Faculty Performance Production: Airline Highway by Lisa D’Amour (DRA4381.02, section 2)

Dina Janis

Airline Highway examines a tight knit community of “outsiders” over the course of a single, legendary day.  The Hummingbird Hotel is the figurative or literal home for a group of strippers, French Quarter service workers, hustlers, and poets who are bound together by their bad luck, bad decisions, and complete lack of pretense.  Presiding over them is Miss Ruby, a beloved former burlesque performer who has requested a funeral before she dies.  As the people whose lives she has touched gather to celebrate her, they must face themselves, each other, and the consequences of the choices they have made.  Airline Highway shows us the tenuous hold that community, authenticity, and real-time ritual have on a rapidly gentrifying New Orleans.

The play contains roles for 5M, 5W, 1GNC actors and Supernumerary roles for actors, dancers, singers and musicians of  6-20.

Students involved in this production will be delving into the musical world of this play which include music from The Soul Rebels, Dr. John, Kanye West, The Brothers Osborne, James Booker, Nina Simone, Ada Louise Metz, and various hymns.

Lisa D’Amour is a former student of Sherry Kramer; as well as a playwright and interdisciplinary artist and one half of the OBIE-Award winning performance duo PearlDamour.  Her plays have produced by theaters across the country, including Manhattan theater Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway, Playwrights’ Horizons, Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, Clubbed Thumb, (all in NYC), Children’s Theater Company (Minneapolis), The Wilma Theater (Philadelphia) and Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington D.C.).   http://lisadamour.com/


Learning Outcomes:
Practicing collaboration and communication with others including the creative team of actors, designers, the playwright as well as the audience.
Learning how to analyze, research, interpret and embody a play and then- share it and give it away, bringing it to life in the communal space of the theatre.



Delivery Method: Fully in-person
Prerequisites:
ACTORS: Auditions held in the first week of the term: dates tba. REQUIRED for AUDITION: 1 or 2 Monologues- Rehearsed and invested in (memorization encouraged but not required) OPTION for NON- ENGLISH MONOLOGUES: Non-English monologues are permitted, and students choosing this option for one or both of their monologue selections s should come prepared with a brief verbal synopsis in English of the text they plan on sharing.
Course Level: 4000-level
Credits: 2
M/T/W/Th 7:00PM-10:00PM (Full-term)
Maximum Enrollment: 16
Course Frequency: One time only

Categories: 4000 , All courses , Drama , Fully In-Person , Two Credit , Updates
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