Serious Play!
Theatre Ensemble
Meta/Pina Project: Blind Dreamers
“As a young ensemble actor in the late 1970s, I would travel long distances to see Pina’s company perform whenever they toured to BAM. There was something deeply profound and truthful in the theatrical movement relationships (tanztheater) that Pina created which reso-nated with me. I was driven by the desire to create ensemble theatre that took as a starting point the condition of our bodies in revelation of human experience.” (S. Stoodley)
With the “Blind Dreamers: Meta/Pina Project”, Serious Play! pays homage to Pina Bausch, visionary German choreographer and creator of Tanztheater Wuppertal. Utilizing Bausch’s unique rehearsal processes and borrowing and responding to her gestural language, co-directors Sheryl Stoodley and Toby Bercovici have worked with ten performers to create a dreamlike family portrait.
Bausch, who died at age 68 in 2009, used a variety of “actor-tasks” in creating her company’s work in order to uncover basic human motivations. Through physical action, relationships are revealed and developed. And physical actions, perhaps repeated or changing in tempo, communicate a variety of meanings. The way a gesture is performed begins to define a relationship and connects to larger themes of tenderness, trust, attraction, insecurity, betrayal, loss, despair and violence.
In Blind Dreamers, the family members strive for connection while struggling to meet familial and societal expectations. Through actor-tasks assigned by the directors, structured improvisational compositions, and the development of gesture, a physical language specific to this piece emerged within the ensemble. As with Pina’s work, Blind Dreamers is built on elements of ensemble members’ own experiences, translated into gestures of connection, personal struggle, and striking interaction.
The performers who make up the ensemble, and who have collaborated with Stoodley and Bercovici in the creation of Blind Dreamers, are Grace Booth, Carissa Dagenais, Jay Dolan, Rachel Garbus, Dunan Herman-Parks, Daniel Kinsey, Constance Leslie, Carolyn Sadeh, Kaliis Smith, Ren Steger. The music is composed and played by John Sheldon, lighting design by Reilly Horan & Kathy Couch, special dance choreography by Lisa Enzer, and swing dance choreography by Emily Fox.
Audience Comments:
What a dynamic and haunting evening of theatre. Congratulations! I had to run after the show but want to thank you for inviting me into the dream.
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META/PINA PROJECT: BLIND DREAMERS reminds us of the power of simplicity.
Age and youth, motion and stillness, sound and silence, words and vocal gestures -- all these aspects of the production suggest meaning but also
convey something more elemental. Like the sculptural environment
provided by the music, the bodies in space stand for something as basic as truth.
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To the cast of Meta/Pina Project;
I’d like to congratulate you all on the piece in which you paid tribute to Pina (I’m a big fan also.)
While you delivered that homage beautifully, you also went well beyond her to speak with your own voices.
The imaginative usage of space, the use of the scrim, the high level of performance, the seamless transitions, the courage to tell your stories, and the ingenious choreography all made for a riveting piece in which the human spirit was elevated by the art form.
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Serious Play! Productions
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Past Productions:
Becoming Antigone
Boriqua: Inside /Out
Crossing the Border
A Fable
Hamlet: Asalto a la Inocencia
Imperfect Satisfaction
Marat Sade: What's Left is not Right
My Name is Medea
Of Turlygods and Time
Red, Black and Ignorant
The Skriker
Reunion
Snake and Falcon
Spring Awakening
Table
The Boxman
Tale of the Lost Formicans
Titus Andronicus
Trolius and Cressida
Untethered
Wider than the Sky
Words, Words, Words
Serious Play! Productions
Most Recent Project:
Past Productions:
Crossing the Border
Imperfect Satisfaction
Marat Sade: What's Left is not Right
Reunion
Snake and Falcon
Table
The Boxman
Tale of the Lost Formicans
Untethered
Serious Play! Productions
Most Recent Project:
Past Productions:
Bluebeard
Crossing the Border
Imperfect Satisfaction
Marat Sade: What's Left is not Right
Meta/Pina Project: Blind Dreamers
Of Turlygods & Time: The Tale of King Lear
Reality Check
Reunion
Snake and Falcon
Table of Content
The Boxman
Tales of the Lost Formicans
Untethered
A Project of Cultural Images Group, Inc
Phone 413-586-1438 or e-mail seriousplaytheatre@gmail.com