Press Release

Ground-breaking performance program offers sneak peak
at work of experienced artists

Second-year students at Naropa University's MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance program offer works-in-progress

Workshop performances to run November 10–December 3, 2005

BOULDER, Colo. (November 8, 2005) - Naropa University's MFA in Theater: Contemporary Performance program offers the public sneak peaks of the pieces its second-year students will showcase fully in Spring 2006. This class of students will be the first to graduate from the MFA in Theater: Contemporary Performance program at Naropa, a revolutionary graduate course of study that integrates theater, dance, music and innovative ways of writing for performance. These second-year students are mature performers with storied careers already behind them; the work they showcase this year promises to be profound. Five productions present the works-in-progress: "Parallel Play: Exploring Instructions from Space" on November 10; the opera "The Bacchae" on November 12; "At A Distance I Can Say," a work by student Jennifer Hicks on November 16 and 17; student Wm. Perry Morgan-Hall's "IDENTITY (An Auto-biographical Musical)" on November 21 and 22; and "House of Daughters," an original play, on December 2 and 3. All performance times are 7:30 p.m. in Studio 9190 at Naropa's Nalanda Campus, 6287 Arapahoe Blvd. Tickets are $7 for the general public and free for Naropa students, faculty and staff. The public may call 303-546-3519 for more information or to reserve tickets.

Since Naropa's founding in 1974 by Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, artists from all disciplines have come together to bring the practices of mindfulness and awareness into the process and training of emerging artists. The MFA in Theater: Contemporary Performance program is unique in its mission to bring contemplative disciplines to bear on the best of the avant-garde ensemble theater tradition. Launched in Fall 2003, the program will graduate its first students this academic year. Wendell Beavers, program director and pioneering performer, says of his students, "This is a company devoted to innovative research as well as delivering accomplished products, ranging from reinvented classics to provocative original work. The works the students will showcase this November represent new and exciting developments in the world of contemporary performance. To see them in progress is an opportunity to witness theater being redefined before one's eyes."

These five performances represent a huge breadth of theatrical experiences. "Parallel Play: Exploring Instructions from Space" will display improvisational spontaneous composition with Barbara Dilley and first-year MFA students. In the opera "The Bacchae," written by Liz Stanton and directed by Joan Bruemmer, an ensemble of performers apply techniques from Viewpoints and Roy Hart Vocal Work to explore the sounds and textures of this classic work. In "At a Distance I Can Say," MFA student Jennifer Hicks and guest artist Phil Nyokai James use innovative movement techniques and Shakuhachi Flute to create a meditation on the ocean. Another MFA student, Wm. Perry Morgan-Hall, uses personal narrative and song to explore how we become who we are in "IDENTITY (An Auto-biographical Musical)." This autumn's run of MFA thesis-works-in-progress culminates with "House of Daughters," an original play-written by Elizabeth Watt, directed by Ashley Hughes, and created in collaboration with student performers-in which a tired seamstress, a bitter actress, a rich blind collector, a frustrated dreamer, and an enthusiastic-but-misinformed linguist grapple with their demons of the past in the setting of a very peculiar present.

Naropa University's MFA in Theater: Contemporary Performance is a cutting-edge graduate program committed to creating new techniques and aesthetics in collaboration with students and to establishing a home for the next generation of innovators and practitioners of performance. The program is designed to support performance and teaching careers in a newly emerging art form that integrates theater, dance, music and creative new ways of writing for performance. The training is ensemble-based with an experimental orientation. The faculty and associated artists at the core of this program include some of the best-known and most important innovators of new techniques and aesthetics in performance and theater education developed over the past 25 years. The students are often seasoned performers of diverse backgrounds and varying aesthetics, areas of expertise and accomplishment, and physical, emotional, and intellectual capacities and proclivities.

Accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, Naropa University is a private, nonprofit, nonsectarian liberal arts institution dedicated to advancing contemplative education. This approach to learning integrates the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions, helping students know themselves more deeply and engage constructively with others. The university comprises a four-year undergraduate college and graduate programs in the arts, education, environmental leadership, psychology and religious studies. It offers BA, BFA, MA, MFA and MDiv degrees, as well as professional development training and classes for the community. In addition, the university runs study abroad programs in Sikkim, India and Prague, Czech Republic.

Contact

Jane Rubinstein
Director, Marketing and Communications
Naropa University
PH 303-245-4643
jrubinstein@naropa.edu

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