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Stage Season 2023-2024

Fall 2023

Poster for Twelfth Night is black with white text overlaid over a busy cubist image.

Twelfth Night

by William Shakespeare
Directed by Alice Reagan
October 19-22

Director’s Statement

I believe it’s important for us, as a Theatre department at a liberal arts institution, to engage periodically with the work of Shakespeare.  He is an influential, provocative, beautiful writer in the landscape of dramatic writing.  There’s always more to learn from this artist.  I’m obsessed and troubled by Twelfth Night, and think it’s the right play for Barnard and Columbia, now.  We need its healing power, and also its spikiness, for courage.  We are still very much in recovery from the pandemic, and far from recovery in terms of political/social battles around abortion, trans rights, a contested election.  When it comes to weather and climate catastrophes, the rain it raineth every day.

The ensemble of Twelfth Night is a ship of fools.  It’s a play in which everyone behaves badly and is a little bit mad.  The play begins in grief, loss, and confusion and moves towards reunion and  wholeness.  However, for Shakespeare and for us, wholeness might not mean perfection or being perfectly happy in love.  I believe grief and loss are not experiences to run away from, but are feelings we would do well to weave into our daily lives—they are always present, in some way.  We are constantly changing, learning, growing, and leaving behind, even as we cling to the familiar.  Shakespeare wants to shake us loose, turn us upside down, have us live in reality, not fantasy.  Twelfth Night is a moment of topsy-turvy revelry but Shakespeare has his eye on the clear light of tomorrow morning, when we may not be at our best, but we’ll be ourselves.

Poster for Inspired by French Cinema shows a black and white photo of a cafe table and its reflection in a window.

 Inspired by French Cinema

Devised and directed by Javier Antonio González
December 7-9

 

Spring 2024

Dance Nation

by Claire Barron
Directed by Tea Alagic
February 29-March 2

Senior Thesis Festival

April 18-20, 2024

 

Frankenstein's Mary Shelley
by Rachel Atkins
Directed by Caroline Egler

Love & So
by Meng Jinghui / Liao Yimei
Translated by Claire Conceison
Directed and adapted by Kathy Fang

The Same
by Enda Walsh
Directed by Amina Khaitova