Saturday, September 05, 2009

P L A Y Festival reflections

The final week of the Play Festival coincided with the first week of actual school (real students not just teacher meetings) so blogging fell by the wayside. However, the final week of the festival was highly motivating in terms of focusing on the craft of teaching acting. This being The Year of Grotowski, and having the New World Performance Lab working and living in Akron is indeed cause for massive celebration!

We were given a demonstration of how the company develops their work and a sneak preview of their latest project called "Gilgamesh" which is, in case you didn't know, one of the oldest stories on record. The ensemble have been immersed in their Frankenstein project for over two years now, so it was fascinating to see them working with source material so far removed from Mary Shelley and those surrounding her summer of ghost stories.

Cheers to the company for consistently inviting audiences in to respond to their works in progress. I remember seeing Frankenstein in its infancy, then watching various performances of it over the course of the past two years. By the final weekend of the Play Festival, the actors reached greater depths than ever before, while the flow of the piece was nothing short of electrifying.

The festival ended with a lovely party in honor of Mary Shelley's birthday. A fantabulous time was had by all! Let's do it again next year!

1 comment:

Acey Bee said...

Show business, it's a funny thing, no?
http://tinyurl.com/qsds88