Play Reading Series 2017-2018
Pal*
By Tasha Gordon-Solmon
Friday, October 27, 2017, 6:30pm
Liberty Theatre, Hailey
followed by a post-reading conversation
FREE ($10 suggested donation, advance seat reservation recommended)
Company of Fools invites you to join in the new play development process! Playwright Tasha Gordon-Solmon will visit Wood River Valley to begin development of her new play, PAL. Two best friends share their favorite movies, their deepest wishes, their greatest fears, and grow up together – all through written letters – in a world in which reality and imagination aren’t so simply delineated.
Tasha Gordon-Solmon’s plays have been developed and produced at Actors Theater of Louisville and The Humana Festival, Clubbed Thumb, Ars Nova, Northern Stage, The Perry Mansfield New Works Festival, Dixon Place, New Georges, INTAR, and the Flea. She is a recipient of the Dramatist Guild Fellowship, a lyricist in the BMI Workshop, a member of the Project Y Playwrights Group, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, and an alumna of the Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group and the Ars Nova Playgroup. As a director, Tasha has worked at Ensemble Studio Theater, The Tank, The Brick, The Cell, The Claque, Crashbox Theater Company, Brooklyn Generator, Pipeline Theatre Company, New York Madness, Columbia University, Studio Tisch, the New York Fringe Festival and the Fire This Time Festival. She received her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU and is a proud 52nd Street Project volunteer.
*Part of The Center’s BIG IDEA project The Unreliable Narrator
The Diary of Anne Frank*
by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, newly adapted by Wendy Kesselman
Student Matinees:
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Friday, January 26, 2018
Public Performances:
Saturday, January 27, 2018, 7pm
Sunday, January 28, 2018, 2pm
Liberty Theatre, Hailey
followed by a post-reading conversation
FREE ($10 suggested donation, advance seat reservation recommended)
In this transcendentally powerful new adaptation by Wendy Kesselman, Anne Frank emerges from history a living, lyrical, intensely gifted young girl, who confronts her rapidly changing life and the increasing horror of her time with astonishing honesty, wit, and determination. An impassioned drama about the lives of eight people hiding from the Nazis in a concealed storage attic, THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK captures the claustrophobic realities of their daily existence—their fear, their hope, their laughter, their grief. Each day of these two dark years, Anne’s voice shines through: “When I write I shake off all my cares. But I want to achieve more than that. I want to be useful and bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!” This is a new adaptation for a new generation.
COF’s staged reading features local student actor Anabelle Lewis in the title role of Anne, COF season apprentice Chris Henderson as Peter, as well as local actors David Janeski, Chloe Khosrowshahi, Christine Leslie, Ward Loving, Rich Rush, Joel Vilinsky, Aly Wepplo and Patsy Wygle. The reading is directed by COF Company Artist Claudia McCain.
Each performance will be followed by a post-reading conversation with Jeannette Ringold, who was separated from her family and hidden by the resistance as a child in Holland during World War II. As an adult, Ms. Ringold has shared her experience in California schools, making the Holocaust real through her personal story.
“An extraordinary theatrical adventure! Go and remember.”
—New York Post
“Undeniably moving. It shatters the heart. The evening never lets us forget the inhuman darkness waiting to claim its incandescently human heroine.”
—The New York Times
“A powerful new version that moves the audience to gasp, then tears.”
—Associated Press
*Part of The Center’s BIG IDEA project This Land is Whose Land?
The Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Company of Fools’ staged reading of The Diary of Anne Frank is produced in partnership with the Wood River Jewish Community and St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
The readings have been generously supported by Carol P. Nie, Wood River Jewish Community Board of Directors and St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
Inside, Outside, Upside Down!
A Mini-Musical Commissioned by Company of Fools & Sun Valley Center for the Arts
Followed by a post-show interactive workshop
By Maggie-Kate Coleman & Erato A. Kremmyda
Directed by Ilana Becker
Student Matinees:
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Friday, April 20, 2018
Public Performances:
Saturday, April 21, 2018, 6pm
Sunday, April 22, 2018, 2pm
Liberty Theatre, Hailey
FREE ($10 suggested donation, advance seat reservation recommended)
Join Kimi, a young adventurer, on a musical jour-ney through our ecosystem as she meets some local pollinators!
Company of Fools commissions award-winning musical theatre writers, Maggie-Kate Coleman and Erato A. Kremmyda, to develop a short musical for young audiences inspired by the visual artwork in The Center’s BIG IDEA project, Bees. We’re pleased to offer student matinees for K–4th grade students alongside uniquely created workshops, as well as a limited amount of public performances.
Maggie-Kate Coleman is an NYC-based playwright, bookwriter, and lyricist from Happy Day Farm (Keedysville, MD): Book & lyrics for POP! -music by Anna K. Jacobs – (Yale Rep, Pittsburgh City Theatre, Studio Theatre DC, etc.) POP! received three Connecticut Critics Circle Awards, seven Helen Hayes Award nominations, and was a Pittsburgh Tribune Top Ten choice of 2012. Other recent: The Map of Lost Things (Hangar Theatre, Ithaca), and with Erato A. Kremmyda, lyrics for Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret (Superhero Clubhouse NYC), Hotel Mediteranee (Between The Seas Festival/Wild Project), The Way They Live (The Civilians at the Met) and more. Current work: The Gift of the Magi with Jeffrey Hatcher and Andrew Cooke (Arkansas Rep), and Marie in Tomorrowland with Erato A. Kremmyda and Sam Pinkleton, developed through The Civilians R&D Group, The Orchard Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, and Catwalk Institute. MK is a 2017 Jonathan Larson grant recipient. MacDowell Fellow 2015, MFA NYU Musical Theatre Writing, BA Ithaca College.
Erato A. Kremmyda is a NYC based composer born and raised in Athens, Greece. Current work: Marie in Tomorrowland (with Maggie-Kate Coleman and Sam Pinkleton) developed at Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Catwalk Institute, The Orchard Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and The Civilians R&D Group; and Io (with Laura Tesman) for the International Filippi Festival 2017. Recent: Riot Antigone by Seonjae Kim (La Mama) and with Maggie-Kate Coleman: The Way They Live (The Met/The Civilians); Hotel Mediteranee (Wild Project/Between The Seas Festival); Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret (Superhero Clubhouse, NYC) and more. Erato is a 2017 Larson Grant winner, a Fulbright Fellow, and an Anna Sosenko Trust grant recipient. Her compositions have been heard at Megaron (Athens), Joe’s Pub, Ars Nova, NYMF, BRIC, HERE, Irondale, Teatro Duo (Rome), Bios (Athens) etc. MFA NYU (Musical Theater Writing, Dean’s scholar), MM NYU (Film Scoring), Athens University, Athens Conservatoire.
*Commissioned as part of The Center’s BIG IDEA project Bees
Generously sponsored by a Springcreek Foundation grant directed by Local Food Alliance, with additional support for student matinees from Joyce B. Friedman, the Papoose Club, Hailey Rotary and the Kiwanis Club of Hailey and the Wood River Valley.