Difficult Plays

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Why we love them, how to direct them?

Are we in an epidemic of TV-inspired 90 minute, family and personal dilemma dramas with 6 blackouts written for 4 characters?  What about complexity?  What about big ideas? What about new forms? What about plays that speak to the really difficult and really complicated times we live in? (But were there ever simple times?)

The 2015 Lab will explore some wonderful, really challenging plays both from the past and from today whose siren songs compel us!  New plays, possibly unproduced, are especially welcome. Who is writing like this now?  How to make sense of them stylistically?  In terms of acting? Who would be able to help shed some light as you seek to understand how such a play works, is structured, needs to be realized?

Our goal is to select eight plays submitted by the directors of the 2015 Lab, and to investigate them together in rehearsal with an acting company, resident peer designers, and invited guests suggested by Lab members.  Each of the chosen plays – ideally a mix of old and new plays - will be tackled by a small group, each director taking a day to lead the exploration.  When you are not directing, you will be observing other members of the Lab working on your- and other - plays.

What kind of play or plays should we explore this summer?  Ones that genuinely have meaning to you, that you have read and been taken with.  What did directors make of the first draft of Angels in America?  Peer Gynt?  Or Euripides’ Ion?  Six Characters? Mud? Skin of our Teeth?  Camino Real?  The Bacchae? Timon of Athens? Penthesilea? Death and the King’s Horseman? Genet’s The Screens? And big, adventurous new work from young writers in 2015!!