Praxis Theatre

Shaw Directors Project Casting Announced

Senora Carrar’s Rifles by Bertolt Brecht

Guernica by Pablo Picasso

Directed by Michael Wheeler

Written in 1937, Senora Carrar’s Rifles is heavily inspired by Synge’s Riders To The Sea, moving the action to a fishing village on The Mediterranean Sea during The Spanish Civil War.

Senora Carrar has already lost her husband to the war and struggles to prevent her sons and guns from going to the front as the Nationalist fascist forces approach.  First published in Prague one year before the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, written by Brecht at the same time as Fear and Misery in The Third Reich, it is a play that was written to explore an immediate moral dilemna facing pacifist progressives everywhere as Fascist forces took over Europe.

The style of performance is an anomaly for Brecht -it was what he called, “Aristotelian (empathy) drama” – complete with a rendition of Ave Maria during the tragic climax. To mitigate any negative effects created by theatre of this nature, Brecht recommends the play be shown with “with a documentary film showing the events in Spain, or with a propaganda manifestation of any sort.”

Starring:

Set and costume design by Erin Gerofsky

Lighting Design by Conor Moore

Original Soundscape performed live by Beau Dixon

Stage Managed by Breanne Jackson

FourPlay by George S. Kaufman & Alice Gerstenberg

Roy Lichtenstein Modular Painting with Four Panels No 2

Directed by Krista Jackson

Thanks to Peter Millard for the title of my two show project: FourPlay. George S. Kaufman’s If Men Played Cards as Women Do linked with Alice Gerstenberg’s Overtones.

The show begins with four men meeting for poker and transitions into four women meeting for tea in a New York City flat in the early twenties. Gerstenberg’s most famous one-act  first played in 1915 in NY and went on to a vaudeville tour starting in her hometown of Chicago a year later. The Kaufman premiered at Irving Berlin’s third Music Box Revue in 1923 at his Music Box Theatre in New York.

I have discovered in my research that Broadway Revue’s were different from musicals or vaudeville of that period. Revue’s were editorial cartoons on a certain topic curated by the director usually with a theme in mind. We are incorporating elements of the Great American Revue into the music and design of both pieces.  I’m thrilled to be collaborating with this amazing team of actors and designers and to be presenting it with Brecht!

Starring:

Set and costume design by Erin Gerofsky

Lighting Design by Conor Moore

Original music performed live by Scott Christian

Stage Managed by Marie-Claude Valiquet

* Are you an Artistic Director? Would you like to be invited to the industry performance of these works on Friday September 21 at 2PM? Send an email to let us know. Click here to read more posts about The Directors Project by Krista and Michael.