Fell - A new play by Harrison David Rivers

FELL postcard

2008-07-22T21:21:00.000-07:00

FELL at The Fringe

2008-07-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

7.15 Productions and Columbia University’s Black Theater Ensemble
Present

FELL

By Harrison David Rivers
Directed by Jess McLeod

The New York International Fringe Festival – FringeNYC
A production of The Present Company
August 8th – 24th
Tickets: $15. For tickets visit http://www.fringenyc.com/

The New School for Drama Theater – 151 Bank Street
Saturday, August 9th @ 2pm
Monday, August 11th @ 5:15pm
Wednesday, August 13th @ 5pm
Thursday, August 14th @ 10pm
Friday, August 15th @ 7pm

7.15 Productions and Columbia University’s Black Theater Ensemble is proud to present FELL as part of the 11th annual New York International Fringe Festival. Performances will take place from August 9 – August 15, 2008 at The New School for Drama Theater (151 Bank Street). Official opening is set for Saturday, August 9th at 2pm.

What are you willing to risk to break through the glass ceiling? Since the civil rights movement gave African Americans equality under the law, an elusive, but very real struggle has emerged: equality in the workplace. Meet Jesse Metcalfe, a successful black businessman one step away from reaching the next rung on the corporate ladder. Facing pressure from his status obsessed wife, not to mention his own desire to rise above societal expectations, it seems that Jesse is willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. FELL is a cautionary tale exploring how one individual's decisions about (or denial of) his race can adversely affect the confidence and self-image of the people he's doing it all for: his children.

FELL is written by Harrison David Rivers and directed by Jess McLeod.

Harrison David Rivers (Playwright) Plays include When Last We Flew (FIRE! New Play Festival 2008), Fell (Black Theater Ensemble, Columbia University), Step (New York Musical Theater Festival), Baptism and Pony (At Play Productions), Man Ascends (The 24 Hour Plays), Mouth Says Move (Atlantic Stage 2), Burning (Manhattan Theatre Source), and Sistahs (Collective:Unconscious). Harrison is a founding member of At Play Productions, a member of the Old Vic New Voices Network, and a Resident Playwright with Brooklyn based Freedom Train Productions. He holds degrees in American Studies and Dance & Drama from Kenyon College and is currently pursuing his M.F.A. in Playwriting at Columbia University.

Jess McLeod (Director) is the Director of Programming at The New York Musical Theatre Festival, where she heads the Next Link Dramaturg program and developed the musical theatre/pop-rock fusion concerts The Unauthorized Musicology of Ben Folds I and II and Undercover Showtunes. Other credits include The Times by Joe Keenan & Brad Ross, The Last Five Years, Kitchen Sink by Rachel Axler. B.A. from Williams College, MFA from Northwestern, 2011; member, NYU's First Look Company.

The cast features Melissa Joyner, Rory Lipede, Jack Perry, Laurence Stepney, Kendale Winbush, and Jehan O. Young.

The production team features Brandon Giles (Set Designer), K.J. Hardy (Lighting Designer), and Jesca Prudencio (Costume Designer), and Carly DiGiovanni (Production Stage Manager).

7.15 Productions (Producer) is a new production company focusing on nurturing and exposing the next generation of theater professionals. Their internet initiative Playit4ward.net is an innovative approach to theater production that uses reality-based videos and blogs to chronicle what it takes to produce when all you’ve got is yourself, your friends and the unlimited marketing and fundraising potential of the internet. Playit4ward.net’s premier production will be Electra In a One-Piece, by Isaac Oliver and Directed by David Ruttura.

Columbia University’s Black Theater Ensemble’s (Producer) mission is to produce quality theater with, about, and for the black community at Columbia University and beyond. Past productions have included Joe Turner's Come and Gone, For Colored Girls Who've Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, American Ma(u)l, and a workshop production of Fell.

FELL plays at The New School for Drama Theater (151 Bank Street between West and Washington Streets). The nearest subway lines are the A, C ,E ,L at 14th Street/8th Avenue.

Sponsored in [in part] by the Arts Initiative at Columbia University. This funding is made possible through a generous gift from The Gatsby Charitable Foundation. Additional funding provided by Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Who's who: Playwright HARRISON DAVID RIVERS

2008-06-12T13:22:00.000-07:00

Named after Harrison Ford

From Manhattan, Kansas (the little apple) oft referred to (by me) as Manhappenin'

Oldest of four brothers

Attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio
Earned degrees in American Studies and Dance & Drama

Worked with young people in a variety of settings in San Francisco for two years before moving to New York for graduate school

Had written one full length play, PROPHET'S WIFE, which at the time of submission to Columbia, was approximately 160 pages long

My first week at Columbia, I was stabbed six times on my ass, upper thigh and shin. It was the day before my birthday, September 11th.
That experience colors everything I write.

Second semester of my first year of graduate school my Playwriting II professor refused to comment on the first act of FELL, citing its copious stage directions as impenetrable and distracting from the story (which he had apparently missed both the first and second times he read through the play). He tossed the then fifty page script onto the table and said, "Call me when it's being produced and then I'll give you feedback." I emailed him the other day: "FELL is being produced. I want my critique."

I finished writing FELL two weeks after this same professor insinuated that I was incapable of writing a play which featured African American characters.

I am black, but I have never felt comfortable reducing myself to a racial classification. I am proud of my heritage, but do not feel the need to only write so-called black plays. When I have a line of dialogue or an image or a character or a story, I write. If there is a black character in the cast, wonderful! If there's not, I don't believe that I'm shirking in my duty as an African American.

I do however believe very strongly in writing quality parts for quality actors. I happen to have some very talented black friends. This play and subsequent plays featuring black roles are for them.

My plays typically begin with an image or a sound or a color

FELL began with a little girl jumping rope
FELL began with feathers falling from the sky

I love magic (not magic magic so much) but stage magic, spectacle
I believe in impossibilities in the theater and I believe that it is the playwrights' responsibility to push the boundaries wider and wider

I am drawn to stories about families, families being broken apart, families coming back together
I love to write kids
And pregnant women
I believe that there should be a moment of intense physicality in every play
Whether it's dance or fight or play or a character standing on one leg for a ridiculous amount of time while peeling an orange
The play should challenge the actors physically as well as psychologically

I love happy endings, but I rarely write them

For the longest time I thought that ZORA was the protagonist of the play
In the original draft WEB sort of came out of nowhere in the second act to move the action forward
In the re-write I believe the narrative to be much more balanced

I am fascinated by how history is represented on stage, how the past is represented
I am fascinated by how characters in the present are affected by the past

As a writer, I sometimes find myself spending more time than I would like inside my own head
When the voices of my characters become indistinguishable from my own voice, I know that it's time to take a break

Writing can be lonely
As such, I would rather write in the company of friends, on a project in which people I love and respect as artists are passionately involved