MultiStages - Archive

Archive

PAST PRODUCTIONS

-- THE JUDAS TREE
-- 2007 NEW WORKS FINALIST READING FESTIVAL
-- 2007 SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT SERIES
-- KNOWING BLISS
-- 2005 NEW WORKS FINALIST READING FESTIVAL
-- DAY OF RECKONING
-- 2003 NEW WORKS FINALIST READING FESTIVAL
-- THE PALACE OF LONELINESS
-- NOVEL
-- 2001 NEW WORKS FINALIST READING FESTIVAL
-- MOVING TARGETS: 3 Interpretations of Murder
-- VARIATIONS ON CHRISTOPHER STREET: Four Short Works for Five Tall Women
-- MAIL
-- MONTANA DREAMING

“THE JUDAS TREE” – 2007 New Works Contest Winner
In Spring 2008, MultiStages produced The Judas Tree by Mary Fengar Gail, Music by Anika Paris, Lyrics by James Schevill, Choreography by Jennifer Chin, Directed by Artistic Director Lorca Peress at Teatro La Tea. MultiStages was invited to present the play in the Theatre for the New City’s Lower Eastside Festival. Dark secrets are unearthed in this tale of murder, magic, and seduction, based loosely on the crimes of serial killer Dorothea Puente. The Judas Tree is a mythical play of operatic proportion with poetic songs, a turbulent garden of dancing corpses, and the 1958 murder trial of Elena Fiero.

CAST: Colleen Cosgrove, José Febus, John Haggerty, Daniel H. Hicks, Roseanne Medina, Lily Mercer, Tanya Perez, and a Chorus of dancer/singers Michael Martin-Badier, Grace Berniker, Andrea Pizza, Lisa Walker and Patricio Witis. ARTISTIC COMPANY: Alex Moore, Lighting; Peter Janis and Christopher McCardell, Costumes; Lorca Peress, Visual and Scenic; Bruce Baumer, Music Director; Jessica V. Urtecho, PSM; Melissa Kraus, Producer's Assistant

2007 NEW WORKS FINALIST READING FESTIVAL
The Festival was held at the Dramatist Guild with Guest Directors Jose Zayas, Gregory Simmons and MultiStages Artistic Director Lorca Peress. Among the Guest Artists were Thursday Farrar, Dion Graham, Roz Abrams, Monica Steuer, and John FitzGibbon. The Finalists: The Storms of Dolphina by Mary Fengar Gail, Freedom High by Adam Kraar, and Howard’s Hand: A Historic Fantastical by Nick Zagone.

2007 SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT SERIES
MultiStages presented readings of Inside Outside, by Gena Bardwell at Theatre for the New City’s Lower East Side Festival and the Producers Club.

“KNOWING BLISS” – 2005 New Works Contest Winner
In Spring 2006, MultiStages produced Knowing Bliss by Arden Kass, Directed by Artistic Director Lorca Peress at Teatro La Tea. MultiStages was invited to perform the play in the Theatre for the New City’s Lower Eastside Festival. This complex piece takes us on an emotional journey between an estranged African-American Anthropologist and her Caucasian actress mother as they visit the Anasazi Cliff dwellings. MultiStages brought in dancers to create the landscape, a shape-shifting Coyote, and memories of the Anasazi people, as well as Music, Video and Mask Design.

The cast featured an international company: Emmy Winner Blanche Baker, Carlos Fittante, Candice Waugh Myers, Natasa Babic, James Birch, Belén Cascón Rojo, Gonçalo Faria, Yuki Kawahisa, Nadia Rahman, Saskia Seligman. Multidisciplinary elements included Music By David Amram (innovative blending of classical music and diverse Native American compositions); traditional Native American songs; Video Design by Austrian visual artist and Fulbright Scholar Elisabeth Fraller; Choreography by Carlos Fittante of the Balam Dance Theatre; and Mask Design By Lorca Peress. Sets/Costumes by Peter Janis; Associate Producer, René Keller.

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2005 NEW WORKS FINALIST READING FESTIVAL
The Festival was held at the Dramatist Guild with Guest Director Chris Silva, and numerous Guest Artists including Melissa Leo, Adam LeFevre, Thursday Farrar, Seret Scott, and Francisco Rivela. The Finalists: What Comes Next by Pamela A.Popeson, The Torment by Nicole Quinn, and Fear of a Führer by Abi Basch.

