Puppet

The Man Who Planted Trees (Seminar) at WSD2013

mwplatedWed 11 Sept 15.00 – 16.00

The Willow Theatre

The Man Who Planted Trees was awarded the 2012 CSPA Fringe Festival Award for Sustainable Production and the 2007 Eco Prize for Creativity.

The company will share their experience of creating and touring the show, conscious how lightweight set design, reuse and recycling, low-impact lighting design, backstage chat at countless venues – plus the power of a great story – has helped them to be sustainable not only in environmental terms but also as individuals working together over the last 7 years.

Who should attend?

Open to all interested in sustainability.

Price: £6

BUY TICKETS

Key contributors

Puppet State Theatre Company - http://www.puppetstate.com

The Man Who Planted Trees at WSD2013

mwplatedWed 11 Sept 13.30

The Willow Theatre

This multi-sensory theatrical adaptation of Jean Giono’s environmental classic tells the inspiring story of a shepherd who plants a forest, acorn by acorn, transforming a barren wasteland.

As much a touching tale as it is a hilarious puppet show, The Man Who Planted Trees shows us the difference one man (and his dog!) can make to the world. Touring since 2006 in the UK and internationally including repeat seasons at the Sydney Opera House and New York’s Lincoln Centre Institute.

“Laughs, heartbreak, war, regeneration, scented breezes, sparkling wit and the best dog puppet ever. Perfect for children and grown-ups. Terrific.” (The Guardian)

Who should attend?

Suitable for adults and children over 7.

Price: £6

BUY TICKETS

Key contributors

Elspeth Murray
Richard Medrington<
Puppet State Theatre Company

Links:
www.puppetstate.com 
@PuppetStateThtr
facebook.com/puppetstate

THE MAN WHO PLANTED TREES Announced as Recipient of the 2012 Award for Sustainable Production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA) has awarded the third CSPA Fringe Award for Sustainable Production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to The Man Who Planted Trees adapted from Jean Giono’s story by Ailie Cohen, Richard Medrington, Rick Conte and directed by Ailie Cohen. It is produced by the Edinburgh’s Puppet State Theater, and is currently on tour in North America.

Giono, who passed in 1970, has said about The Man Who Planted Trees in 1957: “I wrote this story to make people love trees, or more precisely to make people love planting trees. Of all my stories it is one of the ones of which I am most proud. It has never earned me a penny and for that reason it has accomplished the very purpose for which it was written.”

“The Man Who Planted Trees was chosen because of the synchronicity of the themes and the physical production of the show.” comments Ian Garrett, co-founder and Director of the CSPA. “ The award is intended to reward both smartly addressing issues of sustainability and production practices. Further, we recognize that in the Fringe environment, the physically production is often partially determined by the resources and time made available by the venues. What made The Man Who Planted Trees stand out is that it was able to successfully combine these factors into one of the most consistently lauded productions of the festival.”

The award is determined by the submission of a questionnaire about how the show was produced and audience response. The Man Who Planted Trees’ production team was able to provide comprehensive technical information for the production, which showed a commitment to design and resource efficiency. This considered approach also factored into their communications and marketing. All of these factors were further supported by the themes of the play.

The CSPA Directors, Ian Garrett and Miranda Wright adjudicated the award, along with select CSPA affiliates and friends. This year marked the beginning of a closer relation with Festival Edinburgh, which supports all of the festivals throughout August and the rest of the year. For the original Edinburgh Fringe application, Mhora Samuel and Tim Atkinson from The Theatres Trust’s European Regional Development Fund-backed Ecovenue project helped the CSPA adapt the criteria for a UK audience, providing guidance on UK equivalents to US name brands, as well as providing insight on measuring conventions and policy.

“The CSPA is not just another ‘go green’ organization,” says Wright.  “We hope to gather and distribute information that aids in the sustainability of the earth, the sustainability of our communities, and the sustainability of our art.  And so, the purpose of this award is not to recognize the greenest production.  Our objective in offering this award is to ask questions of ourselves, as theater artists, about the greater impact of our work on the world around us. The fringe model provides an ideal platform to introduce these ideas and the award due to the expectations and scale of the shows.”

“Even more so than we want someone to score perfectly on the questionnaire we use to evaluate shows, we want theater artists to look at the questions and think about how it helps to guide their thinking about sustainability in the their art. There may be questions asked in ways they hadn’t thought, and we hope they ask these questions of their next project and the project after that,” adds Garrett.

Ian Garrett and Miranda Wright founded the CSPA in early 2008 after individually working on each of the programs that now make up the multi-faceted approach to sustainability separately. The organization provides a network of resources to arts organizations, which enables them to be ecologically and economically sustainable while maintaining artistic excellence. Past and Present partnerships have included the University of Oregon, Ashden Directory, Arcola Theater, Diverseworks Artspace, Indy Convergence, York University, LA Stage Alliance and others.

Theater Matters – Notes from EMOS 2009 Part II

It’s 11am where I’m from (9am here on the west coast), and I just woke up. The schedule so far this weekend for EMOS coupled with my determination to get everywhere on a bike while I’m here has added up to the biggest physical challenge I’ve undertaken since my chemo and surgery. At about six o’clock this morning I woke up with a painful cramp in my right calf. I was determined to sleep as long as my body needed. So I did.

