Tag Archives: University of Maryland

Pig Iron Theatre Company presents Zero Cost House at Clarice Smith, Apr 4-5

Pig Iron Theatre Company presents Zero Cost House at Clarice Smith, Apr 4-5

By Toshiki Okada

April 4 & 5, 2014 . 8PM

Location: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Kogood Theatre. Reserved Seating.

Click Here to Buy Tickets:
Regular: $35
Subscriber: $28
Senior Citizen: $30
UMD Alumni Association: $30
UMD Faculty & Staff: $28
Students & Youth: $10

Fri, Apr 4, 2014 . 8:00PM
Sat, Apr 5, 2014 . 8:00PM

Description:

Zero Cost House was initially conceived as a meditation on how Henry David Thoreau’s Walden changed the playwright’s life. The Japanese tsunami of 2011 occurred while Toshiki Okada was writing the play, which left him reflecting even more deeply on the disruptions that come from natural disasters and the uneasy compromises between radical idealism and contemporary living.

Known for its raucous performance spirit, Pig Iron Theatre Company is the first English-language company to premiere Okada’s work and is making its Clarice Smith Center debut with Zero Cost House.

Founded in 1995 as an interdisciplinary ensemble, the company is dedicated to the creation of new and exuberant performance works that defy easy categorization. The company calls itself a “dance-clown-theatre ensemble” whose focus moves from character to space to contact with the audience. Individual pieces have been called “soundscape and spectacle,” “cabaret-ballet” and “avant-garde shadow puppet dessert-theatre.” As one company member put it, “We have a hard time sitting still.”

This project is partially supported by a grant from Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, a program developed and funded by The Heinz Endowments; the William Penn Foundation; the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency; and The Pew Charitable Trusts; and administered by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

The Waiting Room at Clarice Smith, Feb 14-22

The Waiting Room at Clarice Smith, Feb 14-22

by Lisa Loomer

February 14-22, 2014

Director Kris Messer

Presented By:
University of Maryland School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies
Venue: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Kogood Theatre. General Admission.

Click Here to Buy Tickets:
Regular: $25
Subscriber: $20
Senior Citizen: $20
UMD Alumni Association: $20
UMD Faculty & Staff: $20
Students & Youth: $10

Fri, Feb 14, 2014 . 7:30PM
Sat, Feb 15, 2014 . 7:30PM
Sun, Feb 16, 2014 . 2:00PM
Wed, Feb 19, 2014 . 7:30PM
Thu, Feb 20, 2014 . 7:30PM
Fri, Feb 21, 2014 . 7:30PM
Sat, Feb 22, 2014 . 2:00PM
Sat, Feb 22, 2014 . 7:30PM

Description:

Lisa Loomer’s 1994 play is a dark comedy about the timeless quest for beauty — and its cost. Three women from different centuries meet in a modern doctor’s waiting room.

Forgiveness From Heaven is an 18th-century Chinese woman whose bound feet are causing her to lose her toes. Victoria is a 19th-century English woman suffering from what is commonly known as “hysteria.” Then there is Wanda, a modern gal from New Jersey who is having problems with her silicone breasts.

Husbands, doctors, Freud, the drug industry and the FDA all come under examination in this wild ride through medical and sexual politics.

The playwright — who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film Girl, Interrupted — often deals with the experiences of Latinos and Hispanic Americans and with various aspects of contemporary family life. For her work on The Waiting Room, she won the 1994 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award and the 1995 American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg New Play Award.

For Colored Folks: An Adaptation at Clarice Smith, Feb 1-2

For Colored Folks: An Adaptation at Clarice Smith, Feb 1-2

Saturday, February 1, 2014, 3:00pm
Saturday, February 1, 2014, 7:30pm
Sunday, February 2, 2014, 3:00pm

Venue: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Dance Theatre.

Free admission, no tickets required.

Description: For Colored Folks: An Adaptation pays homage to innovative African American writers. Incorporating monologues, movement, dialogue, and music, the end result is a cohesive piece that reveals the similarities between people, rather than romanticizing what makes us different.

“for colored folks…” is a hybrid-performance of two choreopoems: Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf and Keith Antar Mason’s for black boys who have considered homicide when the streets were too much.

The end result is a cohesive choreopoem that explores love, loss, happiness, pain, and self-worth.

Stardust at Clarice Smith, Jan 31-Feb 1

David Roussève/Reality presents the World Premiere of Stardust at Clarice Smith, Jan 31-Feb 1

January 31 & February 1, 2014 . 8PM

Presented By:
Clarice Smith Center
Venue: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Kogood Theatre. Reserved Seating.

Click Here to Buy Tickets:
Regular: $35
Subscriber: $28
Senior Citizen: $30
UMD Alumni Association: $30
UMD Faculty & Staff: $28
Students & Youth: $10

Fri, Jan 31, 2014 . 8:00PM
Sat, Feb 1, 2014 . 8:00PM

Description:

Choreographed, written and directed by David Roussève, Stardust follows an African American gay urban teenager’s dreams, misgivings and challenges.

Never seen onstage, the protagonist is present only by the emotion-laden tweets and text messages he sends, which are projected onto multiple surfaces by Roussève’s long-time collaborator Cari Ann Shim Sham.

Stardust juxtaposes fluidity and freneticism, in both its movement and musical score. Lush, jazz-inflected dancing is leavened by frenetic, angular representations of the teenager’s anxious states of mind, in movement performed by a mixed-age company of dancers.

The soundscape pairs the intimate romanticism of Nat King Cole standards with rough-edged, hip-hop inflected original music by d. Sabela Grimes. Designer Christopher Kuhl’s lighting will support both the emotional textures and surreal quality of the work.

The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center co-commissioned Stardust, which will receive its world premiere at the Center. As part of his engagement at the Clarice Smith Center, Roussève will be in residency in several visits during fall 2013, working with local ministries on issues of homosexuality and acceptance in the African American community.

This tour of David Roussève is made possible by a grant from Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. The presentation of Stardust was made possible by the MetLife Community Connections Fund of the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project. Major support of NDP is also provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Nolan Williams Jr.’s Christmas Gift at Clarice Smith, Dec 13-14

Nolan Williams Jr.’s Christmas Gift at Clarice Smith, Dec 13-14

December 13-14, 2013

Presented By:
Clarice Smith Center
Venue: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Kay Theatre. Reserved Seating.

Click Here to Buy Tickets:
Regular: $35
Subscriber: $28
Senior Citizen: $30
UMD Alumni Association: $30
UMD Faculty & Staff: $28
Students & Youth: $10

Fri, Dec 13, 2013 . 8:00PM
Sat, Dec 14, 2013 . 3:00PM
Sat, Dec 14, 2013 . 8:00PM

Description:

Nolan Williams Jr. has created a family-friendly holiday production that celebrates African American culture, spirituality and music of the season.

Inspired in part by his own childhood memories and by Charlemae Rollins’ groundbreaking publication, Christmas Gif’: An Anthology of Christmas Poems, Songs, and Stories, Williams’s production debuted at the Clarice Smith Center in December 2012 to enthusiastic response.

Nolan Williams Jr.’s Christmas Gift! features new and time-honored Christmas music, from African American spirituals and gospel to jazz and R&B, performed by soloists, a house band and the Voices of Inspiration choir. The music is woven together with selected readings from African American poets like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Paul Laurence Dunbar and enhanced by projected images that evoke memories of the season.