   Circle Mirror Transformation February 7, 2012 -
March 11, 2012Directed By Allen Nause Can a drama class change lives forever? In this funny, curiously potent play, five people enroll in an adult creative drama class at a small-town community center. Over the course of six weeks they are led through theater games and exercises into murky and dangerous psychological waters. By the end of the class, layers of emotional baggage are stripped off to reveal how truth and change can possibly “set the body and spirit free.” A Portland premiere, critically acclaimed playwright Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation won the 2009 Obie Award for Best New American Play and garnered accolades Off Broadway and beyond. Cast
Production
*Member of Actors Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States THIS PLAY WILL RUN APPROXIMATELY ONE HOUR AND 45 MINUTES WITH NO INTERMISSION.
SYNOPSIS: Five people of differing ages and in life stages just as disparate, discover how deeply their lives can change when honesty is motivation for action. Marty, 55 and an advocate for adult creative drama class along with a smattering of other artistically inclined intentions, guides five students – one being her husband – through six weeks of acting class. Ranging in age from 16 to 60, students and teacher come together and find common ground in the studio. Therein, secrets and long-held, deep-seated psychoses are exposed and lives are changed forever. Marked with candid monologues and intriguing character sketches, Circle Mirror Transformation explores the constant flux in life, prompting one to question just how many times a person can be reborn in life.
BEHIND THE SCENES: Check out photos from the production by Owen Carey here. Click here to check out the set design by Carl Hamilton. Allen Nause recently spoke with Dennise Kowalczyk of KZME's "Artclectic" program. Make the time to listen to this fascinating, in-depth conversation with Allen about his career at Artists Rep and insights into Circle Mirror Transformation. Listen here.
Allen Nause went into the KBOO studio on Valentine's Day and talked with Dmae on Stage & Studio. Afterward Dmae said, "Theatre is a place we go to look at things in our hearts, do you realize that if you add an HE to ART (as in Artists Rep) that spells heart? – and Artists Rep really IS about heart."
JOIN ALLEN NAUSE FOR A CREATIVE DRAMA WORKSHOP PLAYWRIGHT: Annie Baker grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her full-length plays include Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons, OBIE Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Aliens (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, OBIE Award for Best New American Play), Body Awareness (Atlantic Theater Company, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright) and Nocturama. Her work has also been produced and developed at the Bush Theatre in London, New York Theatre Workshop, MCC, MTC, Soho Rep, the Orchard Project, the Ontological-Hysteric, Ars Nova, the Huntington, Victory Gardens, Z-Space/Theatre Artaud, the Magic Theater, the Cape Cod Theatre Project, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in Utah and Ucross, Wyoming. Annie is a member of New Dramatists, MCC's Playwrights Coalition and EST, and she is an alumna of Youngblood, Ars Nova's Play Group and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Recent honors include a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nomination, a Lilly Award, a Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship, and a MacDowell fellowship. An anthology of her work, The Vermont Plays, is forthcoming from TCG in 2011. MFA, Mac Wellman's playwriting program at Brooklyn College.
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The Reviews...
"Good acting and the vagaries of age also make their mark on director Allen Nause’s production of Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation at Artists Rep, an odd but affecting little backstage comedy in which a motley crew ranging from 16 to maybe 60 gathers in a small-town creative drama class and tries to create a cohesive group from a wildly divergent set of experiences," sadi Bob Hicks for Oregon Arts Watch. Read the full review (he covers alot in this one, read toward the bottom!) here. "Theater is play, pretend, make-believe. Sometimes that’s the only way to get to the truth," said Marty Hughley in a review for The Oregonian. Read the full article here. "...It is a fun peek “behind the scenes” for audiences who love the theatre from their seats," said Jessie Drake for the Arts America blog. Read it here. Playwright Annie Baker says of the play: Properly played, it's not a satire, but rather, "a strange little naturalistic meditation on theater and life and death and the passing of time." Read the preview article written by Marty Hughley of The Oregonian here. A "comically insightful merging of brittle epiphanies and adult education." - The Washington Post "One of the most promising new stage talents to emerge in the past decade." - The New York Times |
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Tickets for Artists Repertory Theatre's 2011/12 season are on sale now. Click on the link below to purchase or call our Box Office at 503.241.1278.
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