I wanted to write more yesterday about EMOS, but my day was so full with the goings-on here, I never got a chance. I arrived at the University of Oregon yesterday morning and began a solid, nearly twelve hour marathon of stuff.

It began by sitting in a classroom, listening to theater scholars describe their work. “Theater scholars,” I thought when I heard the term spoken from behind the lectern for the first time yesterday. “Not theater artists?”

Within the several scholarly talks I listened to yesterday there were a few that stood out, and rose above the scholarly drone. Downing Cless of Tufts University spoke interestingly of how he has directed classic works to draw out their Ecological themes; Heather Barfield Cole (who told me this morning that she’s dropping the Cole from her name soon) of UT Austin described a handful of examples of successful activist theater, including the street theater of Bread & Puppet and even the work of ACT UP — her presentation was refreshingly free of the seemingly typical readerly drone of such things.

The highlight of my day, however, was unexpected: Anne Justine D’Zmura gave a presentation to an entirely too small audience on her experience of producing a work called Green Piece where she is a professor at Cal State Long Beach. Her work was one of the best examples yet of this genre of so-called EcoDrama that I have encountered. Why? It was a completely holistic approach to the problem that we (I think) hope to address when producing work on the environment, sustainability, et cetera. She not only created an original work that thematically addressed the issue of nature, ecological destruction, and social injustice (to name a few), but also took the idea of the thing to heart and made sure to use the work to educate her students (and herself) on the core issues, as well as — and here is where you know I get excited — making a concerted effort to create a piece that tread as lightly as possible on the environment by considering its use of resources carefully. Thank you, Anne. (here is a link to Anne’s study guide for Green Piece.)

Next came Rachel Rosenthal. The now 83-year old performance artist and activist was in good form, and showed excerpts from her works Gaia, Mon Amour (1983), Rachel’s Brain (1986), and L.O.W. in Gaia (1986) — all overpowering examples of her presence on the stage. She struck me as one of the most quotable speakers I’ve ever listened to. Some examples:

“Artaud saved my life.”

“I do love some people, but I love all animals.”

“I hate being old, because I want to see what happens.”

The evening ended with a staging of C. Denby Swanson’s Atomic Farmgirl, a retelling of Teri Hein’s memoir of the same name which details her experience growing up on a farm in Washington state that was repeatedly contaminated with radiation leaking from the nearby Hanford Nuclear site. It was a play in three acts, with two (did I say two?) intermissions. And I have to say this too: as someone who has dealt with cancer directly over the past two years, I was a bit unnerved that the 1st and 2nd place winners of the EMOS play festival both dealt with cancer in a very real way.

Oh, and I almost forgot: I met Theresa May yesterday too, and she was incredibly kind. For all of the nit picking I am capable of, I cannot forget (and won’t let you) that she has undertaken this festival and is obviously a friggin’ force of nature herself. She is to be congratulated for her fortitude and drive — she is asking us to think about these things as theater artists (and scholars), and that in itself is crucial to our future.

Of course, folks never fail to disappoint:

Garrett points at the strange use of the garbage can outside UO's Miller Theatre ComplexGarrett points at the strange use of the garbage can outside UO’s Miller Theatre Complex

It may be difficult to tell in the photo above, but it was surprising to see how so many people at a festival concerned with the environment and our behavior towards it could be so clueless about what to NOT throw in the trash. Behind Ian are a string of recycling options, as well as a yellow bin for compostables — all items used for eating at the festival are designed to be compostable except (I’m not clear on why this is) the forks. But, nearly everyone threw their stuff right in the trash — even the paper plates and seemingly clean napkins. As we walked away from this, Ian and I had a discussion about the need to eliminate sorting at the consumer end of recycling. It confuses, is inefficient, and generally redundant, as most municipalities sort the recycling anyway.

Go to EcoTheater

Rogue Artists Ensemble – AUDITION: Gogol Project Workshop

Rogue Artists Ensemble is now looking for actors, puppeteers and movement-based performers for a staged workshop version of their upcoming original Hyper-theatrical work, Gogol Project, based on three tales by

Russian author Nikolai Gogol. The script been adapted for the stage by Kitty Felde with music and songs by Ego Plum.

The workshop will begin rehearsals the 2nd week of April and the workshop performs Tuesday April 28-Wednesday April 29th at Bootleg Theater on Beverly Blvd. Rehearsals will be Mon-Thurs with select

rehearsals on weekends leading up to the performance. There is a one-night mandatory technical rehearsal on Monday April 27th from 6pm – 11pm.

For more information including the character breakdown, click “read more.”

There is no pay for the workshop, but it will be a rewarding and inspiring experience for all involved The full production of Gogol Project will take place from September through October at Bootleg Theater, and

auditions will be held in July. Participation in this preliminary workshop does not guarantee a role in the full production. The workshop performance will be open to the public and pay-what-you-can/free.

The cast size for the workshop will be twelve actors, some of which will be performing as the silent characters and puppet based characters in the piece. Gogol Project will require an ensemble of actors to together create

the over twenty characters which populate the world of Nevsky Prospect. The workshop will feature some projected elements, puppets, set and costumes in order to help approximate the feel of the full production.

Interested artists should submit by March 20th to scawelti@rogueartists.org, including their resume and headshot if available.

Cast will be contacted by March 27th and auditions/readings may be scheduled if needed.

via Rogue Artists Ensemble – AUDITION: Gogol Project Workshop.