“DAY OF RECKONING” – 2003 New Works Contest Winner In Spring 2004, MultiStages produced Day of Reckoning by Melody Cooper, Directed by MultiStages Artistic Director, Lorca Peress at The Kraine Theater. This explosive world premiere explores politics, civil rights, worker's rights, and the passionate interracial marriage of Lucy and Albert Parsons (a Haymarket Martyr) during Reconstruction and the Chicago Labor Movement. Interviews and theatrical segments presented on WBAI's Building Bridges, Our Community and Labor Report. MultiStages was invited to perform the play in the Theatre for the New City’s Lower Eastside Festival.

Cast featured: Freedome Bradley, Parris Nicole Cisco (The Lion King), Melody Cooper (AUDELCO Award Nominee), Michael Kennealy, and Alima Lindsey (OBIE Award). Artistic Team: Puppetry Design by Lorca Peress; Film and Video Design by Adam Larsen; Lighting Design by D.A. Strawder; Set and Costume Design by Peter Janis; Production Stage Manager, Jaki Silver; and Stage Manager, Kim Goei Okon; Matthew Fletcher, Production Assistant; Anne Coburne, Director's Assistant. Supported in part by the N.W. Dible Foundation.

Listen: The director of Day of Reckoning, Lorca Peress, along with Melody Cooper, actress and award winning playwright of the play, Freedome Bradley, and Michael Kennealy discuss their production for MultiStages.
From:

Talking History. The Radio Archive

Part 1 - Real Media	Part 1 -MP3
Part 2 - Real Media	Part 2 - MP3

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2003 NEW WORKS FINALIST READING FESTIVAL
The Festival was held at the Dramatist Guild with Guest Artists Shawn Elliot, Broadway actors Lea Michele and Eric Bondoc, and film star Linh dan Pham. The Finalists: Machu Picchu by Chris Longo, Hotel Splendid by NEA Fellow Lavonne Mueller, The Breasts of Fortuna by Mary Fengar Gail.

“THE PALACE OF LONELINESS” – 2001 New Works Contest Winner
In Spring 2002, MultiStages produced The Palace of Loneliness by Dorothy Tan, Directed by Elowyn Castle at HERE. This superbly written play combines two interwoven, but separate stories about love, passion, family and death. The contemporary story is of a young Chinese-American woman who walks into a sanitarium and confesses to a murder that no one can substantiate; and the other is a Chinese Operatic Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.) legend of Emperor Xuanzong and his beloved concubine. The plays moves rapidly across time. Unique elements in this production included non-gender specific cross-casting and broad use of multidisciplinary elements: Chinese opera instrumentation, verse, dance, and choreographed movement.

The Cast featured Stephanie Wang, Lorca Peress, Valorie Niccore, Daniel H. Hicks, Adriene Thorne, and Aditi T. Dhruv. Multidisciplinary elements included Choreographer Jennifer Chin; Mask Designer Lorca Peress; Music Composer Hsin Jung Tsai; and Sets/Costume Designer Peter Janis; Gena Bardwell, Associate Producer.

“NOVEL” – Script Development Series
In Winter 2001, MultiStages produced Novel by Nick Bellitto at HERE. Novel was developed by MultiStages in its Script Development Series between 2000 and 2001, and received several MultiStages staged readings at the Lark Studio Theatre. This poetic play is portrait of a struggling artist who is forced to face his creative demons and the guilt over the death of his son as he creates his novel. This surreal memory piece incorporated stylistic movement and poetry. Novel was developed and directed by Lorca Peress.

The Cast featured: Peter Reznikoff, Gena Bardwell and Michael, Citriniti; Sets/Costumes, Mark Borders. Multidisciplinary collaborating artists were composers Anika Paris and Dean Landon. Partial funding for the Script Devlopment Series was received from the N.W. Dible Foundation.

