The UVA Drama season wanders open with Love is the Greater Labyrinth, a retelling of the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The show features a new translation of the final work written by revolutionary 17th-century Mexican playwright Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Guest director Anna Rebek draws a mixture of comedy, tragedy, […]
The UVA Drama season wanders open with Love is the Greater Labyrinth, a retelling of the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The show features a new translation of the final work written by revolutionary 17th-century Mexican playwright Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Guest director Anna Rebek draws a mixture of comedy, tragedy, […]
Exit, pursued by a bear: The queen is in hiding, the king is wallowing, and everyone is pursued by a bear in 16 Winters, or the Bear’s Tale, an imaginative comedy set in the 16 years between acts three and four of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Written by Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, the music-filled play examines […]
All that you can’t leave behind: What if you had to say goodbye to Earth forever? In UVA Drama’s How to Live on Earth, four contestants win the opportunity of a lifetime—a trip to Mars—with the condition that they stay there forever. Playwright MJ Kaufman drew inspiration from the Mars One project and reality TV […]
Climate stage: Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling is an intimate play with a vast setting. It’s 2039, and a catastrophic flood is coming that will end all life on Earth. Interweaving stories from four generations across two continents, the play showcases the lasting impacts of climate change and the damaging legacy left behind […]
Take a listen: With a pivot to podcasts, UVA Drama’s New Works Festival is all ears this year. The fifth annual student-run fest offers five short audio pieces (including one musical), which will be streamed on WTJU. Faculty mentors Dave Dalton and Doug Grissom realized audio dramas were a creative solution to replace the currently […]
Double whammy: UVA Drama doubles down on a pandemic-restricted season with Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage (translated by Christopher Hampton) and Steven Drukman’s The Death of the Author. The companion plays, which introduce the university’s new MFA Acting Company, observe chain reactions as characters argue over what is right, what is wrong, and what must […]
Imagine that an enormous, totally round rock has suddenly appeared in Charlottesville. How would people react? Would the rock be considered a threat, a sign from God, or both? Replace Charlottesville with the fictional Elkisbourne, and you’ve got “The Perfectly Circular Rock,” a new podcast produced by WTJU and UVA’s drama department. Early one morning, […]
The year is 1995, “Friends” is all the rage, and Tilly Evans is “the most uncommon form of nerd in the world”—a girl-nerd who loves Dungeons & Dragons. So begins She Kills Monsters, the 2011 comedy-drama by Qui Nguyen. Known for his innovative use of pop culture, stage violence, puppetry, and multimedia, Nguyen transports us […]
Fantasy rolls: Written by Qui Nquyen, the play She Kills Monsters tells the story of Agnes, a teen who embarks on a fantastic journey after her younger sister, Tilly, dies unexpectedly. Agnes finds Tilly’s Dungeons & Dragons notebook and dives into her sister’s world of fairies, ogres, and dwarves, and begins to understand that she […]
Fatal thaws: The decision to bring a child into the modern world, with its escalating climate change and varying degrees of global unrest, is the foundation of Duncan Macmillan’s smart, funny drama Lungs. Set on a bare stage, the play unfolds through a heart-to-heart talk between partners who debate with ferocity and vulnerability the pros […]