ITHACA, N.Y.: The Cherry Artists’ Collective has announced its 2020-21 season, featuring four socially distanced productions.
The season will open with The Fan (Sept. 17-27), by Carlo Goldoni, an outdoor farce featuring elaborate COVID masks and heightened movement. Artistic director Samuel Buggeln will adapt and direct this production, to be performed as a “lip-sync without lips,” with a recorded track containing dialogue, music, and sound effects. The production will be performed in front of a distanced audience as well as available online.
Next up will be the English-language premiere of A Day (Nov. 13-21), written by Québecoise writer Gabrielle Chapdelaine, adapted by Josephine George, and directed by Wendy Dann. The play follows four characters who guide one another through the obstacles of 24 seemingly ordinary hours. The actors will perform live from multi-camera green-screen booths with their performances mixed in real time with recorded video to create a live video stream.
Following will be the English-language premiere of Hotel Good Luck (Feb. 13-20, 2021), by Alejandro Ricaño, translated by Jacqueline Bixler, which follows a late-night radio DJ who, after an upsetting event, finds himself down a rabbit hole of parallel universes attempting to regain what he’s lost. Buggeln will direct.
The season will conclude with a new headphone walking play tentatively called Trap Door (May 20-30, 2021), with poet Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon as lead writer. The new work will explore the history of Ithaca’s civil rights pioneers and underground railroad.
The Cherry Artists’ Collective produces world premieres, international plays in translation, retellings of classic stories, and diverse art forms in fresh combinations.
