CalArts School of Theater Premiers KENDWOOD WILDERNESS, 4/8-4/17

The CalArts School of Theater premiers Kenwood Wilderness, an opera-play by Peter Parshall Jensen with original music composed by Lam Kwan-Fai and directed by Lars Jan. Kenwood Wilderness will perform in Ensemble Theater II (E400) at the California Institute of the Arts, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, CA 91355. There will be a preview performance on Thursday, April 8th at 8:00 p.m. Kenwood Wilderness will run Friday, April 9th at 8:00 p.m. Saturday, April 10th at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. and Tuesday, April 13th thru Saturday, April 17th at 8:00 p.m. Admission is free and by reservation only. For reservations, please visit www.calarts.edu/events .

Kenwood Wilderness is a story told in time by a grandfather clock passed down through generations. Through snapshot moments in history, a family tree comes full circle. This opera-play with original text, lyrics and music, is structured in a musical format with an overture in the present day. Kinwood Wilderness comprises three movements (the Great Depression, the Revolutionary War, and King Phillip's War) and a coda set in the future. In this state of constant transformation the performance delineates the importance of time within a day, a life, over generations and as a universal spirit.

Playwright and librettist Peter Parshall Jensen is also a screenwriter, folklorist and educator, whose work in any medium focuses on people, dreams and stories. His theater works include Vision's Tale, Who KillEd Whitey? and Kenwood Wilderness. Screenplays include Caridad and Sonia's Gift and he is also developing two original pilots for television. He works as a dramatic writing instructor for CalArts' Community Arts Partnership (CAP) and is a 2010 Master of Fine Arts candidate in the Writing for Performance Program at CalArts. He is also the Co-Founder of Project Por Amor, an ongoing cultural exchange between American and Cuban artists. Peter holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Justice from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Composer Lam Kwan-Fai graduated from Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate in the Composition Program at CalArts. His recent awards include 2nd place for Young Composer in the ISCM-ACL music festival in 2007 and 3rd place in the International Composition Completion of Hsu Tsang-houei Prize in 2006. Lam's film scores have screened in different film festivals including the 31st, 32nd and 33rd HK International Film Festival, Hungarian International Film Festival, The 3rd Fresh Wave Short Film Competition (awarded Best Film). In 2008, Hong Kong Government and the International Association of Theatre Critics (Hong Kong) invited Lam to be the Music Director of the Musical Theatre Animateur Scheme.

Guest director Lars Jan is a director, writer, visual artist and artistic director of Early Morning Opera, a multi-disciplinary art lab based in Los Angeles. His original performance, film and installation works have been seen at The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), Symphony Space (NYC), REDCAT (LA), the Venice Architectural Biennale, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Philadelphia Live Arts & Fringe Festival, The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (Tallahassee, FL) and The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (Troy, NY)

Lars has created new work and taught at Princeton University, Kabul University, Swarthmore College, Mount Holyoke College and Amherst College. Lars is the recipient of the 2008 Sherwood Award, granted by Center Theatre Group to an innovative theatre artist in Los Angeles. He will premiere a new performance work at the Whitney Biennial this spring. Lars holds an Master of Fine Arts in Directing and Integrated Media from CalArts, where he was a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar.

CalArts is unique in its multidisciplinary approach to studying the arts through its six related schools: Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music and Theatre. CalArts encourages students to recognize and explore the complexity of the aesthetic, social and political aspects of the arts. It is supported by its distinguished faculty of practicing artists and provides its BFA and MFA students with both the hands-on training and the engagement with the cultural community necessary for artists' growth. CalArts was founded in 1961-and opened in 1969-as the first institution of higher learning in the U.S. specifically for students interested in pursuing degrees in all areas of the visual and performing arts.

 

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