Circle Mirror Transformation
by Central Texas Theatre (formerly Vive les Arts)
Dec. 13 - Dec. 14 (2015)
Circle Mirror Transformation is a play by Annie Baker, centered on drama classes at a community centre in Vermont. The play opened Off-Broadway in 2009 and received the Obie Award for Best New American Play.
In Shirley, Vermont, Marty, an acting teacher, holds an "Adult Creative Drama" class at the local community center. The people who sign up for the class are Schultz, a recently divorced carpenter; Lauren,a reserved high school junior; Teresa, a former actress; and Marty's husband James. Marty takes the "students" through various acting and dramatic exercises; they act like trees, beds and baseball gloves. In one exercise, they act as one another and tell their life stories. As a possible romance begins each of the group slowly reveal themselves. In a final exercise, Lauren imagines herself meeting Schultz in 10 years and they tell each other what has transpired.
Circle Mirror Transformation was developed at the Sundance Institute in 2008, directed by Sam Gold[7] and the New York Theatre Workshop,[8] with additional support from the Sundance Institute Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship.[9]
The play is dedicated to "my wonderful director and five beautiful actors."[9]
Baker said that she "wanted the audience to learn about the characters through formal theater exercises. I knew I wanted there to be excruciating silences. I knew I wanted a doomed class romance that left one character embarrassed and the other heartbroken. I knew I wanted the characters to deliver monologues as each other....Eventually I realized that the fun of the play is the fact that it's confined to this dull, windowless little space."[10]
In an interview in 2011, she explained that "Like many of her works, says Baker, 'Circle Mirror' grew out of research, contemplation and 'fragments of ideas.' She wanted to watch amateurs learn to act. In a windowless room in a community center.
-- Wikipedia
Directed by Betsi Chamlee
[image via www.showclix.com for a production in Poughkeepsie, NY]
Auditions for our next main-series show, Circle Mirror Transformation, will be Sunday and Monday, December 13 and 14, at 7 p.m. at the theatre. Betsi Chamlee will direct the show.
We need actors who can "hula-hoop". During auditions, there will be cold readings from the script and some movement exercises.
In an artsy small town, an unlikely collection of strangers sign up for Marty's "Adult Creative Drama" class. Unfolding like a charmingly funny indie film, the group plays Marty's imaginative (and sometimes awkward) theatre games. But as their relationships develop over the course of the summer, the seemingly silly games generate some real-life drama.
This delightful comedy from new playwright Annie Baker landed on Top Ten lists of The New York Times and The New Yorker for 2010.
