WORKSHOPS & PERFORMANCES AT THE 16th ANNUAL KO FESTIVAL OF PERFORMANCE

The Ko Festival also includes a series of 6-day intensive WORKSHOPS with master teachers:


BEYOND THE BARS: making theatre with incarcerated people and the recently released


THEATRICAL CLOWN


BREATH, VOICE AND THE PERFORMATIVE SELF: from inner experience to outer expression, SOLO PERFORMANCE


CREATING STAGE TEXTS FOR OUR TIMES.


For more details, see below and visit our website at www.kofest.com

Please help get the word out! Pass this information along to all appropriate friends, colleagues and students.

In spite of efforts to eliminate duplicates, some of you may have received more than one posting. Many of you are highly networked individuals who appear on more than one listserv, or have multiple e-mail addresses. Please, let me know by return email if you would like to be removed from this list, if you have email address updates, or if you would like to receive weekly reminders of our performances during the month-long festival.

All best wishes,
Sabrina Hamilton
Artistic Director
Ko Festival of Performance

SUMMER WORKSHOPS 2007

July 2 – 7
BEYOND THE BARS:
making theatre with incarcerated people and the recently released
with JULIE LICHTENBERG

July 9 – 14
THEATRICAL CLOWN:
with JULIE NELSON

July 16 – 21
BREATH, VOICE AND THE PERFORMATIVE SELF:
from inner experience to outer expression
with LEENY SACK

July 23 – 28
SOLO PERFORMANCE
with MICHELLE MATLOCK

July 30 – August 4
CREATING STAGE TEXTS FOR OUR TIMES
with RUTH MARGRAFF

For full descriptions of the workshops and workshop leaders visit www.kofest.com.

Workshops will be held from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. in Studio II of Webster Hall on the Amherst College campus in Amherst, MA. Tuition is $350. Early bird registration discount available, and a discount for members of the Network of Ensemble Theatres (N.E.T.), and Actor's Equity. Optional room and board are available on the Amherst College campus for an additional fee.


PERFORMANCES 2007

FRIDAY-SUNDAY, July 6 – 9 at 8 p.m.
MATERMORPHOSIS
by Lenelle Moise, performed by Serious Play, directed by Sheryl Stoodley
designed by Kathy Couch & Robin Doty, with Linda Putnam as Gregora/Mother
and Steve Balle, Billy Girand, Jeannine Haas, Glen Love, Alberto Peart, & Alexis Reid
In this darkly ironic and comic adaptation of Kafka's masterpiece of isolation and human cruelty "Metamorphosis," award-winning, Hatian-American slam poet/playwright Lenelle Moise, reworks Kafka's Gregor into Gregora, a critically ill, menopausal mother who has supported her family by working in the sex industry. By depicting her "change of life" as her transformation into insect, the Serious Play Ensemble dissects the social constructs that compromise humanity, family bonds, and the loss of physical autonomy that occurs as we age and confront the possibility of illness and even death.

SUNDAY, July 15 at 8 p.m.
PEACE
by Aristophanes, performed by Ralph Lee's Mettawee River Company
Our annual favorites with a contemporary adaptation of Aristophane's comedy PEACE that tells of a mortal who journeys on the back of a dung beetle to Mt. Olympus to complain to the gods about the situation on earth, only to learn that the gods have fled, leaving War and Greed in charge and Peace buried under a trash heap. In the end, Peace is rescued and an extended celebration begins. This all-ages event is performed outdoors with live music, masks and giant puppets.

An all-ages event, outdoors on the Amherst College Observatory Lawn off of Snell Street. Bring blankets, lawn chairs and insect repellant, but leave the pets at home. Adults $8.00, Children $5.00
No reservations necessary.

FRIDAY – SUNDAY, JULY 20 – 22 at 8 p.m.

THE MAMMY PROJECT
created and performed by Michelle Matlock
co-developed with Joan Evans, directed by Amy Gordon, lighting by Sabrina Hamilton
Writer/performer Michelle Matlock uses original music, storytelling, multimedia documentary materials and her considerable comedic skills to explore the influence that the "Mammy" icon has had on contemporary American culture by re-imagining the cultural traditions from which the image was born — slavery, minstrelsy and advertising. The piece unpacks the little-known history of Nancy Green, the first African-American woman hired to play the part of "Aunt Jemima" at the 1893 World's Fair, and in so doing transforms an oppressive stereotype of African-American womanhood into a celebration of the power to be gained from knowing and understanding history

FRIDAY-SUNDAY, JULY 27 – 29 at 8 p.m.
O, YES I WILL (I will remember the spirit and texture of this conversation)
written and performed by Deb Margolin
direction and dramaturgy by Merri Milwe, lighting by Sabrina Hamilton
Deb Margolin, playwright, performer, and founding member of America's premiere feminist theatre company Split Britches, performs her new solo in which she reconstructs 5 possible monologues with which she may or may not have harangued a group of men in scrubs with knives in the O.R. while under the influence of sodium pentothal before surgery. Was it love she talked about? Was it politics? Sex? Conspiracy theory? Evasion? Ontology? Requests for a ménage a trois, quatre or cinq? Diagnosed with lymphoma ten years ago, Margolin was in a period of remittance for several years, but the cancer reappeared early in 2006. As with every significant event in her life, Margolin is processing it by writing and creating performance. In her work, the personal is always both the political and the poetic.

All performances EXCEPT the outdoor Mettawee production of PEACE will be held in Amherst College's Holden Theater. Mettawee tickets are $8.00 Adults and $5.00 Children.

Tickets for all other events are: $18 General Admission; $16 Students & Seniors A very limited number of $8 SPECIAL RUSH TICKETS will be available at exactly 1 hour prior to curtain.
Box Office opens July 2. (413) 542-3750. For information prior to the opening of the box office, visit WWW.KOFEST.COM or call (413) 427-6147.
--