This weekend!
The Waldorf High School presents its second theater program of the year, Michael Frayn’s one-act comedy Audience, an amusing satire about audiences by the author of Noises Off, Copenhagen and other acclaimed plays, with two performances Saturday, May 17 at 7pm and Sunday, May 18 at 2pm at the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Unicorn Theatre, 6 East Street, Stockbridge, MA.
When Audience was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2009, critic Nicky Woolf of the Fringe Review wrote, “It pits the real audience–us–against an opposing mirror-version. After we have trooped in, so do they, and sit opposite us, discussing us as if we were an imaginary play.” Audience is directed by the Waldorf High School’s Drama and English teacher, Beth Robbins. This is Robbins’s 10th show for the high school including, most recently, Harvey at the Unicorn Theatre.
Audience will be performed by the 9th grade class. Performance is a consistent part of the English curriculum at the Waldorf High School. “One of the greatest gifts in performance with students is the social, ensemble nature of theatre,” says director Beth Robbins. “There’s a necessity to listen to one another and be sensitive that other people are important to the functioning of the group. Performing literature gives students an imaginative entrance into the truth beyond themselves.”
The Saturday evening performance will close with a concert by the Waldorf High School Chorus, comprised of every student at the school and led by chorus director Sheri Bauer-Mayorga, who also leads the Good Globe Singing School and is accompanist for and sings with upstate New York’s premiere chorus, Albany Pro Musica. The program will highlight student solos and acapella numbers from song traditions around the world, followed by a community sing featuring a repertoire of civil rights songs inspired by two great leaders, Nelson Mandela and Pete Seeger.
Tickets are available at the door for a suggested donation of $10, to support the drama program at the Waldorf High School. For directions to the Unicorn Theatre, visit the website at www.BerkshireTheatreGroup.org. For more information about the performances, call the school at 413.298.3800