WHAT'S GOING ON? (from Brecht's Good Person of Szechuan), Generic Ensemble Company at the Salvage Vanguard, May 3 - 11, 2013

Generic Ensemble Company in conjunction with the Lucky Chaos Theatre Project presents

What’s Goin’ On? (Workshop)

Friday-Saturday May 3-4; 10-11, 8 pm

Salvage Vanguard Theatre (2803 Manor Rd, Austin, TX 78722 - click for map).




 








 
What’s Goin’ On is a an ensemble-based, original performance reinterpreting Bertolt Brecht’s classic play, The Good Person of Szechwan, exploring binary notions of Good/Evil, Male/Female, Wealth/Poverty, Coercion/Consent and Artifice/Authenticity. Simultaneously critiquing Brecht’s treatment of gender, sexuality and orientalism in Szechwan while also drawing inspiration from it, this show examines the question: What does it mean to be virtuous in our current historical moment, when societal pressures and inequality continue to marginalize our bodies and lives?
Created from scratch by the performance ensemble, What’s Goin’ On? employs new text created by ensemble members layered with activist aesthetics, choreographed movement, indeterminate games, quotidian rituals made extraordinary, and simultaneous conflicting actions to present a dense and complex collage. Drawing material relevant to ensemble members’ daily lives, What’s Goin’ On? reflects the individual identities and personalities of each collaborator, while also reflecting The Generic Ensemble Company’s continued commitment to make the invisible visible through bold, socially relevant, body-centered theatre that showcases mostly-queer identified, mostly-people of color who are mostly women-identified.
This piece is an in-progress performance featuring: Morgan Robyn Collado, Kimberly Curette, Kirsche Dickson, Ashley Hicks, Anna McConnell, James McMaster, Julie Moore, Julián Padilla, Saray de Jesus Rosales, Wendy Vastine, Leng Wong, and kt shorb with support from Kimberly Alidio, Margaux Binder, Paige Binder, and Laura Khalil.
Tickets are sliding scale $5-10.
What’s Goin’ On? is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division.
 
(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Upcoming Lecture: Carl Weber, 'A Life in the Theatre,' Trinity University, San Antonio, October 24

Found on-line:

The Stieren Lectures at Trinity University, San Antonio, present

A Life in the Theater:

An Evening with International Stage Director Carl Weber

Sunday, Oct. 24, 7 p.m. in the Stieren Theater.

Carl Weber, world-renowned director, dramaturg, and translator, joined the Berliner Ensemble as an actor and assistant director to Bertolt Brecht in 1952. As a director at the Ensemble during the sixties, he staged numerous plays and guest-directed at theaters in Germany, Scandinavia, and the U.S. In 1966, Weber was appointed master-teacher of directing and acting at NYU. Later, he chaired the graduate directing department at the Tisch School of the Arts. Since 1984, he has led the Ph.D. program in directing at Stanford.

Weber has directed more than 80 productions, collaborating with Peter Palitzsch, Ed Bullins, Peter Handke, and Tony Kushner, and has translated and edited the work of Heiner Müller. At Trinity, he will direct Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan, running November 12 - 14 and 17 - 20.

Click to view Weber's biography at www.stanford.edu