City Council Meeting play introduced Nov. 5
Redfern Arts Center Introduces ‘City Council Meeting’ Theatrical Work During the KSC Symposium
The Redfern Arts Center at Keene State College will present an introduction to City Council Meeting, a participatory theatrical work by Aaron Landsman and Mallory Catlett, on Tuesday, November, 5, from 2 to 3:45 p.m. in the Young Student Center Mountainview Room during the 2013 KSC Symposium, Finding Your Place in the Evolving Commons. Landsman and Catlett will return to Keene in February 2014 for a more immersive residency, followed by a three-week production residency and performance of City Council Meeting in fall 2014.
Landsman, a playwright, performer, and teacher based in Brooklyn, N.Y. and Urbana, Ill., and Catlett, a director/dramaturg who creates work with several theatrical entities in New York City, will address how City Council Meeting uses the formal properties of local government meetings to consider the ways that people engage in public or civic life. City Council Meeting incorporates local issues in each city where it is presented through partnerships with local artists, activists, government officials, and citizens. Audience members chose their participation level, acting as staffers, actual council members, citizens giving testimony, or bystanders. This piece is about the poetry in bureaucracy, the architecture of power, and the comedy of procedure.
This introductory presentation will offer KSC students, faculty, staff, and community members a platform for inquiry into how City Council Meeting will serve as an evolving blueprint for discussion, creation, and learning. This first session will provide the playwrights with the chance to connect with the Keene State campus and the greater Keene community – its people and politics – so they can return in 2014 to produce and present the play in its entirety.
“We hope to learn about what makes the college and the community unique, who are the local characters in politics and art, and what are issues that bring everyone out in force,” said Landsman about this first visit to Keene State.
City Council Meeting is about the forms through which we govern ourselves, about the limits of empathy and participation in American life today. It considers issues of mutual respect and consensus versus compromise. In its fullest realized form, audience members and performers become mayors, staffers, schoolchildren, and clergy, and testify on issues of their concerns.
The November 5 presentation is free and open to the public. For further information, contact Sharon Fantl, Assistant Director of the Redfern Arts Center, at 603-358-2167.
About the Redfern Arts Center at Keene State College
The Arts Center is named in honor of Dr. Leo F. Redfern, Keene State College President from 1969 to 1979 for his vision, commitment, and eloquence on behalf of the arts that made funding and construction of the facility a reality. In 1981, KSC inaugurated this new performing arts center, with the goal of providing unforgettable artistic encounters for the campus and community. Since then, the Redfern stage has hosted hundreds of amazing shows, from internationally renowned artists to emerging young talents to KSC’s own student performers. Over the years, the Redfern has expanded its outreach programs, curricular and community partnerships, becoming an indispensable resource for the Keene community and beyond.
