2022-23 Season
The pandemic has altered our lives in so many ways. For one, the vital power of theater, dance, and performance, and the communities that they foster, came to a crashing halt with Covid. How do we make sense of the chaos, losses, transitions, and isolation that we experienced in the last two years? How might coming to performance “again” REactivate, REimagine, and REinvigorate our relationship to art, to our communities, and to ourselves? How do we reflect and return to the stage with both the urgency to create anew and the patience to engage with the complex realities of our present moment?
This season, (Re): Activate, Imagine, Invigorate, Nitery Experimental Theatre invited performances that deeply engage with the question of the role of arts in struggles for justice in our post(?)-pandemic world. We’re hosting diverse works and performances that explore a multiplicity of art with various issues and themes.
THE HEADLANDS
Asian American Theater Project
November 10, 11, 12
EVERYTHING MUST GO
Stanford Theater Lab
December 1, 2, 3
PIPELINE
BLACKstage
February 16, 17, 18
In THE HEADLANDS by Christopher Chen, an amateur sleuth journeys through memories, family histories, and the fog of San Francisco to solve the ultimate true-crime case: the unsolved murder of their father. As the fall mainstage of AATP’s 2022-2023 season “Returning/Reactivating Home”, THE HEADLANDS interrogates the concept of home through a noir memory play. This multimedia production combining both theater and film will ask of us: How can confronting memories of family and home liberate us? What can the home we come from teach us about the ones we hope to build? Content warning: murder, gun violence, family separation. mentions of depression, suicide, and child abuse.
Everything Must Go is a collaborative, devised performance in the style of The Infinite Wrench as performed by the Neo-Futurists. Together, the ensemble will write a collection of 30 short original plays to be performed in exactly 60 minutes in a high-energy, unrepeatable, audience-determined order. These plays can range from deeply personal, to political statement, to stupidly silly, and everything in between. All are truthful and based on the realities experienced by the ensemble in the present moment. The emphasis of the format is creating immediate, non-repeatable work through principles of non-illusory theatre and connecting to the audience; instead of playing characters, you are who you are, where you are, and draw from your own experiences to do things in real time with audience input.
Pipeline is a play that explores systemic racism in academic institutions and confronts the school-to-prison pipeline that traps underprivileged youth in cycles of crime and poverty. This project will not only examine the adversity of the PWI experience but also celebrate our resilience as Black students at Stanford.
PLANET EARTH ARTS NEW PLAY FESTIVAL
April 28, 29, 30
A provocative rich mix of short plays exploring climate change, racial/social
justice, and the future of all life. From the Greeks and Shakespeare to August Wilson and Young Jean Lee, theater has always been one of civilization’s most powerful art forms for exploring the human condition and mirroring the burning issues each generation faces. The Festival features a kaleidoscope of bold and timely new dramatic works: An Indian family pays a tragic price for their GMO seeds; three amorous wolves on the U.S.-Mexican border are separated by “Trump’s Wall”; two island birds confront sea-rise; an African American farming family struggles with drought and environmental racism; three women caught in a California wildfire; and a poetic meditation on the Big Bang – the cosmic beginning of all life.