Theater Department

CURRENT SEASON (2012 - 2013)

For information about upcoming events, please visit:
http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/events.html#theater

Faculty and Senior Thesis productions 

The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy

Written and directed by Rinde Eckert
Performed by Rinde Eckert and Wesleyan students
Thursday, November 15 through Saturday, November 17, 2012 at 8pm
CFA Theater

The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy is about a man raised by wolves who finds himself toward the end of his life at the top of the food chain. Powerful and erudite, he longs for a return to the wildness of the wolf he was--but how does one recover one's original, less conditioned or acculturated self? What is gained in the effort? What is lost in translation? This work is commissioned by the Center for the Arts, and is made possible by the Creative Campus Initiative and leadership support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Tempest

A Senior Thesis Production by Nicholas Orvis '13

Thursday, December 6 through
Saturday, December 8, 2012 at 9pm
Patricelli '92 Theater

A story of love, betrayal, and redemption, The Tempest has enchanted audiences throughout the ages with its combination of fairy-tale magic and poignant melancholy. This senior thesis production by Nicholas Orvis '13 examines the senses of both loss and growth that pervade The Tempest as well as its parallels to Elizabethan treatises on the art of dying. Employing just four actors, the production will use mask and physical theater techniques to draw out the heart of The Tempest: that growth is necessary, inevitable, painful, and beautiful. This production is in partial fulfillment of Mr. Orvis's Honors Thesis in Theater.

Outside the Box Theater Series

Groundbreaking theater performances and discussions presented by the Theater Department and the Center for the Arts.

Anonymous Ensemble: Liebe Love Amour!

New England Premiere
Saturday, September 22, 2012 at 8:00 pm
CFA Theater

The latest interactive work by Anonymous Ensemble, Liebe Love Amour! (2012), is a raw, theatricalized "live film" of a search for an understanding of the phenomenon of love, inspired by the iconography of actress and singer Marlene Dietrich and director Erich von Stroheim. The audience's stories become part of the fabric of the piece as they help guide the spontaneous "choose-your-own-adventure" narrative, which is told by performers Jessica Weinstein '02, Eamonn Farrell, and Liz Davito. The New England premiere of Liebe Love Amour! features live video processing, lush orchestral music composed by William Antoniou, and film footage from the "Golden Age" of Hollywood that has come into the public domain.

Save the Date for Spring 2013!

Lee Breuer's Glass Guignol

The Frist Performance in Connecticut
Saturday, February, 16, 2013 at 8pm
CFA Theater

  “Experimental theatre that moves the art forward and pushes audiences to think outside the standards.”

—Classical Voice of North Carolina

Following his 2011 staging of A Streetcar Named Desire for the Comédie Française in Paris, writer/director Lee Breuer, founding co-artistic director of the New York-based experimental theater company Mabou Mines, goes the next step in his investigation of the work of Tennessee Williams. Following the French guignol tradition of taking realism to the breaking point of horror and hilarity, Glass Guignol is an exploration/excavation of the multi-faceted fictional refractions arising from the writer’s erotic, voyeuristic relationship with his sister, Rose Williams. This production uses The Two-Character Play as a frame, and constructs “the play within the play” with texts from other Williams works, including Out Cry, The Glass Menagerie, A Cavalier for Milady, and Suddenly Last Summer. The first performance of Glass Guignol in Connecticut will feature Obie Award-winners Maude Mitchell and Greg Mehrten, as well as Jessica Weinstein ’02 and Eamonn Farrell from Anonymous Ensemble.