Dramaturgy

Superhero Clubhouse and Matchboxarts in association with Chez Bushwick present MARS (a play about mining)

uqze_MARSlogo2013FacebookcoverphotoMarch 7-9, 7:30pm

Center for Performance Research (CPR)

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Displaced Appalachians resettled on Mars face a familiar dilemma when their leader initiates a questionable mining operation. The sixth in our Planet Play series, MARS is a dance-theater event featuring live music, graphic art and an original story inspired by the history of Appalachian coal mining.

MARS (a play about mining)
adapted from the graphic novel MARS! by  Tom Coiner
Choreography by Adam H. Weinert
Music by Adam Miller
Graphic Art by Kristy Caldwell with assistance from Clay Rodery and Ray Jones
Stage & Costume Design by R.B. Schlather
Stage Management/Assistant Direction by Alessandra Calabi
Dramaturgy by Megan McClain

Directed by Jeremy Pickard

Created & Performed by

Javier Baca
Nathaniel Bausch-Gould
Rosie Dupont
Aba Kiser
Logan Kruger
Dan Lawrence*
Keisuke Matsuno
Adam Miller
Manelich Minniefee
Jeremy Pickard
Davon Rainey
J.P. Schlegel
Adam H. Weinert

*appearing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association

marslogoMust human progress always end in destruction?  What are the risks we will take to restore our home? Contemporary politics and childhood fantasies come crashing together in this unique event inspired the history of Appalachian coal mining.  Led by choreographer Adam H. Weinert, director Jeremy Pickard and composer Adam Miller, MARS features original dance, live music, graphic art and a strong ensemble of cross-disciplinary performers. Our technology is opening new frontiers… and new mines. We can go to Mars, hold the internet in our palm… and blow the tops off America’s oldest mountains. The controversies and paradoxes of mining have never been more relevant. In MARS, we explore these topics in our own unique way, and invite you to join in the adventure and the conversation.

Call for papers: ‘Essays in Performance and Ecology’

Theresa J. May, founder and artistic director of Earth Matters on Stage, and Wendy Arons, director of the Performance and Ecology Public Art Initiative have issued a call for papers for a jointly edited publication, Essays in Performance and Ecology to be published in 2011.

The proposed anthology of essays, interviews, and artist statements will include papers dealing with ecocritical concerns as they relate to theatre and performance. The editors are especially interested in explorations that employ the science of ecology as a critical framework, or employ environmental history to contextualize performance.

The topics welcomed include, but are not limited to:

  • the ecological situatedness of language
  • the dialogic relationship between onstage/offstage ecological discourses
  • intersections and complications of landscape/body
  • performances that participate in/reflect ecological debates
  • ecology, technology and representation
  • the cultural (de)construction of ‘nature’
  • performative intersections of social justice and ecological issues
  • partnership projects in the arts and sciences
  • ecological dramaturgy
  • community/place and ecology
  • the body as a site of ecological intersections
  • the ecologies of theatrical space
  • semiotics of ‘nature’
  • subjectivity/inter-subjectivity and the ecological self
  • animal representation on/off stage
  • eco-activism/community-based performance.
The editors encourage submissions by artists working in the area of eco-performance and who reflect critically on their work and/or process, and encourage proposals that engage a question about how performance (broadly constructed) has or might function as part of ecological communities.
A working or final draft or an abstract of 500 words should be sent as an attachment to both editors by 15 October:
Theresa J. May, Assitant Professor Theatre Arts, University of Oregon
tmay33@uoregon.edu
Wendy Arons, Associate Professor of Dramatic Literature and Dramaturgy, Carnegie Mellon University
warons@andrew.emu.edu