2013-2014 Season
2013-2014 season information for the Theatre Department at Middlebury College.
18th Annual First Year Show: Life Under 30
October 10-13 | Hepburn Zoo Theatre
Danielle needs work advice, Ike and Terry contemplate death at the grocery store, Mel and Billy are dysfunctional friends, Rex the Mex has a theory as to what causes cancer, and Charlene wants that promotion—badly. Life Under 30, and evening of ten minute plays exploring the issues of, well, what happens after college.
Directed by Lisa Velten-Smith
Cascando by Samuel Beckett
October 27 | Dance Studio
A workshop exploration of Samuel Beckett’s Cascando, a rarely produced short radio play originally subtitled “a radiophonic invention for music and voice.” The audience is invited to attend an intimate staged reading of the play in an informal salon setting, and then discuss the work with director Dare Clubb, composer David Lang, cellist Maya Beiser, and performers Jeffrey Brown and theatre professor Alex Draper. Following the discussion, a second iteration of the performance offers a unique opportunity for further conversation and conviviality. An important 20th century work, Cascando investigates the nature of creativity as well as its pleasures and agonies.
Directed by Dare Clubb
Vinegar Tom by Caryl Churchill
October 31-November 2 | Seeler Studio Theatre
Vinegar Tom is a play with songs and a play with subversive intent…a cabaret about hanging witches.
Senior 700 work in Acting of Shannon Fiedler ‘14
Directed by Cheryl Faraone
Boston Marriage by David Mamet
November 14-16 | Hepburn Zoo Theatre
In this wickedly funny and fast-paced face, David Mamet depicts the misadventures of two Vistorian “women of fashion,” living together on the fringes of upper-class society, giving his trademark tart dialogue and impeccable plotting a spice of Wilden wit.
Independent 500 work in Directing of Jake Schwartzwald ‘14
Senior 700 work in Acting of Christina Fox ‘13.5 and Meghan Leathers ‘13.5
Pentecost by David Edgar
November 21-23 | Wright Memorial Theatre
A potentially priceless mural is discovered in a former church in war-torn post-Soviet Eastern Europe. As international and local art historians argue over who should claim ownership, a band of refugees—from Bosnia, from Sarajevo, from Lithuania, from Kuwait—blows into the church seeking asylum, and the fate of the painting becomes a metaphor for the future of the emergent nations of Easter Europe. Throughout David Edgar’s Pentecost, whose title is a New Testament reference to the multiplicity of languages, there is a permeating sense of the freeing and redemtpive power of art.
Directed by Richard Romagnoli and Alex Draper
Harm’s Way by Mac Wellman
December 5-7 | Hepburn Zoo Theatre
Set in the chaos of post-apocalyptic America, this play follows the journey of a man named Santouche, who after committing a murder must avoid the law at all costs. He makes plans to meet his lover, a woman only ever called “Isle of Mercy’ at a place of refuge, but along the way Santouche encounters a bizarre mix of con artists, pimps, and a man who claims to be William McKinley. Harm’s Way is a (sometimes brutally) dark comedy that deals primarily with the loss of control and order in one’s world.
Senior 700 work in Directing of Matt Ball ‘14
The Terms of a Haunting by Jake Schwartzwald ‘14
February 14 | Seeler Studio Theatre
Public reading of Jake Schwartzwald’s new play. Connor is a dead man, stuck among the living. When his suicide produces unexpected consequences, he find himself thrust into a world of farcical self-discovery, sexual revelation, and blathering Buddhism. Romances ignite, ideologies crumble, and dietary restrictions prevail in this wild, fast-paced dark comedy.
Senior 700 work in Playwriting of Jake Schwartzwald ‘14
Land Without Words by Dea Loher
April 3-5 | M Gallery, Old Stone Mill
Land Without Words is an exploration of the potential of art in our everyday lives. It follows an artist who had recently returned from a journey to a war-ridden city, identified only as K, where she experienced extreme violence and poverty. In the face of this human suffering she begins to question the purpose and responsibility of art in society.
Senior 700 work in Acting of Mari Vial-Golden ‘14
Directed by Matt Ball ‘14
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
April 10-12 | Wright Memorial Theatre
The stage adaptation of the groundbreaking 1962 novel, A Clockwork Orange is the story of Alex and his fellow Droogs in a dystopian world as they wreak havoc in celebration of youth, freedom, and power. But when the government response to this ultra-violence involves behavioral modification, then we must to choose: Is it better to be forced to be good, or to choose to be bad?
Directed by Andrew W. Smith ‘97.5
In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) by Sarah Ruhl
April 30-May 3 | Seeler Studio Theatre
From his 1880s parlor and consulting room, Dr. Givings specializes in treating women for “hysteria” with the help of the latest technology: the electric vibrator. When a new patient piques Mts. Givings’s curiosity about the groundbreaking treatment ministered in the next room, she is forced to confront the limits of her marriage and to listen to the music of her own body. An elegant comedy lit by unexpected sparks from the approaching era of electricity, psychoanalysis, and suffragettes, In the Next Room confirms Sarah Ruhl’s status as one of the most imaginative contemporary American playwrights.
Directed by Cláudio Medeiros