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| MET OPPORTUNITIES |
| MULTI ETHNIC THEATER |
| POETRY ONSTAGE |
| MET is a project of Theater Residencies, Incorporated (TRI ), a California non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation. |
- Actors who love poetry (and poets who love to perform) are invited to participate. The project will include
abundant opportunities for growth and for performance in multiple small venues like galleries and cafés.
- MET's first POETRY ONSTAGE presentation will be
An Evening of Poetry and Guitars
- on the first weekend of March 2013.
- This fully rehearsed project will celebrate the 20th anniversary of MET and the 80th birthday of its Artistic
Director. Featured will be three guitarists, several actors and some of the word's most beloved poems.
Proceeds will benefit the Gough Street Playhouse Building Fund.
- To request participation information click on the CONTACT US button above.
- Additional monthly poetry projects will alternate between open mike events and rehearsed presentations.
- Once a Month Open Mike
Opportunities for poets to read their own work and for actors and other readers to present selections from their favorite poets.
Once a Month Featured Poet
Presentations ranging from Homer, Sappho and Shakespeare to Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda,
Maya Angelou and a host of others.
Occasional voice and speech workshops will help participants ease into the challenges of speaking poetry.
- Poetry Alive and Onstage – a rehearsal and performance workshop
Training, rehearsal and guaranteed workshop performances for actors, poets and interested beginners. Basic instruction in
three hour weekend sessions. Includes priority audition opportunities for the for MET's Poetry Onstage Series.
- Basic Voice and Speech for the Actor
An holistic approach using the Lessac method to train the entire voice and speech mechanism to respond naturally and with
vibrant clarity to a full range of acting challenges. Students learn to relax the upper body and larynx, to meaningfully control
the four basic variables of voice and speech (volume, pitch, rate and quality), and to clearly project vowels and consonants.
- Workshops are tuition free for members of MET, Custom Made Theatre, and Trinity-Saint Peter's Church.
a new MET project for 2013 and beyond
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| Additional Projects Under Consideration (Lewis's Bucket List) |
- 20th Century American Revivals with Current Political Ramifications
Power: A Living Newspaper from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
Flexible cast – Flexible staging
One of the Federal Theatre Project's most popular productions, Power played on the double meaning of its title, dramatizing the
story of the development of the electric utility industry as well as the struggle to control that technology. Another title in the series is
One Third of a Nation: A Living Newspaper About Housing. Or several Living Newspaper scripts could be mined to form a
production alarmingly relevant today. The educational value of this project would appeal to schools. Development of this project
would work well with a workshop approach. Another approach would be to use a short Living Newspaper sampler as a context
establishing opening act for a production of Clifford Odets’ Depression Era one-act Waiting for Lefty.
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
Winner of the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award, this evocative, poetic drama explores the pains of youth and the meaning of
family through the eyes of young Jasmine "Frankie" Adams.
To Kill a Mockingbird adapted by Christopher Sergel from the novel by Harper Lee
Courtroom drama exploring racial bigotry and heroic understanding in the pre-civil rights era American South.
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
A new bare stage approach using a cast of eight to cover thirty roles and the townspeople. This is a fictionalized re-telling of the
famous Scopes trial of the early twentieth century. It is especially relevant today considering the current challenges to scientific
thought by the religious right.
- plus any play by August Wilson
- International Plays With Political Bite
Take No Survivors by Gerard Bagardie West Coast Premier Translated by Arnold Slater
2w, bare stage/one interior -- 90 minutes without intermission
Paris. December, 2050. The Youth Brigades are facing Government troops at the barricades. A civil war is imminent. The
President has agreed to meet the young revolutionary leader who demands to be given control of the Government. They are two
ruthless, ambitious, and ideological women who confront each other through the night.
Winner in 1999 of the Jean Anouilh Prize for Best New Play in France.
English language premiere in 2006 at New York’s 59E59 theater. No other US productions.
Brecht on Brecht arranged from the writings of Bertolt Brecht and Translated by George Tabori
Reader's Theatre with music -- 3 - 4 m, 3 - 4w -- Bare stage and stools (w/projections)
The life and works of Bertolt Brecht provide a compelling revue that earned critical acclaim Off Broadway. Showcasing Brecht's
youthful philosophical musings on such matters as book burning, ideology, advice to actors, and critics. Includes excerpts from such
dramatic works as The Good Woman of Setzuan and The Jewish Wife as well as songs and poems.
