2020-21 Season

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Students from the fall course THR 451/MTD 451: Theater Rehearsal and Performance utilized an investigative performance-driven process to joyously uplift lives that have ended, using theater, song and dance. Led by visiting theater director Sam Pinkleton and working with other professional collaborators, students created theatrical work in large groups, small groups and alone. During an ongoing global pandemic, this living archive of the dead offers up space for proposals, reflections, indictments, celebrations and imagined alternatives to a world numbed by an ambush of death. The class has culminated in student micro-projects that can be freely viewed in any order, at any time, from anywhere. FREE; open to Princeton University community. RSVP to vcd@princeton.edu to join the toast on Zoom.

The Programs in Theater and Music Theater present a short film of original theater works created through journalistic research by three generations of Princeton women commemorating this historic milestone. Watch the premiere of the film livestream on December 18 at 7 PM (EST). The film will be available to watch on demand starting December 19, 2020. FREE and open to public.

The first fully-staged production of "Unbecoming," a play by Princeton theater alumna Emma Watkins ’18. Lady Charlotte Guest is a Victorian housewife and mother of seven. Much to her husband’s dismay, she aspires to become the first person to translate the Mabinogion — a collection of ancient Welsh stories — into English. Through her translation, she encounters Blodeuwedd, a woman conjured from flowers as a wife for her creator and punished for her infidelity. As Charlotte struggles to reconcile her creative ambitions with 19th-century expectations of marriage and motherhood, she must also confront the power and responsibility she holds in retelling Blodeuwedd’s story. Watch the video on-demand through January 31, 2021. FREE.

The Lewis Center for the Arts’s Program in Theater presents an academic exploration of Enda Walsh’s strange and tender love story, Arlington. This event examines themes of isolation, hope, and new relationships across space and time. This presentation experiments with socially-distanced performance practices that hauntingly echo the themes and plot of this dystopian story. Available to watch on-demand March 19-26, 2021; talkback event on March 20 at 8 PM (ET) via Zoom Webinar. Events limited to Princeton University community. FREE

A Humanities Council Magic Project launches a partnership between the LCA and New York city based CLASSIX, a collective of Black theater artists and scholars dedicated to expanding the classical theater canon through an exploration of dramatic works by Black writers. This kick-off event features recorded readings by professional actors of excerpts of plays written by artists in the New Deal-era Federal Theatre Project’s Negro Units. The readings serve as a springboard for a panel-led conversation on this moment in Black and theatrical history. With Autumn Womack (African American Studies and Department of English), Kinohi Nishikawa (African American Studies and Department of English) and Arminda Thomas (CLASSIX), moderated by Michael Dinwiddie (NYU). FREE; registration required for Zoom Webinar.

Live-streamed reading of A Game of Inheritance, a new play by Princeton senior Vydhourie Thiyageswaran and directed by professional guest director Sabina Unni, that follows Mindy, a human rights lawyer, dealing with some of the struggles of race, law, class, post-colonial politics, and some yoga in a fictional nation, Kilini. A discussion on the play will follow the reading. FREE and open to public. Presented on Zoom.

"The Chinese Lady" tells the story of fourteen-year-old Afong Moy as she’s brought to the United States from Guangzhou Province in 1834. Allegedly the first Chinese woman to set foot on U.S. soil, she has been put on display for the American public as 'The Chinese Lady.' Inspired by the true story of Afong Moy’s life, "The Chinese Lady" is a dark, poetic, yet whimsical portrait of America through the eyes of a young Chinese woman. Filmed performances livestreamed April 9-10; Live talkbacks with playwright Lloyd Suh and Professors Anne Cheng and Beth Lew-Williams April 8 at 2 p.m. (EDT) and with the show team on April 9 at 9:45 p.m. (EDT). FREE

The Program in Theater presents a reading of a new play by Minjae Kim '21. Where does Korea end and America begin? Where does America end and Korea begin? A play exploring the consensual (?) assimilation to America and the divides it creates within families and within ourselves.

Princeton University’s Program in Theater partners with Fordham University, Purchase College, and University of Massachusetts-Amherst to create a virtual theatrical response to Naomi Wallace’ play One Flea Spare. This play, about strangers quarantining together during London’s 17th-Century Great Plague, provoked this wild artistic departure about our own communities’ social iniquities, abuses of power, classism, racism, fake science, and questions about who can afford to survive a plague and the boundaries of gender and the body. The production, devised by the students and led by Princeton faculty member Elena Araoz, will be performed live. FREE; presented livestream.

A virtual reading of a new play, "Sweet Mother," by Princeton senior Faith Iloka. The story follows a Nigerian family who have recently immigrated to the United States. The play highlights the plight of a Nigerian mother, Ebere, who struggles to overcome domestic violence at the hands of her husband while caring for her three children. Via Zoom. FREE

Join a fun and fresh celebration of theater and music theater seniors as they head towards graduation. The evening will be part variety show, part virtual performance art, part fire side chats. Program curated by Abigail Jean-Baptiste '18 and hosted by Morgan Carmen and Rosie Vasen. On Zoom; FREE and open to Princeton students, faculty, staff + alumni.

Theater senior Glenna Jane Galarion presents a livestream concert drawn from her concept album Vestige following its release. The collection of songs on the album, written, composed and produced by Galarion, encapsulate absence: the absence of permanence, the absence of unconditionality, the absence of choice, the absence of wholeness, the absence of voice. Through this debut full-length original musical project, she explores intimacy and attachment, sonically and lyrically tracing her conceptions of relationships and entanglements from a father's absence to a reclamation of the body. FREE and open to public.

The Programs in Theater and Music Theater and Princeton's East West Theater present a live production of the musical Vietgone by Qui Nguyen with original music by Shane Rettig. It's 1975 and two young survivors meet in a Vietnamese refugee camp in mid-America shortly after the fall of Saigon. Will this strange new land of cowboys, hippies and bikers allow them to fall in love? Playwright Nguyen’s wildly creative, irreverent style flips stereotypes on their head, remixing history and culture into a sexy, funny and energetic fantasia as he imagines how two soulmates might have found each other in a turbulent time.

Princeton senior Morgan Carmen performs two sets of her unique brand of stand-up comedy for a small invited and socially distanced audience, presented by the Program in Theater.

The Lewis Center for the Arts' Programs in Theater and Music Theater present a concert version of "LIZZIE: The Musical" by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt. Featuring Princeton seniors Paige Allen '21 as Lizzie and Nora Aguiar '21 as Emma, directed and choreographed by junior Ines Aitsahalia and music directed by junior Ed Horan.

A reading of a new narrative fantasy play, For the Love of Beauty: Stories About Luz, written by Princeton senior Tyler Ashman '21, presented by the Program in Theater.