Sundance Institute Announces Acting Company & Collaborators for Fall Musical and Ensemble Lab at MASS MoCA

The Sundance Institute Theatre Program announced The Acting Company and collaborators for the three projects being developed at its Fall Lab, which begins today at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). Under the supervision of Philip Himberg, Artistic Director of the Theatre Program, and Producing Director Christopher Hibma, the two-week Lab provides creative support and direction for innovative musical theatre and ensemble-generated projects.

Participants include:

Acting Company & COLLABORATORS
Jay Ansill, Jesse Blesky (Middletown), Hannah Cabell (A Man for All Seasons, 3C), Cindy Cheung (Middletown), Larry Cohen, Edward Cosla, Veanne Cox (Caroline or Change, Company), Eamon Farell (Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse), David Garrison (Married with Children, Silence! The Musical), Elizabeth Barrett Groth, Rebecca Hart (On The Levee), Charlie Hofheimer (Mad Men), Daniel Kluger, Joseph Lark-Riley, Betsy Lippitt, April Mathis (On The Levee), Annie McNamara (GATZ), Greg Mehrten (The Wooster Group), Maude Mitchell (Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse), Deirdre O’Connell (In the Wake, Circle Mirror Transformation), Kyoung Park, Luly Santangelo, Jill Schackner (Les Misérables), Jessica Weinstein (Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse)

STAGE MANAGEMENT
Amy Ehrenberg, McKenzie Murphy & Matthew Melchiorre

DRAMATURGS
Janice Paran (Senior Program Associate), Jill Morris & Thomas White

CREATIVE ADVISORS
Lynn Nottage & Jeanine Tesori

CASTING DIRECTOR
Henry Russell Bergstein

PRODUCTION MANAGER
David Nelson

As previously announced, the projects selected for the Lab are:

Adler & Gibb
Conceived and directed by Tim Crouch

Tim Crouch’s Adler & Gibb is the story of the attempted appropriation of another person's life and work. A young film actress, eager to portray a famous now-deceased artist, tries to research and reconstruct the woman’s story. But the artist herself has achieved fame by creating a purposeful temporal body of work meant never to be remembered or reclaimed. The impulses behind Adler & Gibb stem from Tim Crouch’s interest in our responsibility as artists to reality (and, in this instance, real people).

Tim is a UK theatre artist based in Brighton. He writes plays, performs in them and takes responsibility for their production. Tim works with a number of associates and collaborators to produce his writing. There isn’t a company structure; things and people are brought together as they are needed. Tim is a UK theatre artist based in Dublin. He writes plays, performs in them and takes responsibility for their production. Tim works with a number of associates and collaborators to produce his writing. There isn’t a company structure; things and people are brought together when they are needed.

Iowa
Songs & lyrics by Todd Almond
Text by Jenny Schwartz
Directed by Ken Rus Schmoll

Iowa is a collaboration between playwright Jenny Schwartz and song writer Todd Almond. The story revolves around a 14 year old girl named Becca whose mother Sandy has reunited over Facebook with her high school prom date Roger. Iowa’s style is heightened, absurdist, fantastical, existential and surreal. Nancy Drew is a character in the play, as is a singing pony.

Almond and Schwartz are the recipients of the 2012 Frederick Loewe Award for Musical Theatre for the development of Iowa. This summer they workshopped the play at Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Mabou Mines’ Glass Guignol
Directed by Lee Breuer

Tennessee Williams is one of America’s greatest playwrights yet nearly half of his work has been either poorly received or rarely produced. When Williams changed his style of work, he was deeply resented by the critical establishment at the time. Glass Guignol, conceived by acclaimed New York ensemble Mabou Mines, is an alternative Williams conceit, style, attitude and staging to virtually every production that has gone before. In Glass Guignol, Williams’ relationship with his sister Rose is explored through a variety of his texts, as if their secrets were hidden in a series of Chinese boxes. Utilizing the frame of The Two Character Play, Glass Guignol replaces the play within the play with a selection of Williams quotes from other works – plays, short stories and poems that elucidate and dramatize the brother sister relationship – the most important, agonizing and creatively stimulating of his life.

The work features award winners Maude Mitchell, (Mabou Mines’ DollHouse: Village Voice OBIE, BackStage West Garland Award, an Elliot Norton Best Actress Award and a Drama League nomination), Greg Mehrten (OBIE -Mabou Mines’ Lear), Eamonn Farrell and Jessica Weinstein (both of Mabou Mines’ DollHouse).