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Collectively, the Villanova Theatre season’s plays are about community. Each addresses a different aspect of community. Godspell is interested in building community and, in particular, building a vibrant, healthy, loving community. Intimate Apparel is looking at three separate communities that cannot come together because of race and religion. It is perhaps a bit more interested in what keeps us from the kind of community Godspell celebrates. Mr. Burns like Godspell is interested in the development of community, but instead of building a community around love, it is interested in what people of a community share culturally. Using The Simpsons as a catalyst for this premise, Mr. Burns shows how part of our communal life revolves around a shared language and memory, so that when the world as we know it ends, there will be pieces left over that will bring us together. Finally, Much Ado About Nothing looks at how an established community folds into its fabric new members.
Education Dramaturgs’ Contact Information
Tara Demmy, Workshop Coordinator tdemmy@villanova.edu
Heather Lemos hlemos@villanova.edu
Megan Schumacher mschum10@villanova.edu
Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel (Nov 7-19)
Acting beyond text: Say everything without saying a word A glance can mean a thousand words. So much is communicated in Intimate Apparel through physicality, touch, and space between characters. It is the physicality and emotional state of characters combined with Nottage’s text that makes the relationships in the play so complex and stunning. In this workshop, you will develop scenes using the same acting techniques used by the Intimate Apparel cast — including spatial relationship, touch, and character physicality to articulate clear relationships before even speaking a word.
Connection to ACS: Intimate Apparel tackles the question — “Who am I?” — through the character, Esther, as she traverses a world divided by race and religion. As an African American woman at the turn of the century, Esther struggles with her identity in the confines of her world. Through Esther, the play addresses the question: How do I be me with all the limitations that surround me?
PAST SHOW STUDY GUIDES
