Wake Up, Sheeple! There are terrible shadowy forces at work trying to institute a New World Order meant to put put us all in chains, and The Manhattan Project refuses to be left out. We've embeded ourselves deep inside The System and we're ready to tear it down...or protect it at all costs. We're not sure; the conspiracy confuses us, but it's so juicy we still want to be a part of it!
We're dropping chemtrails over your neighborhoods, we're turning the frogs gay, we're sneaking satanic messages into your kids' music, and we're producing brand new 10-minute plays to brainwash our audience into complacency. This month we're conspiring with local playwrights Val Kozlenko, Amanda VanAllen, Travis Plats, Krysia Orlowski, and Kevin Latimer. We need dastardly, disreputable actors to join our nefarious cause!
We hope to see you there, but if we don't...well, we already see you anyway.
What exactly is The Manhattan Project - Cleveland Lab? The Manhattan Project is a low-stakes, nonthreatening place for actors and playwrights to meet and work together. Based on the Theatre Lab model taught at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and inspired by The Brooklyn Generator in New York, The Manhattan Project wants to introduce Cleveland actors and playwrights to each other by organizing a bi-monthly production of brand new 10-minute plays. Participating artists will meet early in the month and will be broken into teams, each with one playwright. The playwright will then be given a writing prompt to write a new 10-minute play based on the prompt and including all the team's actors. The rest of the evening the team members will get to know each other and get a feel for each other's skills and voices. The teams will reconvene later in the month to perform these plays for each other.
These 10-minute plays are not an end in themselves. Through these small collaborations we hope to build relationships between the two most vulnerable artists in theatre; the actors who put themselves on stage and the playwrights who pour themselves onto the page. Perhaps these 10-minute plays will grow into longer works or maybe these collaborations will become partnerships on larger projects. |