Long overdue report from the field... The world premiere staged reading of Anna Ziegler's THE MINOTAUR was a huge success. More than 100 people joined us last week in the Family Theater at the Kennedy Center's annual Page-To-Stage Festival.
Funny and wise, Anna's take on the Minotaur myth strikes a nice balance between contemporary relevance and timeless themes. We were lucky to have such an amazing cast to bring the words to life. And the audience was great - engaged throughout and I even saw a few tears near the end.
Bringing new relevance to timeless tales is one of many things that excites us here at Rorschach.
The nice folks at DC Theatre Scene even wrote a review of the reading... you can read that by going HERE and scrolling about halfway down the article.
A huge thanks for everyone involved:
FEATURING Wyckham Avery, Matt Dunphy, Danny Gavigan, Marissa Molnar, Jon Reynolds, Colin Smith, Jeremy Webb
DIRECTED BY Randy Baker
PRODUCTED BY Jenny McConnell Frederick
DRAMATURGY BY Carrie Hughes
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ABOUT THE GROUP (I.F.T.A.)
Institute of Factual Theatre Arts started its journey in the year 1998. A fresh batch of theatre workers with a new dream started this journey. We wanted to do theatre in a different form and style. We believe that our folk culture has immense potential in it. We are trying to modernize these elements into our productions. In search of this form we are inspired from different productions of Mr. Ratan Thiyam. We are trying to bring back the traditions of Gambhira, Letto, Alkap, Chhou (Purulia), Raibeshe through our productions.
At the same time we are trying to reconstruct the economic structure of theatre. The crisis through which the theatre workers are passing is terrible .To find a solution of it we are trying to design some methods of earning. With tie-ups to different N.G.O s we are managing some funds and call shows. We are paying our performers a humble token amount as our first step. We are also trying to find more alternative ways and concepts for the same reason.
We are also trying to counter different social hazards by the help of our weapon – ‘theatre’ .We have tried to spread the awareness about child labor , protection of women from domestic violence , child-immunization, Aids etc.
We are also going through different workshop processes with different groups of people for enabling them to speak of their own problems. We have exceptional success working with adolescent girls of different conservative communities.
We have wing of children theatre, which is made of the children, for the children and by the children. They perform regularly in different auditoriums of Kolkata. The members, from different socio-economic background, breathe a shy of relief in this place of free will.
We need to build infrastructure, economic stability for the workers and to stage production of new approach and attitude .We need your support and guidance for fulfilling our dreams.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Debasish Dutta ,-One of the ex-student of Rabindra Bharati University (Drama Dept) directed his first production – named “Alabdha Banchha”,In theatre personalities in this workshop, such as Sri Ratan Thiam, Sri K.N.Pannikkar, Sri Nisar Alana and many more. Since 1998 to present time Debasish Dutta directed 16 production for IFTA in Bengali , English and Hindi also .Some of those are , ‘Ek je chhilo’ (Bengali) , ‘Ki kando’ (Bengali) , ‘Hritu sukhe bibarnno kavita’ (Bengali) , ‘Maa’ (Hindi) , ‘Bhut bhagaban’ (Hindi) , ‘Chitrangada’ (English) , ‘Sacrifice’ (English) . the year 1996 , when he was just 19 .During 1998, Debasish attened a Directors workshop organised by “West Bengal Natya Academy”, and the workshop Director was Sri Arun Mukhopadhyay. In the year 1998, Debasish participated with a “Script Writing Workshop” organised by Natya Samannya, -and the workshop director was Sri Debasish Mazumder. On that workshop a drama written by Debasish Dutta named ‘Aparajita’ made a special impact. In the same year he formed a theatre group, Institute of Factual Theatre Arts (IFTA) and since that time he has been involved with that particular Institution as a Director. In the year 2001, Debasish attended the ‘Central Workshop of Theatre’ and he got the touch of some vibrant characters of the theatre world, such as Sri Kumar Roy, Sri Tapas Sen, Sri Rudraprasad Sengupta, Smt. Sohag Sen, Sri Pabitra Sarkar, Sri Suman Mukhopadhyay, Smt Usha Ganguly and many more. In 2002, he attended the Mime workshop arranged by West Bengal Natya Academy, where he got the touch of India’s one of the prime Mime Artist- Sri Yogesh Dutta. In the year 2002, Debasish participated in the festival arranged by Department of Sports and Youth Services (Govt. of West Bengal), In that festival his directed play ‘Maa’ created a huge impact in viewers mind .
In 2004, Debasish participated Young Theatre Artist Workshop (shantiniketan) organised by Sangeet Natak Akademi. Workshop director was Sri Bibhas Chakrabarty. In 2005, Debasish carried his directed play ‘Chitrangada’ for West Bengal Youth Festival and stood first. In the same year, Debasish carried the same production for 10th National Youth Festival (Hyderabad) and got the ‘Gold Medel’. In 2006, he presented the same production again in 11th National Youth Festival (Patna) and got appreciation. In the same year 2006, he participated ‘Young Theatre Artist Workshop’ (East Zone, Phase II, Kolkata) organized by Sangeet Natak Akademi. The workshop director was Sri Satish Anand. And very fortunately Debasish got in touch of India’s some of the great theatre maestro.
INSTITUTE OF FACTUAL THEATRE ARTS
68/65, Jessore Road, Kolkata-700074, West Bengal, India
Phone No: +91 033-25799106/9836807725/9330059058/9830479991
Email- ifta_company@yahoo.co.in/ ifta.company@gmail.com
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