Taking a bite out of the Big Apple

WALES ONLINE

Sep 4 2008 by Jonathan Evans, Pon­typridd Observer

BROADWAY is call­ing for one uni­ver­sity lec­turer who’s swap­ping Tre­for­est for a stage in the Big Apple next month.

Rea Den­nis, a senior lec­turer in drama at the Uni­ver­sity of Glam­or­gan, will star at the Per­form­ing the World ’08 (PTW ’08) fes­ti­val in New York from Octo­ber 2–5.

She will join Brazil­ian actress Magda Miranda and dynamo Welsh com­mu­nity artist Miranda Ballin to present “per­formed sto­ries of migra­tion and place in cul­tural development”.

The fes­ti­val is expected to attract more than 400 drama enthu­si­asts from across the United States and around the world.

The trio will present Train Tracks And Rooftops, a con­tem­po­rary per­for­mance piece draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from child­hood places of refuge and with extracts from Rea’s solo work, Apart Of And Apart From.

Rea said: “Magda and I devised the piece to explore embod­ied mem­ory of place.

“We have the Aus­tralian coast­line of my child­hood and the São Paulo inner city of Magda’s infused with our research of South Walian childhoods.

“The work plays with fixed bound­aries and fixed iden­tity posi­tions through blend­ing the auto­bi­ogra­phies in the the­atri­cal lan­guage. In a way we are ask­ing where is place? Who owns place? Do I have a place?”

The per­for­mances offer metaphors for spa­tial and rela­tional alien­ation and belong­ing in con­tem­po­rary organ­i­sa­tions and com­mu­ni­ties that are con­stantly nego­ti­at­ing tran­si­tional change.

For more infor­ma­tion on PTW ’08, visit www.performingtheworld.org