First Stage Series: Student Directed Works
All shows listed below are a part of the First Stage Series. The First Stage Series was developed to give students opportunities to explore the craft of play direction while concentrating on the action of the play, and the performances of the actors. To ensure that the student directors are focused on the tasks previously listed, design and technical elements are extremely limited. Each show is mounted in one of the Department of Dance and Theatre's classrooms.
All shows below have the following ticket prices and location.
$10.00 General Admission
RTFP Building - Room 127
Metamorphosis based on the short story by Franz Kafka - Adapted by Steven Berkoff
Directed by Bennett Frohock
October 8, 9, & 10, 2020 at 7:30 pm
October 10, 2020 at 2:00 pm
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant insect." So begins Franz Kafka's famous novella The Metamorphosis, adapted into a symbolic production by British playwright, actor, and director Steven Berkoff. Honoring Kafka's original seminal work, Berkoff dramatizes the dehumanization of an identity built on labor. Gregor Samsa, a young man with his whole future ahead of him, is a traveling salesman. He is stuck working for a cruel and demanding clerk in order to pay off his father's debt as well as support his parents and younger sister Greta. Gregor has ambitions for the future--such as sending Greta to a conservatory to play violin--but all hopes are dashed when he transfigures into a massive insect.
The Samsa family must adjust to Gregor's new state, and they approach him in different ways: His mother believes that he will always be her son; his father is disgusted and repulsed by the sounds Gregor makes; Greta is devoted to feeding him and cleaning his room. As time goes on, the family loses hope that Gregor will ever return to his normal state. But Gregor can hear and understand everything they say, wracked with guilt and loss. In Berkoff's adaptation, Gregor is always visible to the audience through the scaffolding that represents the Samsa house--as the family muses about their future, Gregor's deterioration and hopelessness is consistently on display. Through stylized movement and staging, Berkoff's Metamorphosis honors Kafka's original work in a compelling production of The Theatre of the Impossible. "Metamorphosis" is presented by special arragement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC.
Red by John Logan
Directed by Nathan Danielson
March 25, 26 & 27, 2021 at 7:30 pm
March 27, 2021 at 2:00 pm
Master abstract expressionist Mark Rothko has just landed the biggest commission in the history of modern art, a series of murals for New York's famed Four Seasons Restaurant. In the two fascinating years that follow, Rothko works feverishly with his young assistant, Ken, in his studio on the Bowery. But when Ken gains the confidence to challenge him, Rothko faces the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also become his undoing. Raw and provocative, RED is a searing portrait of an artist's ambition and vulnerability as he tries to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting. RED is presented by special arrangement with DRAMATISTS PLAY SERVICE, INC. New York, NY.
