The Cutting Ball Variety Pack
A Fortnight of Exploration and Collaboration
Snack food for the artistic soul
As easy as grabbing a bag of chips… come explore the act of creation with any combination of our delicious samples.
February 2 - February 13, 2018
Artwork by Jennifer Berkowitz
The Variety Pack is made up of a mix of programming, from an evening of staged short works with the Director's Series to a workshopped reading of two new plays in the Playwrights Series and one time readings of works that spark the Cutting Ball imagination in the Reading Series.
The Directors
Series
An Evening of Four Short Plays
Have you ever wondered how you would stage a production? What choices would you make? What would you want your audiences to feel? To think? Hop on a fast moving conveyor belt of four short pieces featuring music, theater, and movement.
The Directors Series is a program of four short works across a single evening of performance dedicated to directorial exploration with the aim of introducing audiences to a broad array of interdisciplinary, experimental techniques. This series promotes collaboration between the mediums of theater, music, movement, and more and crosses cultural and linguistic boundaries. Placing a premium on the inventive capacities of its lead artists and providing these artists the opportunity to experiment, The Directors Series is rooted in a firm commitment to brave artistic choices.
Ode by Daria Kaufman
Proben im Haus by Paige Rogers and Leighton Fong
Iago: Images Unseen by Jonathan Vandenberg
Pezzetti 2 by Beatrice Basso and Valentina Emeri
The Playwrights
Series
How do you turn words into characters? What do playwrights learn from actors? Watch words come to life.
The Playwrights Series is an incubator for experimental new works. Two unproduced and unpublished plays, selected from a pool of 150 script submissions, are presented in staged readings after a week-long developmental process to refine authorial vision and further craft these in-progress scripts. These two plays may be wildly different from one another but both push theatrical expectations and conventions in form and content. The Playwrights Series reflects Cutting Ball's commitment to the new experimental canon and the emerging artists who will shape it.
THUNDERBODIES: a reading of a new play by Kate Tarker
Complex (KOM-pleks): a reading of a new play by Alexa Derman
The Reading
Series
What if you threw a party and theater happened?
The Reading Series is designed to rally groups of performers and curious listeners for informal, one-time-only readings of plays that may find their way to Cutting Ball's stage in future seasons, or that are just plain exciting to the company's core artists. The Reading Series invites audiences to peek into Cutting Ball's artistic hivemind to get acquainted with classical, canonized, modern and new works and provides Cutting Ball's artists the space to explore and engage with authored plays in depth.
A reading of The Marriage of Figaro, discussion led by Rob Melrose
A reading of Ritter, Dene, Voss, discussion led by Paige Rogers
A reading of Natasha's Dream, discussion led by Paige Rogers
A reading of The Book of Grace, discussion led by Rob Melrose
Thank you to our sponsors Standard Deviant Brewing and Estancia Vineyards
Associate Producers Mary-Kay Gamel, Rebecca Kurland, Sarah Kowalczyk, and Russell Nelson