Play Reading Series 2019-2020
Company of Fools Play Reading Series & Special Projects—2019/2020
- Offers an additional opportunity to engage with The Center’s BIG IDEA projects
- Provides an avenue for Company of Fools and its patrons to hear plays being considered for future production
- Creates an additional opportunity for COF artists to work and practice their craft
- Establishes a forum to explore new work created by playwrights known as well as those new to COF
- Provides another way to engage patrons in the theatrical process through talk-backs with the director, actors and playwright
- Enables COF to offer patrons an additional forum to keep engaged to the work of COF
Lifestyle of the Richard and Family
Oct 18, 2019, 7pm, Liberty Theatre, Hailey
Oct 19, 2019, 2pm, Community Library, Ketchum
FREE! (Suggested donation $10, advance seat reservation recommended)
Written by Roslyn Helper in collaboration with SwiftKey Note
Directed by Jana Arnold
David values a full-time job and a gym membership, and is having an affair with Clare. Maree prefers to do her shopping online and has a drinking problem. Jimmy has just returned from “the other side.” And Sam is a teen goth who likes welding. The story starts in a living room and ends in the deepest reaches of the black hole that is the internet.
This poetically absurd modern drama takes our most familiar truths and our most popular aspirations to a level of strangeness beyond comprehension – but is it a point of no return? Playwright Roslyn Helper partnered with a predictive text AI program to create a theatrical “algorithm” that asks us to consider the increasing role that AI plays, and will play, in our cultural lives. The performance will be followed by a discussion on the future of AI and cultural expression.
Each performance will be followed by a discussion on the future of AI and cultural expression with Dr. Harold and the cast. In addition, Dr. Harold will hold a free public lecture on Things Worth Keeping: The Value of Attachment In A Disposable World at The Liberty Theatre on Sat, Oct 19, 7pm. CLICK HERE to reserve a seat.
About Dr. Harold: Christine Harold is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. She teaches courses in rhetorical criticism, rhetorical theory, and popular cultural studies. Her scholarship analyzes the politics of consumerism and explores opportunities for meaningful political action in a world increasingly defined by the logic of the marketplace. Her forthcoming book, Things Worth Keeping: The Value of Attachment in a Disposable World (2020, University of Minnesota Press), looks at the relationship between mass production, product attachment, and consumer waste. Her first book, OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture (2007, 2009 University of Minnesota Press) evaluates strategies of resistance to the commercialization of public life. Among other venues, her work has appeared in Public Culture, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and JAC. Dr. Harold serves on the editorial boards of the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Western Journal of Communication, and Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies.
Part of The Center’s BIG IDEA project Marketplaces: From Open Air to Online.
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail
Jan 23, 2020, 7pm, Liberty Theatre
FREE! (Suggested donation $10, advance seat reservation recommended)
By Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee
Directed by David Janeski
In 1846, the essayist, philosopher, abolitionist, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail after refusing to pay tax money that would support the war President James Polk single handedly waged against Mexico. This incident later provided the basis for Thoreau’s essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” and serves as the inspiration for Lee’s and Lawrence’s fictionalized account of that evening and the events leading up to it. While the play offers insight into the man and his meditations — his transcendentalist world view, his witty disregard for organized religion and his penchant for nature and civil disobedience — it also concerns itself with what weighs heavily in our own politics today.
Part of The Center’s BIG IDEA project The Bottomlessness of a Pond: Transcendentalism, Nature and Spirit.
Tiny Beautiful Things
Feb 1, 2020, 7pm, Liberty Theatre
Feb 2, 2020, 3pm, Liberty Theatre
FREE! (Suggested donation $10, advance seat reservation recommended)
By Cheryl Strayed
Directed by Andrew Alburger
The uplifting and richly funny TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS is based on the best-selling book by author Cheryl Strayed (Wild), and has been praised by The New York Times as “an ideal catharsis” and “handkerchief-soaking meditation on pain, loss, hope & forgiveness.”
Thousands of people wrote letters asking for advice from an anonymous online columnist named Sugar, who drew from her own life experiences to answer in a candid, often brutally honest exchange. It was later revealed that Sugar was Cheryl Strayed, the well-known author. Actress Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) adapted the book for the stage, weaving together the real letters to explore the monstrous beauty, unfathomable dark and glimmering light which are at the heart of being human. These two performances at The Liberty Theatre follow immediately after Cheryl Strayed lecture presented by the Sun Valley Center For The Arts and are the ideal way to celebrate all things Cheryl Strayed!
Part of The Center’s BIG IDEA project The Bottomlessness of a Pond: Transcendentalism, Nature and Spirit.
A Play in a Day
May 1, 2020, 7pm, The Liberty Theatre
Free! (Suggested donation $10, advance seat reservation recommended)
(participating groups will receive their instructions on Thursday, April 30, 2020 at 6pm)
Company Of Fools is thrilled to announce our first ever 24 hour play project—a wild, exciting, and unexpected way to celebrate the writing, directing, and acting talents of artists in the Wood River Valley! On the evening of April 30th, 5 groups of artists (playwrights, directors, actors, and designers) will gather at The Liberty Theatre and will be given their inspiration (a line, a genre, and a prop) that they will use to create a short play. Teams will write, direct, design, and act in an original work…all in just 24 hours!
The teams will arrive at The Liberty on May 1st at 5pm for their “rehearsal” and then, at 7pm, the entire community is invited to witness the not-to-be-missed world-premieres of five brand new short plays! And, the audience will get a chance to vote on the best play and that team will win cash and prizes!