Collaborative Theatre Project Director Susan Aversa-Orrego has teamed up with Shakespeare scholar Geoff Ridden to form the Rogue Valley Plague Theatre Company.
At 8 p.m., Monday through Friday, members of the company read and post Shakespeare sonnets on Facebook. About 500 people have joined the group worldwide. About 25 people have performed sonnets, which have been read in order. Sonnet 1 was posted March 30. I visited with Aversa-Orrego and Ridden by telephone.
EH: What’s the inspiration for this theater company?
GR: We’re all locked away, not able to do theater. Obviously, we wanted to keep active, doing something, having a project. We thought it would be a neat idea to do one sonnet every day at 8 o’clock, and to go live on Facebook. You either read the sonnet, or have somebody else read it, while you read along quietly at home. Continue reading Pandemic births Rogue Valley Plague Theatre Company
Livia Genise and Jeannine Grizzard have banded together to produce “Third,” now playing at Carpenter Hall through Nov. 24.
Rogue Theater Company Artistic Director Jessica Sage is in rehearsal for the company’s next production: Marsha Norman’s “’Night Mother.” The Pulitzer-prize winning play, directed by Caroline Shaffer, opens in Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Black Swan Theater Nov. 1. Sage plays Mama, and Andrea Hochkeppel plays her daughter, Jessie. We all met one morning at the Rogue Valley Roasting Company.
Oregon Shakespeare Festival actor K.T. Vogt is playing the Clown in “All’s Well That Ends Well” and a myriad of other characters in “Hairspray” this season. Vogt has been a member of the OSF acting company for 12 years. She played a hilarious Falstaff in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” in 2017.
Ashland Contemporary Theatre’s recent production “Pankhurst: Freedom or Death,” directed by Peggy Rubin, is a theatrical tour de force written and performed by Jeannine Grizzard. Set in England in 1913, the play examines the history and issues involved in the women’s fight for the right to vote, finally granted in 1918. Grizzard had researched a speech by Emmeline Pankhurst (a leader in the suffrage movement). She decided to develop the material while attending a Social Artistry Workshop given by Jean Houston and Peggy Rubin. The challenge was: What project can you come up with to change the world?
“The Diary of Anne Frank,” now playing at the Collaborative Theatre Project in Medford, is a powerful production. Last Saturday night’s performance, by a brilliant ensemble cast, left the audience in stunned silence until the characters had left the stage — then they rose to give an enthusiastic standing ovation.
Ashland Theatre 