THE ORPHAN SEA Tapped as Skidmore Theater's Fall 2016 Black Box Show

The Skidmore College Department of Theater has announced the premiere of a multilingual version of The Orphan Sea by Caridad Svich, 2012 Lifetime Achievement OBIE Award winner.

Performances run November 30-December 6 at 8pm (Saturday 2pm & 8pm; Sunday at 2pm) at the Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater on the Skidmore College Campus.

Director Eunice Ferreira, Skidmore theater professor, innovatively infuses the play with multiple languages, song, poetry, film and dance to invite audiences on a metatheatrical journey.

The Orphan Sea is a multimedia theater experience that weaves the myth of Odysseus and Penelope with global stories of migration. With the playwright's permission, Ferreira and a diverse cast of actors created the multilingual version in rehearsal. As playwright Svich describes, "This is a story of us, here, now, and also of who we were once. It is a story of those that cross rivers and seas and those that wait for them, of a lover who searches for one lost years ago, and of someone called Penelope, who may be waiting for someone called Odysseus."

Caridad Svich is an internationally celebrated playwright and translator. Her numerous awards include the 2012 Obie award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater. Svich has been closely involved with this production, collaborating with Ferreira and the cast in rehearsal to bring this production to life. Svich delivered a public talk to the Skidmore and Saratoga Springs community at the Tang Museum in October. On Thursday, December 1st she will participate in a post-show discussion.

"I have always been intrigued with the plays of Caridad Svich and by her impassioned writings on art and activism," explains director Ferreira. "I knew that I wanted to work with multiple languages to diversify and expand the global scope of theater making at Skidmore. The first playwright I contacted was Caridad Svich."

In rehearsing The Orphan Sea, director Eunice Ferreira asks: "How do we respond to global crises of displaced people and environmental threats on our Facebook news feed? What does it mean to cross digital, linguistic and physical borders?" Born to parents who immigrated to the United States, Ferreira explains that the play evokes notions of migration, exile, diaspora, refugees and border crossings. "While riffing on the myth of Odysseus and Penelope, we hope to take audiences on a multilingual, metatheatrical journey across time and geographies of space using installations of song, poetry, film and dance. The Orphan Sea draws on myth to bring the global past, present and future into collision." Ferreira's research centers on global performance and identity. In addition to directing, she teaches a range of courses that engage theater with history, translation, theory, race/ethnicity, and culture.

Tickets: $12 general admission and $8 for students and senior citizens. To reserve seats, call the Skidmore Theater Box Office at (518) 580-5439, email boxoffice@skidmore.edu or find us online on Facebook or at skidmore.edu/academics/theater.

The Orphan Sea was originally commissioned and produced by the University of Missouri - Columbia Department of Theatre under the direction of Kevin Brown.

To post a comment, you must register and login.