This year, Solo Explorations features four new interdisciplinary works by graduating MFA Acting candidates Brett Duggan, Amy Louise Cole, James Marchbanks and Anne Reeder.

Brett Duggan’s Black Out: A Dark Comedy is a theatrical character study of the alcoholic personality. Black Out is the story of a troubled librettist searching for answers. The piece plays with transformation of characters through the embodiment of famous, infamous and anonymous dipsomaniacs.

Amy Louise Cole’s Music, While Drowning is an exploration of the German Expressionist performance aesthetic as translated on the contemporary actor’s body. The German Expressionist movement occurred between 1916 and 1921, respectively. Its aesthetic is often characterized by the abstract shapes and images created with the bodies of its actors and their expansive and rhapsodic conveyance of text. Spiritual awakening was an important theme of German Expressionist drama as it focused on the concept of “The New Man” who rejected the repression of years past and was at one with the cosmos. Cole will be combining contemporary actor training and practice with Expressionist style and motifs in a fully devised solo performance.

Anne Reeder’s  Cigarettes and Milk is an exploration of control and chaos. Control:  to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command. Chaos:  a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.  The character at the center of the investigation of Anne’s fully devised solo performance is torn between her need for control and her desire for chaos and we meet her at the culmination of the struggle between the two. In this Physical Theater piece Anne uses Laban movement technique to investigate and create the character through the actor’s body.

James Marchbanks presents The Art of Everyday Life. His performance aims to bridge the gap between the performer and the spectator.

Solo Explorations runs Friday – Saturday, April 2 – 3, at 8:00 p.m. in the Arena Theatre, Wright Hall.  This production is free of charge.

Bios included in press release.