Department of Theatre and Dance Tackles 48-Hour Theatre Project

With the Occupy Wall Street movement in its public consciousness, the Department of Theatre & Dance at Gustavus will stage its own occupation this weekend in Anderson Social Science Center as the department combines its courses in playwriting and directing to create a 48-hour intensive theatre laboratory project. The project, The Department of Theatre & Dance Occupies Anderson Social Science Center, begins on Friday, March 23 and ends, with public performances at 7 p.m., Sunday, March 25, in the Anderson Social Science Center. The performances are free and open to the public.

The project is designed to provide the students in the Department of Theatre & Dance and all members of the Gustavus community with the opportunity for an intensive and creatively challenging exercise in writing, directing, and performing. With the SSC building currently un-occupied, it provides the perfect location for the project as the department can spread its wings in a new and different space than is available in the Schaefer Fine Arts Center. With the constraints of both time and the space available in Anderson Social Science Center, the project is intended to maximize the learning opportunities of writing and directing, while also pushing those students to explore and engage their talents in a new space and spread their work beyond Anderson Theatre.

At 6 p.m., Friday, March 23, the members of Cory Hinkle’s Playwriting course will receive a theme for a 5-minute play and the parameters they must use in writing that play. The playwrights will have until 8 a.m. the next day, Saturday, March 24, to write the play and submit it to the faculty. At 10 a.m., a lottery will be used to assign each of the new plays to a different member of Henry MacCarthy’s Beginning Directing class.

Open auditions will begin at 1:45 p.m. in the Black Box. All members of the Gustavus community are invited to audition for roles. You are not required to be enrolled in a class or even to be a member of the student body. Everyone is welcome at the auditions. The casts will then be assigned by the faculty and made public at 4 p.m. At that time, the actors will receive scripts and the rehearsals will begin. Sunday, March 25 will feature rehearsals throughout the day and conclude with performances of the plays at 7 p.m.