Synetic Theater | 2011 -2012 Season

2011/2012 Season

EMOTION IN MOTION

This season, Synetic jumps, vaults, and flips as only Synetic can into worlds wrought with love, war, passion, and power. Beginning with Speak No More - the Silent Shakespeare Festival featuring remounted productions of audience favorites Macbeth, Othello and Romeo and Juliet, Synetic will explore once the emotional conflicts of the plays through its unique movement style.

In the Spring, Synetic dives into new territory starting with New Movements, works created and directed by company member Ben Cunis and acclaimed European physical theatre artist Mirenka Cechová. From there, two new productions directed by Paata Tsikurishvili , Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and the new play Home of the Soldier, will round out the emotionally-charged season.

Join Synetic as it moves effortlessly (almost) through tales of joy, hate, conflict, and madness!

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3-Play COMPLETE Subscription: includes New Movements, The Taming of the Shrew and Home of the Soldier. Choose any three plays.

3-Play NEW PLAY Subscription: includes the New Movements Series and Home of the Soldier

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2011/2012 season

SPEAK NO MORE: THE SILENT SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
Directed by Paata Tsikurishvili
Choreographed by Irina Tsikurishvili
Set and Costume Design by Anastasia R. Simes
Lighting Design by Colin K. Bills and Andrew F. Griffin
Original Music by Konstantine Lortkipanidze
Sound Design by Irakli Kavsadze and Konstantine Lortkipanidze: MACBETH
Nominated for 11 Helen Hayes Awards and Recipient of 5 in 2008 including Outstanding Resident Play, Outstanding Director and Outstanding Choreography
Starring Irina Tsikurishvili and Irakli Kavsadze
September 14 - October 2, 2011 at Crystal City; “a fiery adaptation that puts the company’s dynamic style on exhilarating display” – The Washington Post; “Like much of what’s best about Synetic, it’s fearlessly big, sensuously charged, a conscious flaunting of bodies and training and technique–and it fairly explodes off the stage.” – Washington CityPaper; If the first installment Hamlet…the rest is silence surprised Washington audiences with its silence, Synetic’s second Silent Shakespeare production took the area by storm with a “titanic clash of blood and thunder.” Set in a dark, impressionistic, military world, Macbeth is a swirl of murder, madness and self-destruction, exploring the outsized ambitions of a husband and wife.; OTHELLO
Nominated for 9 Helen Hayes Awards and Recipient of 3 in 2011 including Outstanding Ensemble and Outstanding Director
October 19 - November 6, 2011 at Crystal City; “Smashing production… a genre that it has all but reinvented–vacuuming out the dialogue in Shakespeare’s greatest works and redecorating with mesmerizing movement… scorching physicality… a marvelous infusion of up-to-the-minute visual technique.” – The Washington Post; “Othello wows without words… Synetic is certainly one of the most innovative theater arts organizations in the DC area, indeed, in the US.” – DC Examiner; The machinations of Iago are as labyrinthine and dark as the struggles of his mind, and these are all made manifest in Othello. The rapid ascent of the powerful Othello and his love affair with the beautiful Desdemona is thrilling to watch, but it literally fractures the jealous Iago. Themes of love, jealousy, race and perception are explored through the use of onstage projections, a shifting geometric set, and the swirling choreography and physical expression of Synetic’s performers and creators. Othello represents a bold new step in the evolution of the silent theater for which Synetic has become acclaimed.; ROMEO AND JULIET
Nominated for 6 Helen Hayes Awards and Recipient of 2 in 2009 including Outstanding Ensemble and Outstanding Director
November 25 - December 23, 2011 at Crystal City; “If you’ve never experienced the hyper-theatrical dance moves and dramatics of the astonishing Synetic Theater, may I suggest that now would be a very good time to start?” – The Washington Post; “…like a pack of Olympic gymnasts pitted for their lives against Cirque du Soleil acrobats in some half-gravity environment–that’s how fearless, how fast, how goddamn airborne it seems.” – Washington CityPaper; Shakespeare’s classic story of star-crossed lovers is one of Synetic’s landmark productions. Love, passion and timelessness are all made stunningly physical in this rendition of Shakespeare’s great romantic tragedy. Set within the gears of a giant clock, Synetic’s adaptation explores the untimely nature of one of literature’s greatest love stories. The gears of the clock become the world – the church, the balcony and the mausoleum all transform before the eyes. Using shadows, props, mime, dance, sinuous combat, and, most of all, passionate acting, Romeo and Juliet is a heartstopping thrill to experience.

NEW MOVEMENTS SERIES New Works, New Artists Celebrating a new generation of physical theater artists from around the globe, Synetic will launch a new series with a mission to develop Synetic artists, directors and playwrights, and bring world physical theater to Washington, DC.: GENESIS REBOOT
Directed by Ben Cunis
Written by Ben and Peter Cunis
February 9 - March 4, 2012 at Crystal City; What happens when you start everything over? A lone Angel tries to answer this question in an attempt to restart the story of the beginning of humanity: the same story, only better. Lightning dialogue meets extreme movement in this dark comedy, as the powerful Angel and a wisecracking Demon struggle over a retelling of Genesis. Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel are all reinvented as the Synetic ensemble brings the beginning of Creation to life, with choreography by Irina Tsikurishvili.; LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
A decadent, surreal and blasphemous mixture of physical theater, mime and modern dance
Conceived and Presented by Tantehorse – Physical Theater Company of the Czech Republic
Directed by Petr Bohác
Starring Miřenka Čechová and Radim Vizváry
March 8 - March 25, 2012 at Crystal City; Acclaimed actress Miřenka Čechová, and her company Tantehorse from the Czech Republic will mount Light in the Darkness, a two-part piece – On the Dark Road: The Death of Marquis de Sade and Light in the Darkness: Dante – that fuses the disciplines of physical theater, mime and modern dance. The first part, On the Dark Road, is composed of dreams and fantasies and invites the audience to a fictional picture gallery of sins in which various images of death appear and disappear. One fantastic image emerges and develops into another, demanding the viewer’s individual imagination and experience. Light in the Darkness combines surreal and decadent poetry with elements of physical theater and modern dance. Hell is not in others: hell exists within us – just as we contain within us the promise of heaven.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
World Premiere
Directed by Paata Tsikurishvili
Choreographed by Irina Tsikurishvili
Set and Costume Design by Anastasia R. Simes
Starring Irina Tsikurishvili
March 31 - April 22, 2012 at Lansburgh Theatre
Synetic returns to comedy and presents the eighth installment in the Silent Shakespeare series, The Taming of the Shrew, at the Lansburgh Theatre in downtown Washington, DC, in a continuing special alliance with the Shakespeare Theatre Company. Irina Tsikurishvili will play the title character in one of the Bard’s best-known romantic comedies, while the Helen Hayes Award-winning ensemble brings its signature physicality and aesthetic to reinvent this remarkable, fiery war of the sexes.

HOME OF THE SOLDIER
World Premiere
Directed by Paata Tsikurishvili
Choreographed by Irina Tsikurishvili
Set and Costume Design by Georgi Alexi-Meskhishvili
May 23 - July 1, 2012 at Crystal City
Opening Memorial Day weekend, the world premiere of a new text-based play, Home of the Soldier, commemorates the heroism of our armed forces. The story follows a young American through the landscape of war and is a powerful story of honor, courage and love.

ALL SHOW TITLES, DATES, CAST, AND CREW ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.