[Date Prev][Date Next] [Chronological] [Thread] [Top]

RAT Double Double Helix Press Release

PLEASE POST, COPY, FORWARD AND GENERALLY DISSEMINATE WIDELY. MOST IMPORTANTLY, IF YOU'RE IN THE AREA, PLEASE COME!!!


--BRAD


* Press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Theatre Double's reading series,
Underground Voices
Curated by Brad Rothbart
presents a reading of

Double Double Helix
by Kate Walat

Double Double Helix stars Saige Thompson as ALI and Elizabeth Klinger as BEA. The work features Ben Dibble as JAMES WATSON/MR. GOODWILLIE, Colleen McQuaide as CALLIE, and Sue Giddings as DORIS/ROSALIND FRANKLIN. The reading will take place at Theatre Double, 1619 Walnut Street in Philadelphia on Monday 20 March 2000 at 8 pm. Doors will open at 7:30. A free wine-and-cheese reception will follow the performance. The reading is for one night only. Admission is pay-what-you-can, and the space is wheelchair accessible.

About this work, the playwright states: "Double Double Helix dramatizes the struggle of identical twins Ali and Bea to design an experiment that will win the ninth-grade science project and eliminate THE COMPETITION (ninth-grade boys)." The playwright will be present at the reading. Please join us for this complex examination of the continuing struggle of women to gain respect and equality in the field of science.

Kate Walat (playwright) lives in New York. She is an affiliated writer with New Georges theater company, which is dedicated to the development of experimental and emerging women writers. Her play Spy Speak Spy was performed in the 1998 New York International Fringe Festival. Her script Double Double Helix was read at Ensemble Studio Theatre as part of their First Light Festival, sponsored by the Sloane Science foundation, and was also part of New Georges' Round Two reading series. Are We There Yet?, a one-act, was part of the Working Group's evening of short pieces, and Once Upon a Weekday was performed in New Georges' Performathon of 10-minute plays. In 1996 Kate garnered her B.A., graduating with honors in playwriting from Brown University, where she wrote Carrying the Storm, Remembering to Dance, and The Clearing. She is a senior editor of the online magazine TheaterMania, and previously worked in the literary and publications departments of The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival. Her current play-in-progress, Mocha-Diva or the White Girl, is a contemporary take on Melville's Moby-Dick, and was read in New Georges' Newdity reading series this past fall.
"My play Double Double Helix continues my exploration, begun with the first play I wrote, of themes affecting women, dramatizing the struggle of identical twins Ali and Bea to come up with an experiment which will win the ninth-grade science contest -- and eliminate The Competition(ninth-grade boys). It also tells the story of Rosalind Franklin, one of the four scientists whose research was most responsible for the 1953 discovery of the double helix molecular structure of DNA, but who was not credited along with Watson and Crick when they won the Nobel Prize. I am interested in theater that does not follow the rules of the well-made play -- and in figuring out how this rule-breaking theater works and why it excites me. In my own plays stories from several timeframes or worlds are simultaneously unfolding, and I am faced with the challenge of figuring out how to convey that -- and make it dramatically satisfying -- outside of the constraints of traditional dramatic molds.I am also interested in going deeper than the skeletal structure of a play to look at its building blocks: language. I have been experimenting with orchestrating different vocal rhythms for characters, and with colliding poetic language with the particular dialects in which young people speak. I want to channel the tension contained in different combinations of sound and tempo, while studying its effect on the audiences' ear."


 Future Readings Include:
03 April Naomi Iizuka Tattoo Girl
17 April Luis Alfaro Straight As A Line
01 May Karen Cronacher Scavengers