This post was originally published on Playbill - News
Written by: Dan Meyer
The National Asian American Theatre Company has commissioned five Asian-American female playwrights—Jaclyn Backhaus, Samantha Chanse, Mia Chung, Naomi Iizuka, and Anna Moench—to write monologues for characters no younger than 60 years old. Each monologue will be at least 30 minutes long, and all five will be performed together as a piece entitled Out of Time.
The idea was conceived and will be directed by Les Waters. NAATCO, led by Co-Founder and Producing Artistic Director Mia Katigbak, will develop the monologues in quarantine, with the hopes that they are ready for live performance once theatres re-open.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to make a piece for older actors saying wonderful words and one wonderful actor following another, saying more wonderful things,” said Waters, who was inspired by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeke’s dance piece Mitten wir im Leben sind/Bach6Cellosuiten. “Actors have all this experience and are up against the limitations of memory. How cruel it is. And how magnificent it is. And how underused older actors are.”
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