PERFORMANCES 2007
"Stories of Illness and Healing"
THE BOX OFFICE OPENS JULY 2
(413) 542-3750
Prior to that call (413) 427-6147
or click HERE to send us an inquiry via email.
FRIDAY-SUNDAY, JULY 6 - 8 at 8 p.m.
MATERMORPHOSIS
by Lenelle Moise, performed by Serious Play,
directed by Sheryl Stoodley, designed by Kathy Couch & Robin Doty
with Linda Putnam as Gregora/Mother
and Steve Bailey, Billy Girand, Jeannine Haas, Glenn Love, Alberto Peart, Alexis Reid
In this darkly ironic and comic adaptation of Kafka's masterpiece of isolation and human cruelty "Metamorphosis," award-winning, Hatian-American slam poet/playwright Lenelle Moise, reworks Kafka's Gregor into Gregora, a critically ill, menopausal mother who has supported her family by working in the sex industry. By depicting her ”change of life” as her transformation into insect, the Serious Play Ensemble dissects the social constructs that compromise humanity, family bonds, and the loss of physical autonomy that occurs as we age and confront the possibility of illness and even death.
SUNDAY, July 15 at 8 p.m.
PEACE
by Aristophanes, performed by the Mettawee River Company
under the direction of Ralph Lee
Our annual favorites with a contemporary adaptation of Aristophanes' comedy PEACE that tells of a mortal who journeys on the back of a dung beetle to Mt Olympus to complain to the gods about the situation on earth, only to learn that the gods have fled, leaving War and Greed in charge and Peace buried under a trash heap. In the end, Peace is rescued and an extended celebration begins. This all-ages event is performed outdoors with live music, masks and giant puppets.
Performed on the Amherst College Observatory Lawn off of Snell Street. Bring blankets, lawn chairs and insect repellant, but leave the dogs at home!
RAIN SPACE: Amherst College's HOLDEN THEATRE
The production will be ASL Interpreted by Joan Wattman. 
FRIDAY - SUNDAY, JULY 20 - 22 at 8 p.m.
THE MAMMY PROJECT
created and performed by Michelle Matlock
co-developed with Joan Evans, directed by Amy Gordon, lighting by Sabrina Hamilton
Writer/performer Michelle Matlock uses original music, storytelling, multimedia documentary materials and her considerable comedic skills to explore the influence that the "Mammy" icon has had on contemporary American culture by re-imagining the cultural traditions from which the image was born -- slavery, minstrelsy and advertising. The piece unpacks the little-known history of Nancy Green, the first African-American woman hired to play the part of “Aunt Jemima' at the 1893 World's Fair, and in so doing transforms an oppressive stereotype of African-American womanhood into a celebration of the power to be gained from knowing and understanding history
FRIDAY - SUNDAY, JULY 27 - 29 at 8 p.m.
O YES I WILL (I will remember the spirit and texture of this conversation)
written and performed by Deb Margolin
direction and dramaturgy by Merri Milwe, lighting by Sabrina Hamilton
How much do we say when we speak? Yet what if we speak truth and aren't there to hear it? In OBIE Award winning playwright/performer Deb Margolin's new piece a woman is amazed to learn that just prior to going under for surgery, she talked, talked and talked for 12 straight minutes without stopping! This unmediated aria performed before a bunch of men in scrubs with knives was known to them but unknown to her. Was it love she talked about? Politics? Sex? Conspiracy theory? Evasion? Ontology? Requests for a ménage à trois, quatre or cinq? What kinds of things do you say when your body and mind are engaged but not married? This comic tour-de-force for one actor is a kind of Scherezade for the surgery-bound, and offers five radically different possibilities of what she might have said outside the realm of conscious volition. In doing so, she explores the essential nature of language itself, the indomitable human spirit in the face of adversity, what it means to live in a woman's body, and the role of theatre and imagination in our lives . Diagnosed with lymphoma ten years ago, Margolin has processing it, as with every significant event in her life, by writing and creating performance. In her work, the personal is always both the political and the poetic.
All performances EXCEPT the outdoor Mettawee production of
PEACE will be held in Amherst College's Holden Theater.Driving directions to Amherst College
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