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2001 NEW WORKS FINALIST READING FESTIVAL
In September 2001, one week following the World Trade Center attacks, MultiStages produced (as scheduled) the Finalists from its premiere 2001 New Works Competition. The renowned Robert Kalfin directed Broadway actress Tovah Feldshuh in a transporting experience that brought NYC theatergoers and artists together. The Finalists: The Elephant and the Dove by Naomi Lazard, Lions on the Nile by Michael Murphy, The Charity Fish Fry Tinikling Show by C. Rusch, and Surf by David Muschell. Funding from the N.W. Dible Foundation.

“MOVING TARGETS: 3 Interpretations of Murder”
MultiStages was invited to participate in the Sackett Group’s Women’s Work Festival of women directors at the Phil Bosokowski Theatre in Winter 1999. MultiStages Artistic Director and Founder Lorca Peress adapted and directed three narrative poems by award-winning Nuyorican poet Gloria Vando. Peress collaborated with modern dance choreographer Jennifer Chin. The poems included Vietnam/Burn Imagery Transcript based on Huynh Cong Ut’s Pulitzer Prize photo of children running from a napalm attack, Vando takes us into the mind of the pilot and juxtaposes the piece with a voice over of a Burn Imagery Transcript from a hospital Burn Unit; Cante Jondo is a bilingual interpretation of the political and homophobic execution of Federico Garcia Lorca by Franco’s Falanges, with flamenco dance and stylistic choreography; and Lydia’s Phantasmagoria is a macabre revenge tale that includes rape, torture, and murder orchestrated by Puerto Rican soap star Lydia Echevarria.

The Company of actors and dancers featured Gena Bardwell, David Cho, Veronica Cruz, Tanya Perez, Carlos Diaz, and Antonia Ferraro.

“VARIATIONS ON CHRISTOPHER STREET: Four Short Works for Five Tall Women”
In Spring 1999, MultiStages produced a quartet of dance/theatre pieces in collaboration with choreographer Joan Murray at the Lark Studio Theatre. Three of the pieces were original performance pieces written by Lorca Peress, and the fourth was a dance/drama reinterpretation of a short Eugene O'Neill play, Before Breakfast. Peress’ works included: Broadway Bound a poetic look at traveling on the IRT featuring dramatic percussive dance accompaniment and rhythmic verse; Sound Off, a comedic duet for tap dancer and opera singer vying for the stage; and Rock-A-Bye (Winner of the La Mia Ink! One-Page Play Contest), a solo dance piece with song in which a woman struggles with the death of her baby. Variations On Christopher Street was chosen for the Artists Embassy International Festival in San Francisco.

The Company featured actor/dancers Lorca Peress, Zazel O’Garra, Karen Millard, Alison Courtney, and opera singer Becky Holbrook. Joan Muray, Choreography, Amanda Ellis, Assistant Choreographer and Tap Director.

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“MAIL”
MultiStages was invited to participate in the Sackett Group’s Women’s Work Festival of women directors at the Phil Bosokowski Theatre in Winter 1998. Lorca Peress directed the New York City premiere of Stephen Bartell's new play, Mail. This psychological drama features three men living in an unnamed jail-like location they cannot leave; their jealousy, loneliness, and obsession eventually leads to murder.

MultiStages focused on the unsettling psychological and abstract qualities of the piece through a complicated sound collage by Carl Heriem that merged George Antheill’s 1920’s classical piano work Ballet Mechanique with human voice, sounds, and music. The Cast featured: Stacie Dotson, Evan Lucaser, William Joseph Brookes.

“MONTANA DREAMING”
MultiStages made its debut in November 1997 with a bang! The same month Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was arrested, MultiStages produced a workshop production of Montana Dreaming, a politically stirring three-act docudrama by Alex Gross loosely based on the infamous Unabomber. Much attention was given to the play including a National Public Radio interview with Margot Adler and scenes from the show aired on All Things Considered as part of a Unabomber Special. Also, an article in the Sunday London Telegraph, November 9, 1997, by James Langton featured the MultiStages’ production; a television crew taped rehearsals for German television; and on opening night at The John Houseman Theatre, a bomb threat was made - it was only a threat, and the show went on as planned.

The Cast featured Valorie Niccore, Tom Humes, Michael Halata, Jane Lowe, Sarah Young, Tim Burke.

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