Projects
In addition to major productions Circle Rep ran a Projects-in-Progress series called Circle Rep Lab. The Lab's Artistic Director was first Daniel Irvine, then Michael Warren Powell. Powell left due to artistic differences and was replaced by Edward M. Hausle, a young actor and playwright for the Lab since 1993. This choice caused some controversy amongst some of the long-standing members due to his age (Hausle was only 25 at the time.) At its height the Lab had over 300 active members. (actors, writers directors and designers) Plays selected for this series received a week of rehearsal and a four-performance run. Several of these plays went on to become major productions the following season or at other theaters, and include such original stagings as Marsha Norman's 'Night, Mother, Bill C. Davis' Mass Appeal, and William M. Hoffman's As IS. Michael Warren Powell is now artistic director of a successor company, Circle East, which continues on a smaller scale the work of the Lab.
The literary office, headed by B. Rodney Marriott and followed by Milan Stitt, was one of the few that read unsolicited scripts and plays and responded with detailed criticism. To the end of developing scripts and plays, the company ran two reading series, Friday Readings and Extended Readings.
The company collaborated with the Dramatists Guild on a series called Young Playwrights Festival, founded by Stephen Sondheim and Gerald Chapman in 1981. For the festival, ten plays with writers ranging from 8 to 18 were chosen for full production or staged readings. Plays were produced at Circle Rep with professional actors. Among the playwrights were Kenneth Lonergan and Jonathan Marc Sherman.
Read more about this topic: Circle Repertory Company
Famous quotes containing the word projects:
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)