Productions

RED BLACK AND IGNORANT: The War Plays by Edward Bond, directed by Sheryl Stoodley, with UMass English Professor/Bond consultant Jenny Spencer, and collaborating artists Mollye Maxner & Kelly Parsley.

Adapted for a post 9/11 audience, Serious Play’s version examines the imagined life of the last child born before the end of the world.  A charred Monster rises from the ashes of destruction & reveals the world which awaits him: a post-apocalyptic society of destruction & war. Explores issues of conformity, social morality, and ongoing conflict between individual & society, with a timeless tone.  

(Ensemble: Dan Morbyrne, Catherine McCurry (violin), Christian Drake, Ellen Morbyrne, Julissa Rodriguez, Ben Drake, Toby Bercovici, and Candy Santiago)

BECOMING ANTIGONE directed by Sheryl Stoodley with collaborating artists Mildred Ruiz & Steven Sapp (Universes)

A new adaptation of Greek play Antigone by Sophocles, with excerpts from Judith Malina’s version, shapes this interpretation of the Greek chorus into spoken word. Cast with two actresses playing Antigone, it’s a tragedy about the aftermath of a civil war in which the two sons of Oedipus, kill each other, and where the new king, Creon, tries to punish one for his disloyalty by not burying his body properly. Antigone gives her brother a proper burial and thus defies the law & faces death. Debate ensues over choosing the moral decision (a higher law) over man-made law. The message resonates today in choosing civil disobedience & non-violent action as a vehicle for change, to alter what may be seen as unjust laws and government mandates.

(Ensemble: Toby Bercovici, Julissa Rodriguez, Keith Bailey, Christian Drake, Libby Augarten, Arnaldo Rivera, Catherine McCurry, Candy Santiago, Carl Tome, Edward Rueda, Sarah Knox, Diane Griffin, and Gilberto G. Escobar)

HAMLET: Asalto a la Inocencia directed by Sheryl Stoodley with text adaptation by Jonathan Croy, new original dialogue for Puerto Rican actors playing Hamlet & Gertrude, written by playwright Migdalia Cruz.

A play in which the attainment of justice entails the avenging hero's death, as Hamlet causes his own downfall by his obsession with the revenge for his father’s murder. Serious Play’s adaptation from a Puerto Rican point of view, set using a rolling scaffolding, imagining Hamlet and Horatio in a hidden love relationship, and exploring the relationship between the women characters, Gertrude and Ophelia. Nine actors immersed themselves in the intensity of the language, the power of the human relationship & the self-discipline of the stylized structure, through which they could speak.

Toured to the Women Playwrights Festival, Athens Greece.

(Ensemble: Arnaldo Rivera, Candy Santiago, Christian Drake, Anne-Marie Wayne, Edward Rueda, Keith Bailey, Toby Bercovici, and Sarah Knox)

TALES OF THE LOST FORMICANS by Constance Congdon directed by Sheryl Stoodley and Jonathan Croy (Shakespeare and Company, Lenox)

A comedy in which the imaginative, passionate and disturbing world of the “Formicans” deflects the story of a man with Alzheimer’s disease, into a travel guide to Middle America, conducted by aliens from outer space. The play explores a postmodern society's collective nervous breakdown.

(Ensemble: Dane Botfield, Elizabeth Solomon, Candy Santiago, Arnaldo Rivera, Brandon Lappie, Anne-Marie Wayne, and Christian Drake)

TABLE OF CONTENT devised production directed by Sheryl Stoodley & Lisa Enzer

The research & movement improvisation began with a long wooden table and the stories the table evoked. Incorporating Anne Bogart’s Compositional Viewpoints vocabulary for physical theatre exploration, photographic images from the choreography of Pina Bausch, memories of home and community, including original and found monologues, the play was shaped around the living moments that embodied our “table story” concepts.

TABLE OF CONTENT Toured to City Stage Festival, Springfield.

(Ensemble: Julissa Rodriguez, Candy Santiago, Shamia Whitsett, Anne-Marie Wayne, Dane Botfield, Bandon Lappie, and Arnaldo Rivera)

 TITUS ANDRONICUS: Per Styga Per Manes Vehor directed by Sheryl Stoodley and Jonathan Croy (Shakespeare and Company, Lenox)

This production is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragic revenge play. Shakespeare reveals brutal revenge as an alluring and tempting, but ultimately ineffective and harmful, response to personal injury and loss.

