Hell Hath No Fury! Brind School senior Jess Cosgrove briskly dispatches an assortment of adversaries in this video she made for her independent study about women in combat. The Brind School is one of the leading schools in the country for the training of actor-combatants!
Susanne Collins is Gemma and Erin Fleming is Rob, a teenage couple for whom love at first sight has unexpected consequences, in the new musical Crush, onstage this weekend as part of the Brind School’s New Play Festival. Also pictured: Marcus Briddell, A. J. Lockhart, Victoria Bentz, Alaina Wis and Gregory Brown. tickets.uarts.edu
BRIND SCHOOL PRESENTS 2013 NEW PLAY FESTIVAL
Pictured above: the cast of Crush with authors Stew and Yasmine Lever (center front)
A new musical featuring book and lyrics by Yasmine Lever and music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald will be one of the works featured in the second annual New Play Festival to be held at the Ira Brind School of Theater Arts at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia early in 2013. The authors of a new play and a new musical will be in residence at the school for two weeks in January to develop their work, giving student actors and dramaturgs the opportunity to experience first-hand the process by which new work is developed. This year, the Brind School received nearly two hundred submissions for the festival, and Assistant Professor P. Seth Bauer and students in the Brind School’s Dramaturgy class reviewed the submissions and selected the finalists.
The musical CRUSH and the play A FRONTIER, AS TOLD BY THE FRONTIER will be the featured works in this season’s New Play Festival. CRUSH, a new musical with book and lyrics by Yasmine Lever and music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, is a star-crossed love story set against the backdrop of race riots in contemporary London. A FRONTIER, AS TOLD BY THE FRONTIER a play by Jason Gray Platt, is a dystopian fantasy about a group of four orphaned children and their caretaker, among the last bastion of a population torn by civil war, who inhabit an abandoned government-run theme park.
Public presentations of CRUSH will be presented on Friday February 1 at 7pm and Saturday February 2 at 3pm; A FRONTIER will be presented on Thursday January 31 and Saturday February 2 at 7pm. All performances will be held in the Philadelphia Arts Bank, 601 S. Broad St., on the University of the Arts’ campus on the Avenue of the Arts in Philadelphia. Visit tickets.uarts.edu or call 215-717-6450 for reservations.
A piece from Al Dia about Maggie’s costume designs for Lantern Theater’s production of The Liar. (Read it in English if you’d prefer.)
The Brind School will be at the Virginia Theatre Association (VTA) this weekend - stop by and meet staff member Darin Dunston and student Terri Mittelman!
Professor Michael Earley is the Principal of Rose Bruford College of Theater and Performance, a London school with whom the Brind School has begun a student exchange program. In this clip, Michael appears on “Prime Time Russia,” a Moscow-based television show, to talk about the legacy of Konstantin Stanislavski. Rose Bruford is the home of the Stanislavski Centre, “a unique initiative within the UK to create a home for both academic research and practice/performance events based upon the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and the entire subject of acting.” Earley is the editor of a new translation of Stanislavski’s writings created by Jean Benedetti, his predecessor as Principal of Rose Bruford College.
Brind School alum Sarah Bolt, who most recently appeared onstage as Sister Mary Patrick in “Sister Act,” married David Crowell on Saturday, October 20 in her hometown of St. Louis. You can read the details in The New York Times. Congratulations and best wishes to Sarah and David!
Brind School alum Dotan Negrin was featured on CNN’s The Situation Room last week. He and his piano have travelled all across America, and along with his music, Dotan spreads an important message: “You owe it to yourself to do something Remarkable with your life.” Can I get an “amen?”
The third installment of Madison Auch’s backstage vlog captures the scene behind the scenes at the tech rehearsals for A Free Man of Color, opening Thursday October 11 at the Arts Bank. Tickets here; an article in the Philly Tribune about the show and leading man Jahzeer Terrell here. Time to get excited!
