Tag Archive for: Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig

LIDLESS AT THE FESTIVAL

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LIDLESS the new play by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig is set in Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2004 and a week in Minnesota 15 years later. I am looking forward to sharing this terrific new American play with you July 7th-August 1st at the Contemporary American Theater Festival.

MEET THE CAST OF LIDLESS:

Eva Kaminsky will portray Alice: A U.S. Military interrogator.

Eva Kaminsky: Alice in LIDLESS

 

Barzin Akhavan will play Bashir: A Pakistani-Canadian.

Barzin Akhavan: Bashir in LIDLESS

 Zabryna Guevara will play Riva: An Iraqi-Assyrian Texan.

Zabryna Guevara: Riva in LIDLESS

Michael Goodfriend will play Lucas: Alice’s husband.

Michael Goodfriend: Lucas in LIDLESS

Reema Zaman will play Rhiannon: Alice’s daughter.

Reema Zaman: Rhiannon in LIDLESS

 Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig: Playwright

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig: Playwright

 Ed Herendeen

IN HER OWN WORDS

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Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig in her own words talking about her new play LIDLESS:

“The first thing I started with was a cast size. I like ensemble plays, and I like odd numbers on stage, so I set out to write a play with a cast of five, where each character was integral to the story.

This play was also a reaction against myself and past plays. I was writing something else, something poetic and otherworldly…I wanted to do something much more grounded in some social and political realities.

I began this play in October 2007, when Guantanamo, and the sexual tactics being used by female interrogators, was all over the news. I became interested in this relationship.

For this play, I really had to do what one of my favorite playwrights, Naomi Wallace, calls “Transgressing the Self.” I had to figure out how to become tortured and torturer, and how to explore some messy, ugly things.

A friend of mine was a U.S. Army Medic in Iraq and served in a detention center there. He gave me a red-orange jumpsuit that was the exact kind used for detainees, and lent me duffel bags full of his army clothing. Sometimes I would put the jumpsuit in one chair, and an army jacket in another, and look at them while writing. Sometimes I would put on the jumpsuit and write from the perspective of the detainee, then put on the army clothes and write as the interrogator. I tried writing with a bag over my head, at all times of day and night, to find different points of entry into the characters.”

THE MEANING OF THE TITLE:

“LIDLESS is the title of a poem my brother once wrote, about living without eyelids. About being forced to always see what is happening, what you are doing, and never being able to look away. For a lot of their lives the characters in the play are asleep, dreaming, unwittingly or on purpose. During the play they try to wake up.

The most powerful theater experience I ever had was one where I couldn’t speak for hours afterwards. I just left the theater and wandered around alone in the snow, letting the play sink into me. One of my teachers at Dell’Arte, Daniel Stein, says that the goal of theater is to change the way we breathe. Visceral, deep body experiences are what I seek to create in the theater, and what I hope to give the audience.”

The Contemporary American Theater Festival is producing the U.S. Premiere of LIDLESS in our 2010 Repertory. I am looking forward to directing Frances’ new play. And… I am looking forward to introducing you to this extraordinary playwright at the Theater Festival in July.

LIDLESS will be performed in the intimate STUDIO THEATER. The seating is limited…so please make your ticket reservations early. The STUDIO THEATER often sells out.

Please share your comments to this posting. I am interested in your reaction to Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s ideas and inspiration for writing LIDLESS.

Ed Herendeen

LIDLESS AT 2010 FESTIVAL

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“People should not be allowed to haunt other people”cries Bashir, the tortured former prisoner of Guantanamo Bay in LIDLESS, the new play by Frances Ya- Chu Cowhig. LIDLESS is receiving simultaneous World Premiers in England and in the United States at the Contemporary American Theater Festival.

The Yale Drama Series awarded its third annual David C. Horn Prize to LIDLESS. Dramatist and screenwriter David Hare, the judge of the Yale contest, selected Cowhig’s play out of 650 applicants. He writes: “LIDLESS was the clear winner, an extraordinary and original attempt to show the enduring strain on the victims of the U.S.’s deployment of torture at Guantanamo.”

 Here is a quote from David  Hare’s May 3rd 2010 column in the Guardian:

 ” Getting away from the campaign trail to catch a new play has a more lasting impact than anything offered by politicians…I have to declare an interest. For two years I was the judge of the Yale Drama Series, which offers a $10,000 prize and a reading at Yale to a hithero unpublished play. The most interesting aspect of this duty has been to realize how, at the grassroots, playwriting is so completely dominated by women…This vitality is not yet reflected in the repertory of major theatres. The parallel with contemporary politics is obvious. Structures are slow to recognize energy when it comes from below…It is not my job to review Ya-Chu Cowhig’s play LIDLESS. But I can say it is set in the US, sometime in the future. Acts of torture at Guantanamo have entered the American bloodstream and had unforeseen repercussions for years after. Because the action embodies the consequences of parents’ invasive behaviour on their own children, it makes a far more lasting impact than anything offered from politicians in this election on the subject of war or generational damage.”

Rehearsals for our 2010 Season begin on June 8th. We are in the pre-production phase. I have been communicating with Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig via email. She is currently in China.

Ed Herendeen

PASSION FOR NEW WORK

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We are the CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN THEATER FESTIVAL. We are the theater of today…the theater of the Now. We are producing five new American plays in rotating repertory that are present and immediate. This is who we are, what we are and how we will be remembered by future generations. We are responsible for helping to create the destiny of the American theater. We are paying attention to the world. We are listening to contemporary writers who are attuned to our world and whose stories help us define these tumultuous times.

The artists at the Contemporary American Theater Festival are united by their passion for new work. We are united by newness. We are united by this quote from American playwright Steven Dietz (CATF 2009):

“The theater is not about nostalgia. The theater is not a museum. Plays don’t hang on walls, oblivious to time. The theater is a rehearsal of the present moment.”

Great stories beg to be told. And true artists are compelled to tell them. Playwrights are the theater’s storytellers. Max Baker, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Jennifer Haley, Michele Lowe, J.T. Rogers and Lee Sellars are the storytellers of the 2010 Repertory. Their stories will broaden our minds, engage, provoke, inspire and ultimately connect us.

I have selected five new plays by these six artists… because they have written original stories that embody an independent spirit and a distinctive voice. They believe in the power of story. They believe in the power of sharing the most private of feelings in the most public of spaces–the theater. They are not afraid to confront pain and difference, conflict and joy, in the safe environment of the theater.

We all share a passionate belief that we can grow as a society only if we find the strength to confront and consider ideas and issues that may make us uncomfortable. We share the belief that a community without art has no voice, no memory of our stories and aspirations…a community without art is no community at all.

 I believe that making art…making theater…especially in this moment… is a form of social activism. It is a statement of belief in the power of community.

I have always believed that a contemporary theater must aggressively go to the edges of society and tell the stories that no one else will tell. To involve people at the deepest level…we need stories. Stories fulfill a profound human need to grasp the patterns of living–not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience. To do this we must engage our audience with the power of story. We must engage their emotions…AND…the key to their hearts is a story.

Please share your ideas and comments with me.

Ed Herendeen