Caridad Svich's Way of Water Reading Series

A month-long nationwide reading series of a play about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the lives it affected.

1 Campaign |

New York, United States

$385 USD 10 backers

15% of $2,500 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal

Why a Reading Scheme Now?

NoPassport theatre alliance and press is committed to the advocacy, promotion, production and publication of creative expressions of diversity and difference in theatre and performance. It is also committed to interventionist actions through theatre-making in culture toward peace, healing, forgiveness, positive action, and resistance to uncivil actions.

The effect on human health on residents in the Gulf of Mexico region, as result of excessive use of toxic dispersant and toxic rain during the BP oil spill clean-up, has resulted in thousands of reported illnesses and deaths, and hundreds of lawsuits against BP that have yet been resolved.

Awareness to the effect on health, way of life and living, endangerment to livelihood of commercial fishermen, and the increased fragility of indigenous and Creole communities in the region is part of this schemeâ€™s community-action goals.

How can theatre transform and speak poetically to our lives? How can we let art live within us and see our world anew? How to continue to engage civically in the nexus between art and practice and life?

NoPassport asks these questions with any conference, reading, publication , open mic or scholars symposium it forges into action. The same is true with this scheme.

Who We Are

Cariâ€‹dad Svich is a US Latina playwright, translator, lyricist and editor. She received the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for her play The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende. Her works have been presented across the US and abroad at diverse venues, including Denver Center Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Repertorio Espanol, 59East59, McCarren Park Pool, 7 Stages, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Teatro Mori (Santiago, Chile), ARTheater (Cologne), and Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK. She has been short-listed for the PEN Award in Drama three times, including in the year 2010 for her play Instructions for Breathing. Among her key works:12 Ophelias, Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues, Any Place But Here, Iphigenia...a rave fable, Fugitive Pieces, In the Time of the Butterflies (based on Julia Alvarezâ€™s novel), Magnificent Waste, and the multimedia collaboration The Booth Variations. She was recently profiled in American Theatre magazine. She has edited several books on theatre including Trans-Global Readings and Theatre in Crisis? (both for Manchester University Press) and Divine Fire (BackStage Books). She is alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport theatre alliance & press, associate editor of Routledge/UK's Contemporary Theatre Review, Drama Editor of literary journal Asymptote(www.asymptotejournal.com) and contributing editor of TheatreForum. She holds an MFA in Theatre-Playwriting from UCSD. Website: http://www.caridadsvich.com

Dramaturg:

Heather Helinsky received her MFA in Dramaturgy from the American Repertory Theatre/MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. At the American Repertory Theater, she dramaturged for directors Robert Woodruff, Krystian Lupa, Scott Zigler, Marcus Stern, and Sasha Marin. In season 2008-2009, she worked as Resident Dramaturg at Pittsburgh Public Theater, where she organized events for the celebration of the final play of the August Wilson Cycle as well as the premiere of Edgerton grant play Harry's Friendly Service. In season 2009-2010, she worked with director Austin Pendleton on Terrence McNally's new play Golden Age at Philadelphia Theatre Company. Heather is dedicated to developing new American plays and reads for organizations like Sundance Theatre Lab, Great Plains Theatre Conference, PlayPenn and many others. Nationally, she has been developing new plays with Constance Congdon, Caridad Svich, Tom Gibbons, Toni Press-Coffman, Rob Zellers, Ellen Struve, and Matthew Ivan Bennett. She has been a member of LMDA since 2006. Website: www.

Assistant Dramaturg:

R. Alex Davis graduated in 2009 from Bard College with a B.A. in Playwriting. His thesis play, Endless Carnations, was produced at Bard and directed by Claudia Zelevanksy. Alex is a founding member of Rogue Company, a division of Raleigh-based BARE Theater, dedicated to the performance of classical texts. As an actor, he has also performed the works of Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Brecht, and others in numerous theatrical productions. In 2010, Alex co-produced a festival of plays by Jean Genet, including his own adaptation of Genet's Deathwatch, at Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn. Most recently, he worked as a production assistant on Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson's Einstein on the Beach. Other recent projects include the solo performance Schizocity, a devised-theater adaptation of Zachary Mason's Lost Books of the Odyssey, and a dance piece entitled BOYS. Alex currently lives in Brooklyn.

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