 |
|||
 |
|||
|
|
|||
July 12 - 29, 2001 Thursdays-Saturdays @8pm Sundays @ 6pm 3225 California Street, Omaha, NE Box office: 341-2757 |
SNAP!fest is a unique project that showcases new plays and plays new to Omaha in repertory, and invites the playwrights to interact with the audience, cast and directors in post-performance discussions July 26-29. SNAP! hopes to infuse the audience with a sense of adventure as they experience a play for the very first time. SNAP! also hopes to enhance the educational experience by introducing audiences to the creative process behind the performance they just witnessed. Except for the July 15 performance, all tickets are $10.
"The post-performance discussions are one of my favorite aspects of SNAP!fest," said SNAP! President, Roxanne Wach, a participant in SNAP!fest 1 and 3. "It's fascinating to hear about events and inspirations that lead the playwright to write the play. The playwright is often an elusive element in the theatrical process. While audience members may be able to discuss a performance with the actors and sometimes the director, it's a rare opportunity for the audience to be able to approach the playwright directly. This year's playwrights will really add another dimension to SNAP!fest with their amazing backgrounds."
The playwrights will be in Omaha July 26-29 due to the generosity of our travel sponsors: Tailored Travel/Paige Beeck; Old Market Encounter/Barb and Cliff Schaffer; Jerry Jensen/Jensen's Cinema 16 Collection.
This year's festival offerings are the Midwest premieres of Mother, Tree, Cat by Dori Appel, Ashland, OR, and Doric Wilson's Street Theater, New York, NY. (See attached biographical information.)
In Mother, Tree, Cat a former child prodigy revisiting her complicated Jewish family faces a confrontation with her adored lesbian aunt and a romance with a disillusioned rabbi as she struggles to regain her spirit and her art. Ms. Appel's works, Tea Time and Balance were presented in last year's SNAP!fest. Mother, Tree, Cat runs July 13-15, 26, 28. The opening night performance, July 12, is sold out and the performance on July 15 is a benefit for Temple Israel Synagogue, but is open to the public. The benefit performance cost is $25 and includes a box dinner if reservations are made by July 8 and has a special curtain time of 7 pm. A sign language interpreted performance of Mother, Tree, Cat will be presented July 13.
Ms. Appel is a psychologist and family therapist, as well as a playwright, and will provide insight into the family dynamics, acceptance issues and artistic struggle addressed in her play.
Mother, Tree, Cat is directed by Lara Marsh and the cast includes SNAP! and SNAP!fest veterans Kristi Pederson and Liz Heim as well as, Andrea Tonsfeldt, Shane Staiger and Tanya Reyes-Nechodom.
Doric Wilson's Street Theater focuses on a panorama of drags, dykes, leathermen, flower children, vice cops and cruisers - the innocent and not-so-innocent bystanders who would turn Christopher Street and the 28th of June, 1969 into D-day in gay history - the night that gays fought back. Street Theater runs July 19-22, 27, 29. A sign language interpreted performance of Street Theater will be presented July 22.
In addition to post-performance discussions during the last weekend of the run, Doric Wilson will give a talk (with plenty of time for Q & A) about the roots of Gay Theatre and Gay Theatre pre-AIDS. Doric had a great deal of his early work performed at Caffe Cino, which was a major influence on American theater, beginning what became known as Off-Off Broadway and introducing dramatists as diverse as Tom Eyen, John Guare, Robert Heide, William Hoffman, Harry Koutoukas, Robert Patrick, Sam Shepard and Lanford Wilson. Alternative theater in general, and gay theater specifically can trace their roots directly to Caffe Cino.
Doric Wilson's Street Theater is directed by Scott Jackman and the cast includes: Tom Bertino, Andy Carl, Jeremy A. Earl, James Tobey, Mike Van Meter, Matthew Weddle, Jerry Evert, Meredith White, Wai Yim, Patricia Lilyhorn, Jeff Lively, Scott Schondelmeyer, Chad Sulley and Robert Williams.
SNAP!fest 2001 is produced by Tom Bertino. Ernie Gubbels is Lighting Designer. Barbara Binns is Associate Lighting Designer. Michael Taylor-Stewart will design sets. Properties are by Rhonda Hall, and Omaha Community Playhouse interns, Jenni Harden and Sprite Haston.
SNAP! Productions
strives to provide educational and humanistic support of AIDS-related
programs and to promote understanding and acceptance of all members of
the community through artistic expression.
