Theater season goes overtime

 

The last theater production of the year ended weeks ago. more

 

Shakespeare in the City was last Tuesday. more

 

But the after school theater season continued today, as a dozen Middle School students gathered for a table reading of a new work - with the author in attendance.

 

 

The script was The Exact Opposite, a play full of young characters, written by Oriana Lada, a second year graduate student in the Brown University Trinity Rep MFA program. 

 

 

As Deborah Salem Smith, Lada’s teacher, Trinity’s playwright-in-residence, and parent of two Gordon students, explained to the group: “The playwriting program is full of people age twenty-five to thirty-five, so this is our first chance to hear real young people read these lines.”

 

For the students, it was a chance to sharpen some acting skills, and practice giving constructive feedback to an author they’ve only just met.

 

Tomorrow, another group of Gordon students will meet to continue their work on a new script by Brad Foster, a recent graduate of the Brown Trinity MFA program.

 

 

Brad first came to Gordon in 2015, as the author of Little Big State, a script that became Gordon’s third and fourth grade musical that winter.

 

 

It’s all part of a growing partnership with Brown and Trinity, stewarded by Milly Romanzi, Gordon’s Director of Fine and Performing Arts.

 

 

The partnership has grown organically, with care taken to be sure that the connections between Gordon students and the two Providence institutions are mutually beneficial.

 

 

Where is it all heading? One clue: at this year’s Gordon Groove event, parents raised funding to pilot a playwright-in-residence for the 2017-2018 school year, modeled on Gordon’s long-running Britt Nelson Visiting Artist and Karla Harry Visiting Author programs.

Trinity Rep actors are part of the faculty for Gordon Summer Theater, which has its third season this June. 

In the first week of August, Gordon heads downtown as Milly Romanzi helps lead Trinity’s YASI Players youth program.