HWS News
20 October 2022 Behind the Curtain View
The HWS Theatre Department will launch the 2022-2023 Frame/Works series on Friday, Oct. 21 with Guest Artist and Co-Artistic Director of the New York Neo-Futurists Rob Neill.
In advance of the HWS Theatre Department's production of the neo-futurist play Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind by Greg Allen (running Nov. 3, 4, 5), New York Neo-Futurist founding member and current co-Artistic Director Rob Neill will present a talk titled “Storytelling, Neo-Futurism, and Devised Theater” on Friday, Oct. 21 from 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. in the Gearan Center Room 228.
The talk will focus on the Neo-Futurist approach to storytelling, performance and devising. Neill returns to HWS after a previous residency in 2018. In addition to the public Frame/Works talk, Neill will visit Professor H May’s “Advanced Acting Styles—Devising” class to work with students who are currently developing the spring HWS Theatre production Fault Lines (which will run April 13, 14, 15).
Neill is a New York-based writer, performer, educator, and film and theater maker whose body of work includes avant-garde theater, podcasts, storytelling, Broadway, short film, and masterclasses in devised theater and creativity. His original plays have been performed at The Public Theater, The Ontological, P.S.122, The Whitney, and HERE Arts Center. As an actor, he has performed in numerous Neo-Futurists shows in NYC and beyond over the past 25 years, in addition to Tony-nominated Broadway shows (“London Assurance” and “Peter and the Starcatcher” on tour), regionally (“You Never Can Tell,” “Tartuffe”) and at the Edinburgh Festival (“Too Much Light...” & “The Dirty Thirty Plus”). Neill has taught a variety of masterclasses around the country at Brooklyn College, Fordham, NYU, Wellesley, Hofstra, Texas State, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Grinnell College and the University of Rhode Island where he was an artist in residence in 2017.
He holds a BA in philosophy and Russian studies from Grinnell College and a master’s degree in classical acting from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He also studied performance at the National Theater Institute and sketch at the Peoples Improv Theater, and he has worked on a variety of independent films.
Frame/Works is a program designed to draw connections between scholarly examination and artistic practice. Scholars or artists are invited to present their research on a play, playwright, historical moment, genre or style in a pre-show lecture. Following a selected performance, audience members are invited to participate in a post-show talkback with members of the cast and creative team. Taken together, the pre-show lecture and the post-show talkback, “frame” a “work” of theatrical art. Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind is directed by Associate Professor of Theatre Chris Woodworth and runs Nov. 3 and 4 at 7:30 p.m.; and Nov. 5 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. in McDonald Theatre. Tickets are free (donations accepted) and must be reserved in advance through the HWS Theatre Box Office. A limited number of tickets will be available at the door before each performance.
Following the Nov. 4 performance of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, audience members are invited to stay for a post-show talk-back with members of the cast and production team. Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind opens the HWS Theatre 2022-2023 season of unpredictability.