- Theater Classics
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
In this production Pale Hecate and the witches would run the show as puppeteers from on high moving into the action and donning
the garb of various smaller roles: messengers, servants and hired murderers. The cast would thus be smaller and the action
streamlined.
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
This production would be set on a Mississippi River Boat, The Illyria. The Captain of the boat is Duke Orsino, and Lady Olivia, the
woman he pines for, runs a saloon and theater on the lower deck. “If music be the food of love” refers to a banjo played by Feste,
an actor in Olivia’s theater company.
She Stoops to Conquer, or The Mistakes of a Night by Oliver Goldsmith 18th Century comedy 3w, 5m
This play would work well in a cartoon-like Wild West setting with simple staging. A excellent holiday choice.
The Trojan Women by Euripides
Special staging set in a modern center for politically captured women. Features offstage sounds of modern warfare: helicopters
landing, jeeps approaching and screeching to a stop, distant explosions. Period images rethought for modern staging. For example
Hecuba to her daughter, the maddened Cassandra: “Give me your torch, you do not hold it well.” But Cassandra is actually
brandishing a hand grenade from which she has just pulled the pin.
An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
Dr. Stockman, by standing up for what he knows is right, becomes unpopular when the town discovers that his knowledge regarding
health problems at the profitable local mineral baths poses an inconvenient truth which is likely to cause financial losses to the
mercenary minded population.
The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky
Modern adaptation of the Russian naturalistic drama. Scene: a hangout room in an urban flop house. This production would be
set in a modern slum area with a bunch of familiar down and out characters from a wide variety of former stations in life.
- Musical Theater Projects
Walt Kelly’s Songs of the Pogo World Premier Production 3-4w, 4-5m
The text would be from the comic strip Pogo, with infectious music from the album Songs of the Pogo. The two have never been
combined to form a musical. The material presents an exciting opportunity for a group-write, improvisational approach similar to
Second City’s development of Story Theatre.
Opera do Malandro by Chico Barque English Language Premier 7-8w, 7-8m Open staging with space for dancing.
From Brazil, this is an energetic, samba driven retelling of The Three Penny Opera.
Down in the Valley by Kurt Weill and librettist Arnold Sundgaard a one-act opera
1w (soprano), 5 m (3 sung, 2 spoken) plus a chorus of townspeople
Runaways by Elizabeth Swados Summer Youth Production 7-10w, 8-11m
Swados took her idea for a musical about running away "from home, from a boyfriend, from a predator,... from yourself" to Joseph
Papp, who agreed to produce it. She looked for children to be in the musical in various places in New York City, such as a community
center, and "little by little, we built a world where runaways came together, told their stories, and acted out the hardships they
endured." Some in the cast were actual runaways. The show was done in a series of songs, monologues, scenes, poems, and
dances
The Me Nobody Knows Summer Youth Production a cast of 12 (ages 12 to 25).
Tony-nominated and Obie Award-winning musical. Within the envelope of a single day, the show poetically examines the aspirations
and fears of a multi-racial cast of young people. Inspired by actual writings of students in the New York City Public Schools, the
stories are universal, and can be shared by and with all races.
- Exclusively For the Chapel Space
A Shakespeare Valentine a February treat in 2014.
This fully rehearsed project, will consist of fifty-three sonnets especially staged to create a “new play” about the joys and perils of
- Mr. Shakespeare’s Magic Mirror
This is a training / performance vehicle in anticipation of later full-length Shakespeare challenges. It consists of an evening of
scenes, “tragical, comical, historical,” and a few sonnets. Included is a ten minute Shakespeare baseball game: “A hit! A hit! A most
palpable hit!”
A Read-Along Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens an enjoyable, low-cost fund-raiser
The entire original version read by participating audience members, cast as they arrive, and reading from prepared copies, on which
assigned sections are highlighted. Three and a half hours with a Victorian dinner break.
The Serpent: a Ceremony by Jean-Claude van Itallie
The Book of Genesis and some violent American history combine to make a moral statement.
Salomé: a tragedy in one act by Oscar Wilde
A staged choral presentation, costumes but no scenery.
Two On an Emerald Aisle
a dialect training/performance vehicle – two Irish one-act plays to be selected.