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After Words Looking Back at WEEK 29 with Director Pamela Turner
multiShades.atlanta celebrates diversity in many ways and as director of Week 29 of the 365 Project, this meant working with a performance team that was mixed in terms of age, race, gender, gender orientation, experience level and artistic discipline. Our collaborative production in progress morphed with each introduction of new talent, new space, new ideas and new problems. We were intent on bringing the work of Suzan-Lori Parks to life in a highly original way, but we didn't want to lose the imprint of the playwright. Foremost in our mind was the goal of creating a unique theatrical universe and of having the audience move through the space to the world of each of the smal plays. We also wanted the audience to experience a changing perspective at each stop, and so they would sometimes look up, other times down, or in, or out, or through the glaze of a projected image. The play texts for Week 29 equaled about 7 typewritten pages--the production script I wrote to bring those pages to life came to 21 filled sheets. Audience members saw puppeteers animating their puppets, and an aerialist performing on hanging silks, and a musician filling the air with the sound of violin and flute, and clowns drinking tea, and mimes telling a story--and just about everywhere, magical floating imagery appeared and disappeared. Week 29 was produced by multiShades.atlanta in association with the Academy Theatre and featured video design by angelworks23 Cine-Majik Design LLC. Directed by Pamela Turner, the performance team included: Sabina Maja Angel, Roz Ayres-Williams, Kim Brundidge, Chris Dalton, Noel C. Greene, Alex Greenfield (Assistant Director), Betty Hart, Jonathan Lowe, Brenda Porter, Hilary Riall, Scott Turner Schofield, Amee Vyas, and Graham Waldrop.
PAMELA TURNER is a playwright and director with credits in the United States, Europe, and the Pacific. Her most recent original plays included VOICES DEUX (2007 New Plays Festival, Decatur, Atlanta); COSMETICOS (2006 XPT Adult Series, Center for Puppetry Arts, Atlanta); FUNNY VALENTINE (2004, 7Stages Theatre, Atlanta; 2004 Spoleto Festival USA); THE LADY AND THE POET (2003 Spoleto Festival USA; 2003 and 1994, Theatre Gael, Atlanta) VALENTINES DAY (2001 Pulse Theatre Ensemble, NYC). Current projects include FRIJOLES ON THE SIDE (2006 commission by Fly-by Theatre, Atlanta) and BURNING MAN (2006 Stage 3 Theatre Company's Festival of New Plays, Sonora, CA). FUNNY VALENTINE was a winner of the 2006 American Theatre Coalition Playwriting Competition. BURNING MAN was a semi-finalist for the 2006 PlayLabs at The Playwrights Center, Minneapolis and the 2006 SheWRITES competition, Synchronicity Theatre, Atlanta. MALE MAN was a finalist for the 2004 Heideman Award (Humana Festival). Pamela is the Artistic Director of multiShades.atlanta, the Atlanta Regional Rep for The Dramatists Guild of America, the Editor of ShowGuide magazine and the Producer of Playworks 2000 for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education. |
Chris Dalton on violin
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