), The Aurora Theatre: (Lobby Hero, Seascape), Theatre-On-The-Square: (Jeffrey, Curse Of The Werewolf), San Jose Stage: (Wilde West), and Marin Theatre Company: (Bus Stop, Sacco and Vanzetti), as well as the Oregon, California, Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Marin Shakespeare Festivals. Howard Swain performed with the national tour of Picasso At the Lapin Agile, the long-running San Francisco production of Killer Joe, and in the SF production of Love, Janis. His television credits include appearances on Nash Bridges, Midnight Caller, Lying Eyes, Kiss Shot and Hill St. Blues and in the films Cherry 2000, Miracle Mile, One Night, Golden Gate, Teknolust, Frameup, Night Of The Scarecrow and Valley Of The Heart's Desire.

For additional biographies and production information, please contact Events and Residency Manager Allison Coyne Carroll at carroll@middlebury.edu

Artist Website: http://www.rindeeckert.com/

Press Quotes:

"But Mr. Eckert... is undeniably expert in anchoring elusive ideas to the point at which they become graspable. The forms he uses are often deliberately simple, precisely because the content is anything but.

At the same time, he finds vivifying parallels between the theological quest of one man and the theatrical quest to capture and illuminate life. In 'Horizon,' the dynamics of art and religion are remarkably and nobly the same." -- Ben Brantley, New York Times, June 6, 2007

"Arriving, in the usual manner of messiahs, just too late for the salvation of this year's awards, comes what must, improbably, be called the season's best musical." --Michael Feingold, The Village Voice, June 13th, 2007

Students of Middlebury's Theatre program