We are off to a great start with development for our upcoming project! Early this fall, dramaturg Miriam Felton-Dansky and the rest of the company began research into French melodrama and the history of medical experimentation for our adaptation of Alice, or The Scottish Gravediggers, to premiere in October 2011, just in time for Halloween. In addition plowing through a vast amount of reading, we visited the Cushing Center at Yale’s medical school library to look at the hundreds of slices of preserved brains Dr. Cushing collected in his research. Our research into melodrama yielded a fabulous document called “The Thespian Preceptor,” which provides recipes for actors in portraying nearly every emotion under the sun. With the help of translator Daniel Gerould, we discovered that the play has never before been performed in English.
Our October 2010 reading of the original play was followed by a lively post-reading discussion with Daniel Gerould, who answered questions about everything from melodrama’s position as a popular form to its relationship to opera. Since the reading, we have continued regular meetings to discuss issues surrounding the play and to share research and images. The acting company has been meeting for a series of movement workshops, led by Lindsay Torrey, to explore melodramatic physicality. Over Thanksgiving, our set designer, Danielle Baskin, visited the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago and returned with wonderful research on medical instruments and anatomical painting.
We are also thrilled to have been offered a residency and partnership with the Old Stone House in Park Slope, where we will begin working in January 2011 and produce an August 2011 workshop and the full production. We should be all set to begin practicing medical quackery in earnest by the time the new year rolls around.
- Jessica Brater, Artistic Director
Monday, June 20, 2011 at 5:49PM 
