Welcome to the shiny, new Fault Line Theatre website!
Though the website lay dormant for the last couple months, we certainly have not. There’s so much to talk about, but it seems fitting to begin right around where we left off…
Almost 18 months ago (back when I was still an intern), I sat in a small rehearsal room in Downtown NYC with the cast and creative team of what would become From White Plains for the first time. Michael Perlman (our fearless director and playwright) had brought along nothing but a few pages and some ideas about where they would go. We were set to open in just over a month.
As many of you know, the rest is history…
The run at La Tea Theatre in June of 2012 was an incredible success and the remounting at the Pershing Square Signature Center brought the show to an even wider audience.
In my opinion, the process of writing is almost an impossibly magical task; a writer must conjure characters out of thin air. Until these characters are embodied by actors, they exist only on the page and in the minds of those who read the play. By developing From White Plains with the actors and designers in the room from nearly Day 1, we were able to literally see the characters take shape in reality, rather than in our heads. The actors and the characters they played were in a dialogue with one another, each influencing the actions of the other. The task became not figuring out who these characters were, but instead, what would these people do if placed in these circumstances. The process felt immediate. A thousand versions of From White Plains were staged in that rehearsal room and it was the job of the artists to filter, distill, and decide which version told the clearest, most necessary story.
So where are we now?
It’s been 7 months since From White Plains closed at the Signature Center. Our goal in producing this show (as with any show) has been to share it with as many people as possible. We feel that it tells a story that needs to be heard at this moment in time. We feel like it shows the grey areas of an issue many people paint black and white… And we’re thrilled that audiences who have seen it feel the same way.
From White Plains now has a life outside of New York City. A remounting of the show, with the same cast and crew as our NYC production, opens THIS WEEKEND at The Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY. In February, Fault Line Theatre Co-Artistic Director Craig Wesley Divino (who normally plays the role of John in the show) will be directing a production at Xavier University.
Productions of the play are also being produced by other companies across the country. The show can be seen in Chicago and Boston in the coming months (as well as other cities to be revealed soon…).
If you find yourself in Ithaca between now and November 11, head over to The Kitchen Theatre:
