June 22, 2006
UWB theater group heads to Italy
By Elaine Kraft
UW Bothell
The Empty Suitcase Theater Company, a student theater group of the UW Bothell, will be traveling to Tuscany this month at the invitation of the international student theater festival in Arezzo, Italy.
The 4th annual Arezzo Festival is hosted by the Accademia dell’Arte, the University of Siena, and by the city and province of Arezzo from June 25 to July 1.
“The festival provides a unique opportunity for the Empty Suitcase Theater Company to highlight the work that is being done here at UW Bothell and to represent the Pacific Northwest in an international arena,” says Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, assistant professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences program at UW Bothell and director of the company.
The OmniBus Project, which the company has developed to perform at the Arezzo Festival, focuses on real and imaginary bus stories in order to chronicle ordinary experiences as well as the history of buses and civil rights.
“This project is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me,” says troupe member Cammy Louise Ponn. “I am a former drama pre-arts major who gave up performing when I became a mother. I am now a single parent going back to school to become a teacher. This will be a great experience as part of my education and as a future teacher.”
Taking their project abroad offers the student actors a unique opportunity to be part of a performance piece that is being created and developed for the international community. Students learn how to place a stronger emphasis on communicating stories and characters with signs and symbols that can be read cross-culturally.
Other troupe members are Giselle Cárcamo, Caylin Shiree Feiring, Grace Anna Hamilton, Debra Ann Bryant, Sharron Isabella McAllister, Amber Braxton and Kelsey Ann Denney.
This year the festival will be held in the outdoor spaces of the Accademia dell’Arte, on a hillside near Arezzo. A stage for the performances will be constructed in the large garden of the Accademia.
In addition to UW Bothell’s troupe, other performing groups will include groups from the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan, Poland; Trinity College of Dublin, Ireland; the University of California Santa Barbara; the Academy of Film and Drama in Ljubliana, Slovenia; Columbia University of New York City; a collaboration between the University of California Irvine and the Korean National University of the Arts; Teatro Punto of Amsteram and the “berliner schule für schauspiel” a group from Berlin, Germany.
