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October 28, 2004
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October 28, 2004 |
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Two artists reunite at Antioch Theater
For Tony Dallas, going to the theater is like taking a journey, an experience like no other. And those who make the journey may learn something new about human nature so that they leave the theater slightly different from when they came in. Dallas hopes that local audiences will make that journey this weekend when he directs Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Antioch Theater. Performances will take place at 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, Oct. 28 through Oct. 31. The cast features Chilean artist Peyuco Villagra as Didi, Justin Keen as Gogo, Terry Hempfling as Lucky, Dallas as Pozzo and Jake Kintner as the Boy. Helen Richardson has designed the set and lighting design is by Adrian Davidson. The play is presented with funding from the Ohio Arts Council and from local donors as part of The New Foundry Theatre Project, a new community-based initiative at the Antioch Theater. Although its cast is small, Waiting for Godot is “a large play, a meaningful play, a wonderful challenge to direct,” Dallas said. “It fits any people and any place in the world. People have a deep sense of resonance, of recognition that this is about us.” Dallas has directed The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and his own adaptation of Medea at Antioch. He has also directed Hamlet and Tartuffe at the University of Dayton and Death of a Salesman for the Human Race Theatre Company, where he is a resident artist. A native of Yellow Springs, he is the son of Meredith Dallas, a longtime Antioch theater faculty member, and Willa Dallas. Directing Waiting for Godot is especially meaningful to him for two reasons, Tony Dallas said. First, he clearly remembers seeing the play when he was a boy, when his father directed it at the Antioch Amphitheater. He can still recall details of the set, but most of all he remembers how moved he was by the production. And Dallas is delighted that Godot provides a way to collaborate with Villagra, a visiting artist at Antioch through November. The Ohio Arts Council is funding Villagra’s residency. Dallas met Villagra in 2001 when he traveled to Chile to direct his adaptation of Medea. Villagra, an actor, playwright and director, translated the play into Spanish. In Chile Dallas felt challenged by the more forceful, political role that theater plays in Chilean culture. In contrast, Dallas believes, many American plays tend to have smaller ambitions and smaller themes. Since returning from Chile, Dallas said, he has “become more aware of how unresponsive our own theater is to who we are as a people.” “Much of our theater has become reduced down to personal problems. But the job of theater is to look at who we are as a people, as a society,” he said. His experience in Chile sparked a personal journey, Dallas said, and in Villagra “I found a kindred spirit. He was instrumental in these changes in me.” The collaboration between Dallas and Villagra will continue in November, when Villagra directs The Desolate Prince by Chilean playwright Juan Radrigan. Translated by Dallas’s daughter, Paloma Dallas, the production will be performed the weekend before Thanksgiving. The Desolate Prince is a contemporary allegorical play set in a mythical Garden of Eden, Villagra said. It addresses the issues of power and disenfranchisement, and will include movement and choreography. Antioch students will appear in the play, and Villagra has found more similarities than differences in working with American theater students compared to teaching those in Chile. “The theater is the same all over the world, the same questions about life,” he said. “There’s a kind of brotherhood of theater people, especially the young. There’s a similarity in their look, in their generosity.” Dallas and Villagra hope that their artistic collaboration continues after Villagra returns to his home next month. “I believe we should build an international arts community. We can’t keep being alienated” from each other, Villagra said. “It’s important to make things together. We as artists must try to build something, some kind of point of encounter somewhere and somehow.” For more information about Waiting for Godot or to make reservations, call Louise Smith at 769-1030.
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