About the Playwrights
DORI APPEL: SNAP! audiences will remember Dori from last season's SNAP!fest where we presented two of her short works, "Tea Time" and "Balance." She is the author of 13 full-length plays, 16 one-acts, shorts and monologues, and more than 50 published poems and stories. Her plays have been produced throughout the United States, and internationally, and her poetry and fiction have been featured in many magazines and several well-known anthologies. These include "When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple" and "The Best is Yet to Be," the audio recording of which was a 1997 Grammy finalist.
She was the winner of the Oregon Book Award in 1998 for "Freud's Girls" and in 1999 for "The Lunatic Within", and has also won first place in the George R. Kernodle New Plays Contest, the New American Comedy Contest, and the Crossing Borders New Plays Contest. Recent and upcoming productions include: "Hot Flashes: Revelations of the Dangerous Age" in Ashland, Oregon; "Tea Time" at the Mae West Fest, Seattle, Washington; four short plays in the ArtsWest Festival of Plays by Women, Seattle; "Freud's Girls" at Yale College, Wales, U.K.; and "Tilt!" at Actors' Theatre, Talent, Oregon.
A native of Chicago and longtime resident of Boston, Dori Appel lives and writes in Ashland, Oregon.
DORIC WILSON: In 1974 Doric Wilson founded TOSOS, NYC's first professional theater company to deal openly and honestly with the gay experience. His plays "The West Street Gang", "A Perfect Relationship", "Now She Dances!" and "Forever After" became staples of the rapidly expanding national gay theater movement of the 1970s. In recognition of this contribution in 1994 he received the first Robert Chesley Lifetime Achievement Award.
A participant in all 3 nights of the Stonewall riots, Wilson wrote "Street Theater" not so much as a history of the event but as a record of the people he knew and the incidents he was involved in on Christopher Street in the months, days and hours leading up to the night gays fought back. Since it's opening in 1980, Street Theater has had multiple productions, most recently in Vancouver. B.C., and San Diego (CA) with productions pending in Ft. Lauderdale (FL), Rochester (NY), Yorkshire (GB), and a revival planned for next season in New York City.
Doric Wilson was one of the first playwrights at NYC's legendary Caffe Cino, his comedy "And He Made A Her" opening there in 1961. Other Cino productions included "Now She Dances!" (one-act version), "Babel Babel Little Tower" and "Pretty People." A pioneer of the Off-Off-Broadway movement, he wrote, directed, produced and/or designed over a hundred productions, becoming a founding member of Circle Repertory Theater and the Barr/Wilder/Albee Playwright's Unit.
A major revision of Doric Wilson's "Now She Dances!" had its world premiere in Glasgow, Scotland in November of 2001. The play, a fantasia on the trial of Oscar Wilde, was directed by Steve Bottoms for the Flexible Deadlock Theatre Company.
Calendar
of SNAP!fest 2001 Events
• July 13-15, 26, 28 o Mother, Tree, Cat o (Performance on July 12 is sold out.)
Curtain times: Thurs., Fri., Sat. - 8 pm o Sun. - 6 pm (July 15@7pm)
• July 13 - Sign language interpreted performance of Mother, Tree, Cat.
• July 15 o 7pm curtain o Mother, Tree, Cat: a fundraiser for Temple Israel Synagogue, open to the public.
Tickets for this date only are $25 and include a box dinner. Reserve by
July 8.
• July 19-22, 27, 29 o Doric Wilson's Street Theater
Curtain times: Thurs., Fri., Sat. - 8 p.m. o Sun. - 6 p.m.
• July 22 - Sign language interpreted performance of Doric Wilson's Street Theater
• July 26-28 - Playwrights attend performances. Please join us for post-performance discussions of the thought-provoking issues presented by the play. SNAP! offers audience members the opportunity to chat with the director, cast and the playwright, immediately following each SNAP!fest performance during the last weekend. Find out what it is like to bring these works from the mind of the playwright to paper to stage. Thank you to travel sponsors: Tailored Travel/Paige Beeck; Old Market Encounter/Barb and Cliff Schaffer; Jerry Jensen/ Jensen's Cinema 16 Collection.
• July 28 o 1 pm o SNAP!/Shelterbelt Theatre o 3225 California St. o Suggested Donation $5 - Doric Wilson will give a talk (with plenty of time for Q & A) about the roots of Gay Theatre and Gay Theatre pre-AIDS. A participant in all three days of the Stonewall riots, Doric began his career at Caffe Cino, the birthplace of Alternative, Gay and Off-Off Broadway Theatre with the likes of Robert Patrick, Sam Shepard and Lanford Wilson. Join us for this rare opportunity with Doric!