Greetings to our Itinerant Theatre friends and acquaintances. Next weekend, Friday and Saturday, March 25-26 we are thrilled to host guest artist Laura Rikard who will perform two short plays each night. Plays start each night at 7:00pm in Central School’s main stage, the Ben Mount Theatre, 809 Kirby St., Lake Charles. There is one intermission. Cost is $15/$10 students.

IT is very excited that on Saturday morning, 10:00am – 12:00noon on the same stage, Laura will lead a WORKSHOP that is participatory. Attendees will explore the roots of this new theatre form, “devised theatre”, and will devise a mini-theatre piece themselves by the conclusion of this $5 workshop. Scholarships are available to cover all costs. No experience necessary! All ages are welcomed.

In the 1st play, Laura Rikard will explore the very, very challenging life of the founder of the Shaker Movement, Mother Ann Lee. She was determined to speak out and establish a religious sect in 18th century England (finally moving to upstate New York). Explore this deeply inspired life. The play itself is simple and unadorned, as are the Shakers. View women’s issues through the lens of the 18th century, and the 18th century through the lens of Mother Ann Lee.

The 2nd play, “The Pink Ribbons are Choking Me” is about one professional woman’s challenges in leaving NYC to return home to rural South Carolina and become a care-giver to her independent Mother who has advanced breast cancer.

IT proudly announces that Saturday morning, March 26 from 10:00 – 12:00 noon in Central School’s Ben Mount Theatre, our guest artist Laura Rikard, MFA will lead a workshop on “devised theatre”.

During this participatory workshop attendees will create their own devised theatre piece.

Cost is $5. What a deal!

Laura Rikard, our March 25-26 guest artist and friend whom we met via Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival work where she served on the six-state Region 6 committee chaired by our own Joy Pace, is now Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University. Laura is an academic with an MFA and an MA and years of devotion to academia. She is also a dynamic performer who won “Best Acting Award” at the 2011 Virginia Film Festival.

Not content with these laurels and accomplishments, Laura took on “devised theatre” by studying in Denmark with Odin Teatret.

So, how is “devised theatre” a theatre form that is both novel and different from your typical theatrical production that starts with a playwright’s script? In “devised theatre” cast and crew do NOT begin the process with a written script! Instead, cast and crew engage in an exploratory rehearsal process, a laboratory of theatre, perhaps with some loose outline of a theme, or topic. There is research, improvisation, experimentation. Slowly, form takes shape, and a “script”/a full lived play emerges from this exciting, shared process.

For our upcoming weekend , “New Explorations: Journeys & Legacies” March 25-26 at 7:00pm at Central School’s Ben Mount Theatre, Laura’s audience will experience “… a devised, abstract performance using theatre techniques based in Commedia dell’Arte, Viewpoints, Suziki and Meyerhold’s Biomechanics in order to explore…” two disparate themes in two short plays (each performed each evening).

FYR the two plays Laura Rikard will perform at 7:00pm on March 25-26 are:

1. A Shaker’s Path, the life and times of Mother Ann Lee, the founder of the Shakers and the inspired woman who led this persecuted group from England to finding a peaceful homestead in Upstate New York. We may know the Shakers for their exceptional furniture, but this is a driven group doomed NOT to recreate itself because it believed in abstinence.

2. The Pink Ribbons are Choking Me, an autobiographical exploration/tale of Laura’s returning home to a small South Carolina town from her NYC career to care for her cool, independent mother who is suddenly struggling with breast cancer. Laura plays different characters and gradually unveils family secrets and wonders, at some point, who truly are her parents.

IT is proud to host guest artist Laura Rikard for two nights of two original, intriguing performances (7:00pm, March 25 and 26) and also one afternoon workshop at Central School, 809 Kirby St., Lake Charles. Ms. Rikard has composed, or rather devised, these pieces. She travels all the way from Brown University, where she is a professor, to share them with our IT audience.

Devised Theatre is a new, contemporary, popular, unusual form of theatre. There is no playwright, as commonly understood. The piece is devised, perhaps by an entire company! The work evolves. The pieces are physical, energetic and personal! Watch for details on the exact titles (there has been a change, and it is a good change!)

See you at the show!