Metamorphoses
Senior Company 2011
The Department of Theater and Senior Company 2011 presented Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses in the Lang Performing Arts Center's Frear Ensemble Theatre.
Friday, December 3rd at 4:30pm and 9:00pm
Saturday, December 4th at 3:00pm and 8:00pm
The Senior Company included Eva Amessé '11, Nell Bang-Jensen '11, Emily Letts '11, Joshua Lipman '11, Isa St. Clair '11, and Brian Willis '11, with guest performers Ben Hattem '12, Thomas Powers '13 and Brian Ratcliffe '11. The production also included set design by Professor Laila Swanson, lighting design by Jessie Bear '09, sound design by Louis Jargow '10, costume consultation by Tara Webb '94 and props design by Vianca Masucci '13 and Logan Tiberi-Warner '11.
Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses is a non-naturalistic play that uses mythic elements to tell stories about human transformation. The play is based on the myths of Ovid as translated by David Slavitt, along with several other fables as interpreted by the playwright, and includes words from a poem by Rainer Marie Rilke. After initially premiering in 1996 at Northwestern University, it was picked up in 1998 by the Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago and then premiered off-Broadway in October 2001 at the Second Stage Theater in New York. Metamorphoses opened on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theater in 2002, was nominated for Best Play and won a Tony Award for Best Direction.
The play builds a foundation of striking images that examines human behavior and emotions from different viewpoints. Senior Company has staged the production as a series of fantastical, Greek vignettes in an abstract and thought-provoking environment. Senior Company's collective design and collaborative process focuses this production on the storytelling, explores the relationships of the multitude of characters present in its world, and showcases the central idea of the play. The characters are not the actors themselves, but various storytelling personas that the actors manifest as needed using props, physicality, and costumes. The goal is to offer tales to ponder and wonder about, not to make the audience choose sides between story and storyteller. As Mary Zimmerman has stated about the play, "the Greek gods, I believe, are twelve different names for feelings inside ourselves...." --Program Notes, Joshua Lipman '11 (December 2010)
