600 HIGHWAYMEN's 3-Part Work A THOUSAND WAYS to be Broadcast Across the World

A THOUSAND WAYS, a 3-part work of theater from 600 HIGHWAYMEN (Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone) bringing audiences back together in poetic and revelatory ways, will be presented this Fall by venues around the world.

Beginning with a sculpted, structured phone call between two strangers and continuing with one-on-one in-person encounters across a panel of glass, A THOUSAND WAYS eventually culminates, when it's deemed safe, in a group gathering. This stirring reintroduction into a world where people bear witness to, and hold space for, one another both accentuates and transcends the collective isolation of our moment and asks how to rebuild our vocabulary for communing with strangers in all their complexity-something that had become endangered well before COVID-19.

Produced by ArKtype, A THOUSAND WAYS will be presented around the world by partners including Canadian Stage, Dublin Theatre Festival, Singapore International Festival of the Arts, The Arts Centre at NYU Abu Dhabi, Festival Theaterformen,CAP UCLA, Carolina Performing Arts, Dublin Theatre Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, The Momentary, On the Boards, Stanford Live, Arizona Arts Live at The University of Arizona and Williams College.

A THOUSAND WAYS draws on theater's fundamental basis in human spectatorship to kindle the mythic aspects of our everyday, as it provides a three-act structure to the very act of encountering a stranger and sharing both imagined and physical space. Each act bears its own heightened score for attending audience members to carry out, creating a new kind of theater with and for one another. In Act I, over a simple phone call, two strangers take an hour-long journey together. They are transported to a shared fiction they create, guided by a set of directives issued by an automated operator; before returning to their own daily existences. In Act II, two audience members encounter one another across a bare table. With a stack of cards and a few objects, what begins as a simple exercise of working together becomes an experience of profound connection with another person across a small distance. In Act III, the performance's participants gather for the first time all together in one space for a collective, celebratory, communal action/event-with the knowledge that someone in this space is the person with whom they shared a very singular phone call, and another is that person they connected with, from across the glass.

600 HIGHWAYMEN, "standard bearers of contemporary theater-making" (Le Monde) who have "quietly been shaking up American theatre since 2009" (The Guardian) have always centered the creation of intimacy among strangers in their artistic practice. The idea for A THOUSAND WAYS came into being (originally commissioned and co-conceived by Temple Contemporary at Temple University, USA) before COVID-19 erupted and rapidly accelerated the alienation of our already ever-distancing, virtualizing, and flattening sociality. In this moment, the original idea has been reshaped and brought into sharper perspective-but remains just as much a response to a world that was already becoming far too reliant on social distance.

Engagement Schedule (as of September 14, 2020):

On the Boards

Seattle, WA
Act 1: Sept 9-27, 2020
Act 2: Nov 3-22, 2020
Act 3: Fall 2020 (TBD)

Dublin Theatre Festival

Dublin, IE
Act 1: Sep 27-30, 2020
Act 2: Sep 27-30, 2020
Act 3: N/A

The Arts Centre @ NYUAD

Abu Dhabi, UAE
Act 1: Oct 7-18, 2020
Act 2: Feb 21 (TBD)
Act 3: Spring 21 (TBD)

Williams College

Williamstown, MA
Act 1: Oct 2-4, 2020
Act 2: Feb 11-13, 2021
Act 3: Spring 21 (TBD)

Canadian Stage

Toronto, ONT
Act 1: Nov 2-16, 2020
Act 2: Jan 18-Feb, 2021
Act 3: June 12, 2021

Carolina Performing Arts

Chapel Hill, NC
Act 1: Nov 9-22, 2020
Act 2: Feb 21 (TBD)
Act 3: Sep 21 (TBD)

The Momentary

Bentonville, AR
Act 1: Nov 20 (TBD)
Act 2: Jan 21 (TBD)
Act 3: May 21 (TBD)

Stanford Live

Stanford, CA
Act 1: Nov 2020 (TBD)
Act 2: Feb 21 (TBD)
Act 3: Fall 21 (TBD)

NYC Engamement

New York, NY
Acts 1-3: TBA

CAP UCLA

Los Angeles, CA
Act 1: Dec 6-13, 2020
Act 2: Jan 23-24, 2021
Act 3: Fall 21 (TBD)

Berkeley Rep

Berkeley, CA
Acts 1-3: TBA

La Jolla Playhouse

La Jolla, CA
Acts 1-3: TBA

Singapore Int'l Arts Festival

Singapore
Act 1: Jan 2021 (TBD)
Act 2: May 21 (TBD)
Act 3: May 21 (TBD)

Arizona Arts Live

Phoenix, AZ
Act 1: Spring 21 (TBD)
Act 2: Spring 21 (TBD)
Act 3: Spring 21 (TBD)

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