(Ensemble:  David Inglis, Libby Augarten, Dane Botfield, Jill Frutkin, Elizabeth Kelly, Dan Morbyrne, Arnaldo Rivera, Elizabeth Solomon, Claire Titelman, and Katya Shapiro)

A FABLE by Jean Claude van Itallie, originally created with Joe Chaikin’s Open Theatre, adapted & directed for Serious Play by Sheryl Stoodley.

A FABLE is a stylized allegory, that tells the story of one woman’s journey through life as she grows from adolescence to maturity and confronts the terrors that befall us all. A wooden wagon pulled by the woman moves around the stage providing various locations for scenes of alternating humor and dark menace, and many comic roadblocks.

(Ensemble: Libby Augarten, Jill Frutkin, Dane Botfield, David Inglis, Elizabeth Kelly, Luke Meginsky, Dan Morbyrne, Arnaldo Rivera, Candy Santiago, Elizabeth Solomon, and Claire Titelman)

REUNION directed by Sheryl Stoodley & Lisa Enzer

REUNION interweaves scenes about disintegrating family relationships and love gone wrong, from Nicky Silver’s Pterodactyls and Jean Anouilh’s Eurydice. Pterodactyls is a dark comedy about a family stripped of their ability to deny their truths any longer which cripples them to reclaim the son who refuses to cow to their idealized expectations of him. He is always assembling the bones of a dinosaur skeleton to remind the family, that he will outlive them all. Juxtaposed against scenes from Eurydice, about a family of traveling performers and the tragedy of the young daughter’s love denied, reflecting on the mystical myth of Orpheus & Eurydice.

(Ensemble: Libby Augarten, Dane Botfield, Alex Chambers, Dan Bifano, Maria Hudak, Elizabeth Kelly, Luke Meginsky, Emilie Miller, Jill Frutkin, Dan Bifano, Arnaldo Rivera, Candy Santiago, Claire Titelman, Jeff Welliver, and Judith Zaft-Weissman)

UN-TETHERED adapted and directed by Sheryl Stoodley & Lisa Enzer

UN-TETHERED is a collage of female voices, including Mary drawn from the play Insaniety of Mary Girard, to Shakespeare’s Ophelia, to Rose Martula’s modern day character, drug addict Maggie from her play Packed. The production examines male centric thinking as it relates historically to the control of women & their desperate struggle to be heard & accepted. Intertwined are Mary’s thoughts after being confined by her husband to an asylum for infidelity, Ophelia’s desired relationship with Hamlet, and addict Maggie’s modern-day fight against drug dependence.

(Ensemble: Libby Augarten, Maria Hudak, Devon Harlow, Rory O’Connell, Elizabeth Kelly, Luke Meginsky, Dane Botfield, Dan Bifano, Alex Chambers, Steve Simpson, Rose Martula, Nina Wheeler-Chalfin, and Arnaldo Rivera)

 CROSSING THE BORDER Collaborative production with Harlem School for the Arts, NYC at Academy of Music

co-directed by Sheryl Stoodley & Artistic Director of Harlem School for the Arts

CROSSING THE BORDER explores racial history in the USA, through chosen monologues and scenes, collaboratively staged by the two ensembles & their directors, during a week residency at A.P.E. spent sharing theatre exercises, research and personal reflections.

THE FOLKTALE PROJECT/ BLUEBEARD & THREE LITTLE PIGS

Stories collaboratively shaped for the ensemble by Sheryl Stoodley & Lisa Enzer.

Bluebeard story told from the feminist interpretation drawn from book, Women Who Run with the Wolves  & Three Little Pigs, a new version told from the wolf’s point of view. THE FOLKTALE PROJECT/ BLUEBEARD & THREE LITTLE PIGS is a stylized performance with movement, rhythmical text and stage combat.

(Ensemble: Alex Chambers, Arnaldo Rivera, Devon Harlow, Libby Augarten, Dane Botfield, Elizabeth Kelly, Luke Meginsky, Emilie Miller,Steve Simpson, Dan Bifano, and Jeff Welliver)

 REALITY CHECK directed by Sheryl Stoodley & Lisa Enzer

REALITY CHECK is a stylized performance with movement, dance and text, deconstructing Our Town by Thorton Wilder, interspersed with scenes from Out of Gas On Lovers Leap by Mark St Germaine. This production explores a most important and universal theme, the lack of appreciation most people have for everyday life before death.

 (Ensemble: Venuta Carrulli, Devon Harlow, Elizabeth Kelly, Aviva Wertkin, Tom Costello, Maria Hudak, Dan  Bifano, David Inglis, Emilie Miller, Arnaldo Rivera, and Jesse Sharrard)