Saturday, August 2, 2008

12 Ophelias, 1 Degree of Separation

Hey! Did you all take a gander at the audio slide show that's heading the New York Times theater page right now?

It's about a play called Twelve Ophelias, written by Caridad Svich and premiering at the McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn. The images look beautiful--the perfect way to spend a New York summer twilight. And I like the kind of rag-tag, do-it-yourself aesthetic of the production--an antidote to the false idea that New York theater must be flashy and expensive.

But, OK, this really caught my attention because the director/slide-show narrator is Teddy Bergman, who was a senior at Vassar when I was a freshman. He played either Rosencrantz or Guildenstern (you can't expect me to remember which one, can you?) in Stoppard's play, so it's interesting that now he's directing another take-off on Hamlet. He also made a memorable Alan Strang when his student-theater group, Woodshed, produced Equus--and now Twelve Ophelias is being produced by the Woodshed Collective. It makes me happy to see ideas formed at college being taken out into "the real world."

I have also met Pepper Binkley, the actress who plays Ophelia--not that she'd remember me or anything, but she was at PCS two summers ago playing the lead role in the JAW workshop of A Feminine Ending.

This post has been brought to you by The American Theater World Sure Is Tiny, Inc.

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