Fort Point Theatre Channel presented
the 2nd Valentine's Day staged reading of the
Marquis de Sade's JUSTINE
a libretto for a new opera
written by Meron Langsner and Silvia Graziano
and directed by Christie Gibson
What better way to spend Valentine's Day?
And it was FREE!
10 Channel Center Street
Fort Point, Boston
poster by Cara Grace Pacifico
An informal night of friends getting together to read a play about art, consumption, and modern society
Fort Point Theatre Channel is launching a series of informal readings of full-length plays, both new and established works.
For the first in the series, we offered Magnificent Waste, introducing Boston to Latina playwright Caridad Svich, winner of the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize.
The reading featured some of our favorite actors
Megan Cooper
Mary Driscoll
Michael Fisher
Christie Lee Gibson
Tim Hoover
Ron Lacey
Sally Nutt
Phil Thompson
About The Play
Lizzie B makes shock art. Arden buys beautiful things. A young man wants to be famous. In a modern world addicted to sex, drugs, fashion, and celebrity, three friends make a pact that will change their lives. "Magnificent Waste" explores America's appetite for excess and presents an unsettling portrait of its own undoing: a glittering but brutal exploration of modern society's superficiality and the objectification of the human body.
Magnificent Waste had its world premiere in 2011 at Factory 449, a theatre collective in Washington, DC.
Watch this space for news of our next events. Sign up to receive email notices of the latest news, including calls to submit your new work for Exclamation Point!
We are developing a number of projects, to be presented in 2012 and beyond. Here's a hint.
This new play by Silvia Graziano, our resident playwright and co-artistic director, explores the battle within each person between her or his human potential and animal origins. The production will combine traditional theatre with original dance, film artistry, and new music. The script has a touch of both Edgar Allen Poe and Harold Pinter, mixed with surrealism—a blending of the dark and the ridiculous.
The Ten-Block Walk: An Old-Person’s Odyssey
FPTC member Christie Lee Gibson, librettist, is collaborating with composer Erin Huelskamp on this one-act chamber opera and movement-based theatre piece. The Ten-Block Walk follows Mrs. Otis as she journeys from her home to the local senior center. This is a piece about being present, about taking time and taking in your surroundings and responding to them. It is about persistence in the face of pain and obstacles and handicap, and about understanding that when you achieve your goals, often after great physical and mental exertion, it doesn’t always look or feel like you think it’s going to.
A Better World
A Better World, a “devised play with songs and comics,” explores the themes of optimism and life choices. It tells the story of a young person going to the San Francisco Bay Area at the end of the beginning of the seventies to play rock n roll and create revolutionary pamphlets. The hero lands in a household of women’s liberation activists, who suggest an entirely different course of action. The story is based on “A Better World Is Possible,” a book-length comics memoir-in-progress by FPTC member Nick Thorkelson. The production will feature new music by Thorkelson and by FPTC’s Mark Warhol, as well as songs from the historical moment.
FPTC is contributing to this project of the nonprofit, On With Living and Learning, Inc. Legacy is led by FPTC member Mary Driscoll, who also directs OWLL, a nonprofit that uses theatre to give voice to marginalized people and assist their transition to productive citizenship. Its work creates a medium for public dialogue to promote economic opportunity and active engagement for all members of a community. Legacy probes the question of how being born into a legacy of poverty and prison affects succeeding generations. Combining theatre and music, it is “verbatim theatre,” weaving together personal testimony and research to explore social justice issues—in this case, for people who have been incarcerated for nonviolent crime and are facing the challenges that arise when reentering their communities.
The tenth Exclamation Point! will be on the theme of film—as a topic rather than as a genre. It will include the premiere of the animated film Où est Fleuri Rose, written and composed by Mark Warhol and designed by FPTC’s Nick Thorkelson and Fort Point artist Amy MacDonald.
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Coming up
Exclamation Point! #9
Grand Circle Gallery
347 Congress St.
Fort Point, Boston
November 5, 2011
FREE!
Click here to view photos by Daniel J. van Ackere
Curated by Christie Lee Gibson
Are you of a singularly sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic inclination? Exclamation Point! 9, the ninth entry in our popular series of short new works, was inspired by the Four Ancient Humours, from the theory that the human body was filled with four basic substances. When the Four Humours were in balance, a person would be healthy. Disease resulted when they were not.
The lineup:
Alignment, a play by Barry Eitel
Beds, a play by Susan Cinoman
A Better World, an excerpt from a play in progress), by Nick Thorkelson
The Fifth Humor, by Rick Winterson
4squared, by Six One Seven Dance Collective
Humor Me, poem and projections by Maureen Tracy Venti
I Never Got to Say and Lonesome Town, two cello pieces by Cam Sawzin
The Ten-Block Walk: An Old-Person’s Odyssey, an excerpt from an opera in progress, by Christie Lee Gibson (libretto) and Erin Huelskamp (composer)
With appearances and help from: Glorivy Arroyo, Cliff Blake, Hannah Blitzblau, Rebecca Bradshaw, Jon Burrowes, Julia Carey, Amanda Collins, Kenzie Finn, Shannon Gmyrek, Gabriel Graetz, Kaedon Gray, Kendra Heithoff Henseler, Erin Huelskamp, Lenni Kmiec, Sarah Kornfeld, Hugh Long, Rafael Marinho, Jacqueline Mosca, Paula Plum, Cecelia Raker, Scarlett Redmond, Lacey Sasso, Robin Smith, Jesse Strachman, Meredith Stypinski, Nick Sulfaro, Camilo Viveiros
Fort Point Theatre Channel
and the
Fort Point Arts Community
presented the Fort Point premiere of
Please Remove Your Shoes
and for more information about
Please Remove Your Shoes.
Please Remove Your Shoes is a revealing documentary about broken government process. It is also an empathetic story about a half dozen public servants who try to fix it. And it is a familiar topic to all of us who have flown in the last fifteen years: the security routine at the airport, first the FAA and now the TSA.
Please Remove Your Shoes examines the period before 911 and the current situation and asks the questions that make Washington squirm: “Are we really any better for all our money spent? Or is it safe to say that nothing has changed?"
