The Department of Theatre Arts is bringing back the Iowa Directors Festival after a short hiatus. The festival gives our MFA directing candidates the opportunity to work collaboratively with a design team to present a work in a festival setting. The festival will be presented over the course of two weeks and will include four plays, two presented each weekend on the following schedule:
Week #1: February 3–5
small hours
By Lucy Kirkwood and Ed Hime
Directed by Sarah Gazdowicz
Where does your mind wander to in the small hours of the morning? Alone and struggling mentally and emotionally with being a new parent, a woman navigates those eerie early hours where your darkest thoughts are your loudest.
This production contains a depiction of post-partum distress including depression, anxiety, and disassociation. Prolonged building of intensely loud sounds, including a baby in distress, and sequence of flashing lights and visuals will be used.
Letters from Cuba
By María Irene Fornés
Directed by Natalie Villamonte Zito
Letters from Cuba seamlessly moves back and forth in time, place, and spirit, linking a recently emigrated dancer in New York City to her family across the sea in Cuba. The play interweaves familial, romantic, and platonic love into a singular feeling of closeness and affection. A poetic reflection on the act of artistic creation, on memory and dreams, on longing desires, and how the yearning of a brother and sister to reunite is so strong it defies the logic of time and space. Letters from Cuba quietly explores the connections and separations between people and across borders, through an ethereal, dreamy lens.
Week #2: February 10–12
Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Kenneth Collins
In this short atmospheric drama by University of Iowa graduate Tennessee Williams, two unnamed characters, Man and Woman, live in a crumbling flat on the Lower East Side. He is a drunk, and she is purposefully wasting away – but between them there is an intimacy of desperation. Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen examines the ways we can feel isolated even while being surrounded by others.
This production contains adult content.
England’s Splendid Daughters
Written and directed by Ann Kreitman
England’s Splendid Daughters is a physical theatre piece based on the memoirs of ambulance drivers in World War I. When the British were losing the war, in order to send more men to the trenches, they promoted all service level staff to the front lines. To replace the ambulance drivers, the British Armed Forces sought out unmarried women who knew how to drive a car. Unintentionally, they recruited a bunch of lesbians. England’s Splendid Daughters was written to prove to ourselves and the world that queer people have always been heroes.
This production contains graphic discussion of injury and death, homophobia, explicit language, and the use of theatrical blood.
All performances will begin at 8:00 p.m. and will take place in the David Thayer Theatre at the UI Theatre Building. Tickets are available through the Hancher Box Office at 319-335-1160 or online at hancher.uiowa.edu/tickets.
Tickets are $20 adults, $15 seniors (65+), $10 students & youth, $5 UI students
Capacity is limited and all seating is general admission. Masks are strongly encouraged.