VITAL DRAMA League Alumni Directors Fest

Alumni of the Drama League Directors Project choose and direct their favorite projects.

WEEK ONE: APRIL 27-30, 2006

In Yehuda Hyman’s Swan Lake Calhoun (Actors Theatre of Louisville Heideman Award winner), two regular guys are ice fishing when an accident occurs. A lovely swan (or maybe a goose — she won’t admit which) who happens to be an enchanted Ukrainian former dental technician, comes to the rescue. Pesha Rudnick directs.

Mahayana Landowne creates and directs Blue Period – Still Into Life.
She engages physical imagination with Picasso’s paintings to create a performance translation of his blue world through scenes that address war, poverty, longing and love.

In Shawn B. Hirabayashi’s Poor Ophelia, a sad young woman sits and sips champagne while reading the Bard, poised on a limb over a pond of cool water. She suddenly finds herself in the pool where a bizarre mix of strangers — Bette Davis as the Snake, a Fellini-esque clown gravedigger, her mass murderer boyfriend and his oblivious mom, and others, try to keep her from the cave that calls to her. Julie Hamburg directs.

In Brian Sloan’s Bumping Heads, when a night of dancing at the Roxy goes terribly wrong, two men spend the balance of their Saturday evening in an Emergency Room tending to wounds both physical and emotional. A sassy medical intern doesn’t help matters as they try to sort out their relationship. Andrew Volkoff directs.

WEEK TWO: MAY 4-7, 2006

Gregory Lamont Allen directs Dearborn Heights by Outer Critics Circle Award winner Cassandra Medley. Two African American women — one light-skinned, the other dark — meet in a home-style diner in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. What starts as a gushing new friendship turns hellish when their own prejudices are pushed by the intolerance shown by the other diners.

Max Sparber’s The Older Gentleman is set in a small, repressive Midwestern town in the early 1960s, where a college student and his “flamboyant” vocal coach discover they have more in common than anyone would suspect. Rob Urbinati directs.

Push It is Maria Gabriele’s comedy of the brutal. In a reality show gone wild, actors playing Chekhov’s Three Sisters are pitted against each other. As the host eggs them and the audience on, The Chopper waits in the wings, ready to take off a body part of the loser. Tom Rowan directs.

In Tell Her That by Michael John Garcés, two divorced parents try to get their uncommunicative daughter to explain a dramatic event at school.
In Garcés’ perceptive and staccato style, no one understands, no one connects, and no one can finish a sentence. Moritz Von Stuelpnagel directs.

Box Office Hours: 10-6 Monday thru Friday, BO opens 1 hour before show other times

Group Sales Number (10+): 212-579-0528

Appropriate For Ages: 14 and up