Senior Thesis Festival - Weekend I
April 18-20, 2024
Love & So
by Meng Jinghui / Liao Yimei
Translated by Claire Conceison
Directed and adapted by Kathy Fang
At the turn of the 21st century, a rhinoceros dances in the heat, alone. Her keeper is in love with his next door neighbor. They love, and so there was light.
Love & So collages two of Chinese director Meng Jinghui’s plays: Rhinoceros in Love, a play composed and developed with playwright Liao Yimei, and I Love XXX, devised two decades after the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In addition to the two plays’ shared interest in love—and all the things we do in the name of love—both Rhinoceros and I Love XXX ask us to feel language differently, in strange new terms of movement and drama. Love & So is an invitation to step into a language of speaking, of moving, of loving that is not quite our own. Learning to speak together, we reach towards an ethics of translation as empathy, as intimacy, as love and as play.
Thursday, April 18, 7 PM - GET TICKETS
Friday, April 19, 8 PM - GET TICKETS
Saturday, April 20, 7 PM - GET TICKETS
The Same
by Enda Walsh
Directed by Amina Khaitova
Dramaturgy by Ryan Puterbaugh
To live a life already lived…
The Same tells a story of two versions of the same woman named Lisa. It is essentially a memory play in which the timelines get intertwined, the past version becomes the future and the future leaves its mark on the past. At the core of the play is the internal world – the psyche of two Lisas – where the personal memories are told through a reenactment of circumstances that fundamentally shaped Lisa’s personality. In a world where the internal becomes the external, the physicalized and visual realities serve as stimuli not only for Lisa’s mind but also for the audience’s as an encouragement to build your own “truth” of the story. Prepare to dive into the unknown, strange, dangerous world of two Lisas where nothing is as it seems, and everything is not quite right.
Thursday, April 18, 8 PM - GET TICKETS
Friday, April 19, 7 PM - GET TICKETS
Saturday, April 20, 8 PM - GET TICKETS
Design, performances, and stage management by Barnard and Columbia Students
Festival Directing Advisor Shannon Sindelar
Festival Design Advisor Kara Feely
Lighting Design Advisor Kate McGee
Sound Design Advisor Daniel Baker
Director of Production Mike Banta
Costume Shop Manager Kara Feely
Technical Director Greg Winkler