Strongly influenced by the Italian commedia dell'arte, Moliere's Scapin tells the tale of two young men foiled in love when their respective fathers arrive determined to marry them off...but not to the women they're in love with. The sons appeal to the servant Scapin for help, but with disastrous consequences. Scapin's antics create more confusion, mistaken identity, rancor...and hilarity.FEATURING THE MFA ACTING CLASS OF 2006: Amanda Boekelheide, Charles Browning, Laura Butler, Kelly Eubanks, Jon Froehlich, Laura Heidinger, Rebecca Henderson, Susan Hyon, Kyle Knauf, Walker Lewis, Areshia McFarlin, Luis Moreno, Christopher Ryan Richards, David Skeist, Adam Tsekhman, Isaac Hirotsu Woofter, Chi Wright
"The friend of mankind is no friend of mine"— the words of an honest man determined to exist in a society ruled by insincerity, and of a humorless grinch whose only pleasure is the humiliation of others. The only hitch is an obsessive passion for a woman who embodies all that he despises. Absurd and hilarious on the surface, sad and frightening in implication, The Misanthrope is a dazzling look at sincerity, social rules, and romantic love.FEATURING THE MFA ACTING CLASS OF 2006: Amanda Boekelheide, Charles Browning, Laura Butler, Kelly Eubanks, Jon Froehlich, Laura Heidinger, Rebecca Henderson, Susan Hyon, Kyle Knauf, Walker Lewis, Areshia McFarlin, Luis Moreno, Christopher Ryan Richards, David Skeist, Adam Tsekhman, Isaac Hirotsu Woofter, Chi Wright.
POETICS: a ballet brut, conceived and directed by PAVOL LISKA, is a non-verbal performance that strips theater down to its barest physical essentials and swarms the entire architecture of the Theatre of the Riverside Church. 2000 years after Aristotle's original Poetics Liska asks – can we forge a new aesthetic?PAVOL LISKA (director) was born and raised in Slovakia. For the past 10 years he has directed his own as well as others' plays at venues around the city, including Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Classic Stage Company, Theater for the New City, P.S.122, Chashama, and the Collective:Unconscious. Poetics was originally presented as a work in progress for Prelude '05, a festival of contemporary theatre, at CUNY Graduate Center. This spring Pavol will be collaborating with Obie award-winning playwright Chuck Mee, Jr. on Fragment 147 at Classic Stage Company.