GREEN Auditions at the eco-friendly Wild Project theater
The wild project is a production company and venue for contemporary theater, film, and visual art. They hope to bring the community together by providing inspiring and entertaining art from emerging artists, exploring green technologies, and finding innovative ways to help our world and each other. Inspired by our participation within the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, the Wild Project chose to support our production of GOLIATH as our sponsor. We held our auditions in the Wild Project theater- a space that utilizes skylights for natural lighting, has a garden on the roof to help with insulation, water efficient flushing options in the bathrooms, organic eco-friendly cleaning supplies, and solar panels for all the non-theater lighting. It was a fantastic place for our auditions and a great way to start off our eco-friendly production of GOLIATH!
We started the process by trying to reduce paper waste as much as possible. While the script still underwent some changes we utilized handheld smart phones and laptop computers to avoid printing copies of the script that would be used for only one or two readings or rehearsals.
Found Design Elements
Goliath’s Director (and Co-Artistic Director of Poetic Theater Productions) Alex Mallory envisioned a minimalist design utilizing items that one could find on the street. The full scenic design included three milk crates and a few pages from the New York Times. The minimalist approach that only utilized re-purposed elements was eco-friendly, cost-efficient and was the perfect non-obtrusive complement to the poetic text of the show.  |
| Our awesome Associate Producer, Eden Jeffries, with set (and back-up) in tow! |
Using the real uniforms
As NYtheatre.com describes so well, GOLIATH “is the story of a young soldier, David, who heads off to the Iraq war to become the man others expect him to be, and loses the man who he wants to become in the process.” David’s father is a Vietnam veteran, David’s drill sergeant also plays an integral role in the show. Instead of designing and creating new costumes we followed our costuming consultant Sydney Gallas’s advice to go to Kaufman’s Army & Navy where we were able to rent a real uniform that was used in Iraq, a jacket used in Vietnam, and a real drill sergeant’s uniform. Using these items was not only the eco-friendly route, but added a somber reminder that these characters being portrayed in the show represent men and women who serve our country. | ||
| Dontonio Demarco (rear) and M. Scott Frank (front) in real ACU uniforms rented from Kaufman's Army & Navy |
Support for the men and women serving abroad: VFW’s Operation Uplink
Throughout the run of GOLIATH we encouraged our audience to donate to Operation Uplink, a program of Veterans of Foreign Wars that enables troops stationed overseas to call home free of charge through sponsored “Free Call Days”. This program is funded entirely by donations. In addition to funds donated by our audience members, all proceeds from the sold-out June 11th performance of GOLIATH (50% of all ticket sales) will be donated to the program. The mission of VFW is to foster camaraderie among United States veterans of overseas conflicts, to serve our veterans, the military, and our communities, and to advocate on behalf of all veterans. In addition to raising awareness of this extremely important program run by the VFW, we were able to raise hundreds of dollars to support the program, enabling many of our soldiers to call home and talk to their families. Warrior Writers
Before each performance of GOLIATH poets and artists from our community including Quinn Warren, Wade Ray, Elliott D. Smith, Akua Doku, Joseph Reese, and Urban Word NYC youth poets Ishmael and Mega presented original poetry as well as poetry by current and former members of the armed service through the Warrior Writers Project: an organization that brings together recent veterans and current service members to be in creative community and utilize art-making processes to express themselves. This was an important element to us as it gave us an opportunity to share the words of veterans on our stage and to prepare our audience for the topics touched upon in GOLIATH.You can read some of the poetry we presented on the Warrior Writers website.
I Am Who Survived Forgive Me by Aaron Hughes
6 Marines in the Picture by Cloy Richards
You Are Not My Enemy by Drew Cameron
Blood Sweat and Tears by Cloy Richards
Urban Word NYC
On June 7th and 16th we featured poetry performances from Urban Word NYC poets Ishmael and Mega. Urban Word NYC champions the voices of New York City youth by providing platforms for critical literacy, youth development and leadership through free and uncensored writing, college prep and performance opportunities. As we continue to expand out community as Poetic Theater Productions, it is important to us to hear the words of talented up and coming youth and to introduce Urban Word NYC’s amazing program to our audiences. We hope to explore more ways to collaborate with Urban Word NYC in the future.
______________________________________
We are so grateful to Planet Connections for encouraging us to keep finding new ways to be green and support good causes! Thanks to everyone who saw the show and we hope to see you at the next one- keep up with us at www.poetictheater.com!
No comments:
Post a Comment