The New School Presents The New Visions Drama Directing Festival 11/19-12/12

The New School for Drama presents The New Visions Drama Directing Festival, a new series featuring seven contemporary plays performed in repertory November 30 through December 12 at the New School for Drama Theater. This festival highlights the work of the graduating MFA directing and acting students in the program, and is free and open to the public.

"This festival builds on the legacy of collaboration and experimentation at The New School," said New School Drama Director Robert LuPone. "As part of their thesis, these directors have conceived and re-imagined these extant plays. With our graduating actors, together, they have collaborated to facilitate what's best about The New School for Drama and theater in general."
The MFA directing program at The New School demands that directors read theater history and study acting, movement, script analysis, and hands-on directing. The directing track is designed to build necessary skills in play analysis, defining and executing the given circumstances, and shaping a production around the director's idea of the story of the play.

The MFA acting program offers a comprehensive hands-on education in the art of acting. This track offers intensive training in all aspects of internal and external disciplines, as well as in the individual and collaborative application of classical and modern texts. Acting and Directing are two of the three MFA programs at The New School for Drama, alongside Playwriting, which enables all students to work collaboratively to develop their skills as professional artists. In the spring, The New School for Drama will offer a playwriting festival, where students from all three disciplines will collaborate on the production of new work.

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

NORMAL: THE DÜSSELDORF RIPPER by Anthony Neilson, directed by Lucia Peters
November 19: 7:00 p.m.; November 21: 9:00 p.m.; December 10: 7:00 p.m.
Based on real events in 1920s Düsseldorf, Normal follows the trials and tribulations of accused murderer Peter Kurten. Wehner, a naive young lawyer, is hired to defend the undefendable Kurten, and decides to plead insanity on his behalf-only to come to the startling conclusion that his client is, in fact, worryingly sane.

ORESTES 2.0 by Charles L. Mee, directed by Sarah Bellin
November 19: 9:00 p.m.; November 21: 7:00 p.m.; December 10: 9:00 p.m.
An irreverent, surreal, and heartbreaking retelling of Euripedes' Oresteia that sends brother and sister Orestes and Electra through a nightmarish and comic dreamscape of autopsy suites, hospital wards, kangaroo courtrooms, and hostage takings, as they face the emotional and legal consequences of having murdered their mother, who murdered their father.

AMAZONS AND THEIR MEN by JorDan Harrison, directed by John Hurley
November 20: 7:00 p.m.; November 21: 1:00 p.m.; December 11: 7:00 p.m.
The Frau used to direct beautiful films for a fascist government-now she's trying to make a film that's simply beautiful: she casts herself in the lead role of the Amazon queen Penthesilea, who falls in love with Achilles on the battlefield of the Trojan War. But when telegrams start to arrive from the Minister of Propaganda, it becomes impossible for the Frau to ignore the real war outside her sound stage.

ON THE VERGE or The Geography of Yearning by Eric Overmyer, directed by Elizabeth Carlson
November 20: 9:00 p.m.; November 21: 3:00 p.m.; December 11: 9:00 p.m.
A valiant trek into terra incognita uncovers artifacts from the future-much to the delight-and discomfiture-of three Victorian lady explorers, as they jaunt through a continuum of space, time, history, geography, feminism, and fashion.

4:48 PSYCHOSIS by Sarah Kane, directed by Mason Beggs
December 3: 7:00 p.m.; December 4: 9:00 p.m.; December 12: 1:00 p.m.
What happens to a person's mind when the barriers which distinguish reality from different forms of imagination completely disappear?

THE DROWNED WORLD by Gary Owen, directed by Barrett Hileman
December 3: 9:00 p.m.; December 5: 9:00 p.m.; December 12: 3:00 p.m.
In this vicious tale of love, revolt, and beauty, we're presented a vision of a world divided between citizens and non-citizens, where friends betray one another, and where surface matters more than love or kinship. In a drowned world, how far will you go to save your own skin?

DESDEMONA, A Play about a Handkerchief by Paula Vogel, directed by Joan Kane
December 4: 7:00 p.m.; December 5: 7:00 p.m.; December 12: 7:00 p.m.
Having slept with the entire military encampment, Desdemona revels in her bawdy tales of conquest, and although she has never been intimate with the soldier Cassio, her life is soon in danger when her husband, Othello, suspects her of infidelity in this re-imagined work of Shakespeare.
New Visions Drama Directing Festival Performances are on November 19 through December 12 at The New School for Drama Theater, 151 Bank Street, 3rd floor. The performances are free but reservations are recommended. Call Ticket Central at 212.279.4200 or visit www.ticketcentral.com.

About The New School for Drama
At The New School for Drama, the instinct to create is revered. Through its interrelated three-year MFA program in acting, directing, or playwriting, the school is forging the next generation of dramatic artists. A faculty of working professionals brings to the fore each student's unique and original voice and helps them establish a rooted sense of who they are as individuals and as artists. The New School's history in the dramatic arts began in the 1940s, when the Dramatic Workshop, led by founder Erwin Piscator and a faculty including Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, fostered artistic voices as distinctive as Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando. For more information, visit www.drama.newschool.edu.

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