Assembly, a potluck Artists Salon at the Bridge, now open to public
About a year and a half ago, Jennifer Tidwell and Sian Richards of PEP invited all the artists they knew to a monthly gathering at the Bridge called ASSEMBLY. The purpose was to create a forum whereby all types of artists in Charlottesville could socialize, present works in progress, request help on projects, and seek collaborators.
It remains our belief that more unity and collaboration among individual artists in our town will lead to a more vibrant and mutually supportive arts scene in Charlottesville, and might yield a voice to speak to local government and funding organizations.
Originally the group was a word-of-mouth, by-invitation sort of thing, but now PEP is opening up ASSEMBLY to anyone interested in the Charlottesville area. It happens the 2nd Sunday of every month, from 8:00 to 10:00. Here are the remaining dates in 2010. Mark your calendars and check it out!
- September 12
- October 10
- November 14
- December 12
Our Trip to Hollins for the MFA Workshop
Yesterday, Sian, Jennifer and I headed to Roanoke for an afternoon of experimentation with Hollins U’s MFA Playwright candidates. They were very game – took their shoes off, threw themselves (unrehearsed) into some Chairman Mao exercises and basically did whatever we told them. Suckas.
Seriously, it was fantabulous to see so many playwrights with experience as actors, directors, theatre technicians – and all interested in the collaborative process of building performance to boot! They created short individual performance etudes, wrote short bits of text (natch) and used these elements, in groups of three, to create super short performances. Of course, they had some random inspiration to contend with: tarot cards and other source material around Gypsy history, folklore and fortune telling. This source material just happened along, and since we PEPsters are in love with the value of randomness, well we just took the ball and ran with it.
Anyhooters, it was gangs of fun and the playwrights concocted some impressive stuff, so here’s a shout-out to all our willing and very able MFA students for participating in our experiment. And many thanks to Todd Ristau, our host.
Just as an FYI, we’ll be in Roanoke on Monday evening, July 5, at the Taubman Art Museum for a “talk” about our performance history, how we got started, how we work and other unbelievably earth-shattering information. Don’t worry peeps! Even though it’s a “talk,” we promise it will be lots more fun than the usual variety (think disgruntled parents, principals, significant others).
If you’re curious about our lovely mistress Process, and wonder when you too might meet her, just jingle us up or email us, (or whatever you 21st century peeps do) we’d love to work with you…
Martha
Performers Exchange Project at the PCA Women in the Arts Preview.
PEP will be heading over to McGuffey Art Center tomorrow June 3rd to participate in Women in the Arts!
Piedmont Council of the Arts is holding it’s Women in the Arts Preview Party and we will be performing an excerpt from Our American Ann Sisters.
We are really looking forward to giving some new people a peek at the work we have been doing and to check out all the photographers work featuring some of the women in our local arts community. Click the party link above for ticket information. The party will be going from 5:30 till 7:30.
We hope to see you there!
PEP
