Post Gazette: "Elizabeth Van Dyke loves what's she's doing.
She's a guest worker in Pittsburgh, where August Wilson's plays began. She's an experienced director, directing a Wilson play for the first time -- and not just any play but the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'The Piano Lesson,' in which she once acted at the country's leading black theater. And she's doing this at Carnegie Mellon, which lavishes more resources and support on her students than she can quite believe."
5 comments:
Not only is it exciting to being performing a pittsburgh base work in Pittsburgh, but I think CMU found a marvelous director to deliver this work to this audience. The article talks about discovering what it means to be black and I keep hearing from the actors how she's cutting away black stereotypes with them. "Just talk. You're black, therefore when you speak you sound black," she once told her cast. She's really getting to the hear to of the piece and I think this is going to be a work with new sensitivity to Wilson's work that hasn't been seen in a while.
This article has really enlightened me to a lot of the hubub surrounding this show and has reminded me how cool it is to be at CMU Drama where all of these really cool opportunities are being extended to me. This production is breaking new ground in a lot of ways and that is why I came to CMU is to not only get the incredible grounding in the entire industry but to be involved with the special things that are going on in theatre today.
Isnt art wonderful, powerful, and delicious. I think I like this woman. It is really refreshing to finally hear about the directors background. I'm also really pleased to be hearing about the methods which she used with the actors, encouraging that the history of the characters were just waiting to rise out of the history of these middle-class actors from predominantly white schools. I like the idea that the character had been simply lying dormant inside them since they were born.
I was completely blown away by Elizabeth at the post-show celebration on Friday. Along with hearing how she was working with the actors and the designers she expressed the most genuine and heart-felt gratitude for an opportunity and it's success that I've ever seen. I think that doing so many shows and having so many things on my mind all the time desensitizes me in a way because I didn't really think about any of the things she mentioned until she took the mic. Just watching her speak and feeling all the emotion in the room was amazing let alone hearing from Wilson's sister.
It's so strange that our production is actually being watched and reviewed. I couldn't stop but wonder when they took that picture. I am sure there were lots of pictures from the photo calls that they could have used for the article.
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