The 60-minute work-in-progress, 'Breaking and Entering,' is a collaboration between dance, music and art student.
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The CalArts School of Theater’s New Works Festival (NWF)—an interdisciplinary, student-run festival that fosters opportunities for collaboration among all schools of the Institute—opened on Saturday with 50 scheduled events over a 16-day period.
The festival celebrates the talent of CalArts students, allowing them the freedom to play and experiment through immersive risk-taking in new works, in which the process is valued above the end result.
“Last year, we expanded festival projects to include all the schools. This year, we encouraged the collaboration to occur between the schools. As a result we had a lot of successful cross-pollination on projects this year,” says producer Meg Annand (Theater MFA 13). “I can proudly say that almost all of the projects incorporate students from at least 2 schools.”
Annand also says that many projects incorporated more interesting space usage this year. Project venues range from CalArts elevators and hallways to The Walt Disney Modular Theater to even the trees behind the campus tennis courts.
Select pieces include:
- Wurmhole: The Dreaming is an interactive, mythological view of our world combining culture, electronic music, performance and story. A mysterious troupe of nomadic performers arrive, transcending time and take the audience on a journey of self discovery and initiation. Who knows where you’ll end up? Explore. Celebrate. Play. Express. May 13, locations vary.
- The House is Open is a new electro-acoustic opera written and composed by Alexander Vassos, directed by Marina McClure and Deena Selenow. The opera blends instrumental orchestration, electronic soundscapes, arias and spoken text to explore the facade of domestic suburban life through the eyes of prepubescent children on the verge of awakening. May 11, 12, 13 & 14, 8 pm, MOD.
- Bedtime Stories: A troupe of gypsy storytellers has arrived on campus to share a few tales! Join them in the Coffeehouse for a slumber party or in your dorm room for a goodnight parable. Coffeehouse performances will be followed by an open bedtime story hour. *No happy endings guaranteed: Offer is available for a limited time only. May 2 and 9 (and by appointment), 10 pm, Coffeehouse and Dorms.
- On Being Blue is a slap-dash, seat-of-your-pants, skin-of-your-teeth plunge into blue — “the word and the condition” — devised in three discrete incarnations as site-specific performances. In the secret and overlooked places of our otherwise well-trod campus we will use all capable limbs of imagination to create vignettes inspired by the essay On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry by William Gass. Three different pieces, headed by three different creative minds (Matthew Bamberg-Johnson, Genevieve Gearhart and Ásta Hostetter) are created in no more than seven days for each. April 29, 9 pm, May 4 and 11, 8 pm, outside.
- I Should Have Held a Party for All the Things I Didn’t Say: This is a movement driven piece that reimagines Chekhov’s Ivanov as a musical score, made of essences and rhythms. May 11, 4 pm, E407.
For the full festival schedule, visit the NWF site.
New Works Festival
CalArts
24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia
Through May 14
Free