÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥

BANG!
Spring 2012

Directed by Charlotte Ford

What stories do we tell ourselves about sex? Our desires can disturb us and run counter to our more "highly evolved" politically correct minds. What makes you hot? Why? What do you desire that you are ashamed of? Why do you desire it? Why are you ashamed? How does culture influence our subterranean "animal" desires?

Set and Costume Design: Maiko Matsushima
Lighting Design: Oona Curley
Stage Manager: Maddy Austin

Cast:
Gizem Aydin
Anna Bullard-Werner
Bianca Curtis-Mead
Camilla Dely
John Dominguez
Lena Ferguson
Tatiana Hammond
Dominique Koo
Danyelle Philips
Ryan Rebel
Erin Washburn
Jessica Wong

About the Director

Charlotte Ford is a Philadelphia-based theatre artist who creates avant-garde slapstick performance art that celebrates sublime stupidity with joyful abandon. She has toured her original work to the Traverse Theatre as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the London Barbican as part of the London Mime Festival, and the Paris Maison de Métallos as part of Festival Paris Quartier d'été. Original, collaboratively devised work includes CHICKEN, Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl (Fringe First, Edinburgh, 2010, short-listed for Total Theatre Award) and the upcoming 2012 Philadelphia Live Arts debut of a new project with Emmanuelle Delpech, Sarah Sanford and Lee Etzold that explores female sexuality and the funny/sexy divide through clown. She has also collaborated in creating/performing original work with Pig Iron Theatre Company (Welcome to Yuba City: Barrymore nominations, Outstanding Supporting Actress, Outstanding Ensemble), Emmanuelle Delpech (Raymond), Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental (Red Eye to Havre de Grace, Flamingo Winnebago), Rainpan (Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines) and New Paradise Laboratories (Don Juan in Nirvana). She has performed with 1812 Productions (Cherry Bomb: Philadelphia Weekly's "Best Supporting Actress in a Musical"; An Evening without Woody Allen), Theatre Exile (Gruesome Playground Injuries; That Pretty Pretty or the Rape Play; Red Light Winter: Barrymore nomination, Outstanding Supporting Actress; Mr. Marmalade: Barrymore nomination, Outstanding Ensemble), the Arden (the upcoming Robinhood), the Lantern, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, the McCarter, and Brat Productions. She is a two-time recipient of the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative grant, the Independence Foundation fellowship, and the 2008 and 2009 Leeway Art and Change grant. A 2011 finalist for the F. Otto Haas award, Ford holds a BA from ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ and an MFA from the London International School of Performing Arts.

A short Q&A with Director Charlotte Ford

Q: What's the appeal for you, as a director, in creating a collaborative piece? How does the communal experience change the shape of the show?

A: Creating a collaborative theatre piece makes each actor an author, and means that their role is tailor made for them. Collaborating is delicate; too much democracy can create an unfocused mush. At its best however, collaborative theatre creates a vibrant and timely work of art that is completely unique to its creator/performers.

Q: You've mentioned an undercurrent of repressed desire in your description of Bang! is culture an influence on our wants? How does this play, as a piece of culture, avoid this?

A: Culture definitely influences what we desire, most obviously through advertising, but perhaps more interestingly through what foods we think of as appetizing or how standards of beauty vary from culture to culture. The play cannot avoid this.

Q: Is this a show pertinent to the concerns of a women's college? Do you discuss gender in your show at all?

A: Oh sure. I always discuss gender--gender as performance, nature vs. nurture, all that good stuff. As for the show itself— those themes are in our dramaturgical soup; I'm sure they'll show up somehow in the final draft.