I have the pleasure of announcing a public reading of my new play Rousseau and Hobbes: November 21, 2011, 7 pm, Bullitt Cabaret stage, ACT Theatre, Seattle.
Readings are an important step in the development of a new play. The audience’s response teaches the writer and director a great deal about where the play requires more attention before the project moves to a fully staged production. I hope you can be part of this exciting process.
This project has the good fortune that John Vreeke is directing. John is a renowned director who has helmed many productions all over the country. While he’s directed many classic plays, he has a passion for new work and has already been an immense help to me as I work on rewrites (an essential part of script writing).
We have a cast of seven, large by contemporary theatre standards. The female roles have all been cast with some of Seattle’s finest actresses. As soon as the male roles are finalized, I will announce the cast on – where else? – this blog.
This reading is made possible by the generous support of the Central Heating Lab at ACT Theatre. I cannot thank enough the many fine and passionate folks at ACT for their support of my writing and this project.
You might well be wondering what this play is about. It is the story of world-famous primatologist Dr. Mira Feldman in Uganda in 1994. Feldman has isolated herself from other people, emotionally and geographically, and shifted her attachments to the chimpanzees she studies. Refugees fleeing the genocide in nearby Rwanda penetrate the forest where Feldman conducts her research. Starving, the refugees eat a chimpanzee. Primate research designed to uncover evolutionary roots for human aggression is imperiled by violence in the form of genocide. For Feldman, this threat is terrifying and personal: she is devoted to her chimpanzees plus keenly aware that her own grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz fifty years earlier. When genocide convulses Feldman’s world, how will she respond?
Two previous blog posts described Rousseau and Hobbes’s inception and first private reading with actors.
I hope you can join me on this artistic journey ten weeks from now at ACT Theatre.
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