DR. C Makes Its NY Premiere At 3LD Art And Technology Center 6/2-6/14

Called "one of the ten top, hot companies in New York" by The New York Times, Theater Mitu invites you to the New York Premiere of DR.C (OR HOW I LEARNED TO ACT IN EIGHT STEPS) at 3LD Art and Technology Center. Performances run June 2-14 at 3LD (80 Greenwich Street at Rector Street -- accessible from the 1 train at Rector Street).

ImagiNe You awoke one morning and didn't know who you were. You felt healthy, and all the material trappings of your life surround you-except memories. Your task becomes to construct a life using the evidence that you can find. Such is the work of the actor. Juxtaposing the 1919 silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari against a new text created from the words of eight of history's leading acting theorists, DR.C (OR HOW I LEARNED TO ACT IN EIGHT STEPS) investigates the history of acting through athletically precise movement, live music, innovative projections and songs. It is an unintentional homage to the people and ideas that, for better or for worse, have irrevocably shaped the way we view the art of acting.

DR.C evolved from Artistic Director Rubén Polendo's realization that the three most common excuses for ‘bad acting' ("I wasn't grounded", "I wasn't feeling it", and "it didn't seem truthful") are tied to the assumption that an actor's experience of performing is the same as what the audience experiences. Polendo decided to do an experiment: what if you removed any possibility of experiencing those three supposed necessities? Using the film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, one of the few remaining examples of what acting was before Stanislavski began to shape American acting, the company began exploring a correlation between distinct sections of Caligari and eight major theorist/artists whose ideas have influenced what acting ‘is' or ‘should be'. By exactingly recreating the physical movement of Caligari and supporting it with a new text created from the words of Aristotle, Adolphe Appia, Stanislavski, Brecht, Artaud, Grotowski, Peter Brook and Anne Bogart, a new and autonomous narrative was birthed that asks "What is acting?"

DR.C (OR HOW I LEARNED TO ACT IN EIGHT STEPS) stars Aysan Çelik, Justin Nestor, Matt Carlson, Emily Davis, Adam Cochran, Nathan Elam, Laura Stinger, and Marc LeVasseur. The production features sets by Amy Rubin, lighting by Kate Ashton, costumes by Candida K. Nichols, video by Jake Witlen, sound by Alex Hawthorn, original music by Ellen Reid, text compiled by Rubén Polendo and Jocelyn Clarke, production management by Leighton Mitchell, and stage management by Hilary Austin. The production was developed at Sundance, Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, and New York Theatre Workshop (where Mitu is Company-in-Residence).

Since its inception in 1997, Theater Mitu has presented works at theaters nationally and internationally, including New York Theatre Workshop, The Public, INTAR, Lincoln Center Director's Lab, A.C.T., McCarter, Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Rep and Patravadi Theater (Bangkok). Past productions include Four Saints in Mexico (inspired by G. Stein) Above All... (inspired by Chekhov). Hamletmachine (inspired by H. Muller), The Apostle Project, The Shakespeare Project (adaptation of Macbeth and King Lear), The Noh Cycle, The Tutor (based on texts by Brecht and Büchner) and an acclaimed re-envisioning of Death of A Salesman. For more information visit www.theatermitu.org.

3LD Art & Technology Center creates and supports challenging large-scale art within a financially sustainable environment. Its goals are to create viable growth oriented business models for experimental art production, revitalize the experimental tradition in New York by improving the working conditions and quality of production, and foster a community of artists who work cooperatively and aggressively to address their own barriers. In order to achieve these goals, 3LD creates, re-distributes and re-imagines resources that drive core cost reduction while increasing capacity and revenue.

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