Spearheaded by NYTW Artistic Director Jim Nicola and Associate Artistic Director Linda Chapman, NYTW's Dartmouth residency will bring together students, artists and directors in a series of workshops to prepare six original works of theater for public presentation.
The residency is divided into three one-week installations. Each session which will feature a different set of artists will begin with a free, public "brown bag" discussion, held on Tuesdays at 12 p.m. in the Hopkins Center's Warner Bentley Theater. These casual sessions allow audience members to eat their lunch while listening to the artists of the week discuss their upcoming works, according to the Hopkins Center website.
After the brown bag session, the artists meet with students in Dartmouth's Theater 65 class, Drama in Performance, with whom they collaborate during the week.
After 15 to 20 hours of participating in workshops, rehearsing and rewriting the plays, the week concludes in a Saturday performance of the pieces. This final performances are often staged readings, as the works are at various stages of completion.
Through their collaboration on the two works featured each week, both artists and students gain unique experience, according to Nicola. Students act as assistant directors, dramaturges and stage managers, and some have the opportunity to perform.
Seminar sessions on critical response to theater, as well as movement and performance techniques, are offered by NYTW staff and actors, and students are directly involved in the response and critique process, Nicola said.
"In the past five years, we have worked out a way to connect with the students better," Nicola said. "Artists have a level of confidence in their work, and when they are put in a situation with less experienced people, they have to reconnect with why they are doing what they are doing."
The connections between students and artists often continue outside the scope of the residency through internships and employment opportunities with NYTW in New York City, he said.
Tuesday's brown bag session previewed playwright Catherine Rush's "The Loudest Man on Earth," directed by Pamela Berlin, as well as Tony Award-nominated actor and playwright Colman Domingo's "Wild With Happy," directed by Robert O'Hara.
"Loudest Man," inspired by Rush's own marriage to actor Adrian Blue, a deaf man, attempts to communicate the experience of being hearing impaired. In the play, the protagonist also played by Blue must figure out a way to be successful and happy, despite his isolation, and addresses misconceptions about deafness.
"It requires the audience to use their eyes in a new way," Rush said.
Rush said she looks forward to revising and rewriting this week.
"Wild With Happy," by contrast, treats silence in a less concrete manner, discussing the way in which people do not talk openly about death often. Gill, the play's protagonist, struggles with the loss of his mother. After her death, Gill wants to bring her ashes to Disney World, but is faced with opposition from his family.
"It's about the surreal things that happen around death," Domingo said, adding that his work, a dark comedy, asks the viewer to question their assumptions about dying.
Domingo said his play was inspired by a firework display at Disney World, and he hopes to capture that same feeling that inspired him to write his piece.
"Fireworks open you up, taking you to that childhood place of openness again," he said. "They give a bit of hope that you will be awed in life again."
This week's plays touch on the importance of family, as well as silence, Domingo said.
"There's dialogue happening in the silence," he said.
Both Domingo's and Rush's works-in-progress will be performed this Saturday in the Warner Bentley Theater in the Hopkins Center at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. respectively.
