Release Date: March 16, 2009
The Collision Project: Where great theater collides
For media inquiries: Cheryl Anderson Brown, Director of Public Relations,
770-499-3417 or cbrown@kennesaw.edu
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KENNESAW, Ga.—The KSU Department of Theatre and Performance Studies will present the world premiere of “Memorabilia,” a co-production with the Alliance Theatre Collision Project. As part of KSU’s second annual New Works and Ideas Festival, the creative joint venture is part of a weeklong series of theatrical readings and events to be held on the KSU campus March 25-30. The week’s events will be performed by emerging artists and coordinated by KSU Associate Professor Dean Adams. A contemporary rendition of “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, “Memorabilia” was created by local high school students and professional playwright Ken Weitzman. The play will be directed by Rosemary Newcott, the Alliance Theatre’s artistic director of theatre for youth and the Collision Project’s facilitator. The play will feature a cast of Kennesaw State University students.
“Memorabilia” is the first Collision Project collaboration with KSU. “We didn’t pick the play, but we have been talking to the Alliance for several years about doing the project here,” explained Adams. “The Collision Project is a collaboration that the Alliance Theatre has been sponsoring for a number of years. The idea is to take a great work and re-imagine it. After performing here, the production will then tour Atlanta-area high schools, thus making a full circle.”
The newest brainchild of its Theatre for Youth programming, Collision Project brings Atlanta-area high school students to the Alliance Theatre for an intensive three-week summer workshop. The students create a play for and about themselves by “colliding” with a dramatic text, reducing the text to its essential elements and resetting it within contemporary experience. A playwright then takes the material generated in workshop to create a six-person cast of university actors who tour under the direction of Newcott.
“Memorabilia” is a drama as touching and emotional as the original inspiration. Set in a small Atlanta apartment, the play is a memory of a family that learns it cannot outrun its past. Performances are at 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 8 p.m. on Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday in the Studio Theater of the Joe Mack Wilson Building. The cost of tickets is $5. This event includes themes and language that may not be suitable for all audiences.
For more information, visit www.kennesaw.edu/arts or call the KSU box office at 770-423-6650.
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A member of the 35-unit University System of Georgia, Kennesaw State University is a comprehensive, residential institution with a growing student population of more than 21,000 from 142 countries. The third-largest university in Georgia, Kennesaw State offers more than 65 graduate and undergraduate degrees, including new doctorates in education and business.
The KSU College of the Arts is one of only four Georgia institutions to have achieved full national accreditation for all of its arts programs.