David Henry Hwang, a Stanford alumnus, will launch the residency program when he workshops his new play Yellow Face, which will get three free, public staged readings on Feb. 12, 15 and 16 at 8 PM at Roble Studio Theater. The work is directed by Leigh Silverman and is getting a world premiere co-production at the Mark Taper Forum in May and at the Public during the 2007-08 season.
For the 2007-08 residency, the director JoAnne Akalaitis will workshop a new production of Euripides' The Bacchae, with music by Philip Glass. The show will go up at the Public during either the 2007-08 or 2008-09 seasons.
Hwang's residency involves over a dozen campus events, including his How I Write lecture at Cubberly Auditorium on Feb. 13 at 7 PM, and a discussion with Hwang, the playwright Stan Lai and the Public's artistic director, Oskar Eustis, at the Pigott Theater on Feb. 15 at noon.
The Feb. 2006 Stanford workshop of the Public's upcoming musical Passing Strange — which has music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald and is directed and created in collaboration with Annie Dorsen — served as a pilot program for the residency. The work went up near Stanford at Berkeley Rep — the Public's co-producer on the world premiere — in October 2006.
For the commissioning program, each year one playwright will be selected by a joint Stanford-Public committee to receive a commission to develop a new work. The playwright will participate in a residency at Stanford and will engage with students and faculty. The first recipient will be announced in fall 2007. For the annual fellowship program — designed to increase diversity in the American theatre, particularly in positions of leadership — two undergraduates will get paid summer jobs at the Public and one post-graduate fellow will get a year-long, full-time position starting in September. The first recipients — selected by representatives from Stanford and the Public — will be announced in May.
The organizations involved in the partnership include Stanford Lively Arts, Stanford Institute for Creativity in the Arts (SICA) and the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford (IDA).
For more information visit publictheaterny.stanford.edu.
