Theresa Helburn Chair of Drama, Director and Professor of Theater Mark Lord and Associate Professor in Theater Catharine Slusar collaborate as Joyous Eddies House of Theater to present Samuel Beckett's Not I at 908 Christian Street as part of the 2021 Fringe Festival. Performances are at 7:00 p.m. from September 15 through October 3. Visit FringeArts for tickets and more information.
Director's Notes
A handful of audience members gather in an intimate space.
A mouth speaks—she utters a torrent of words: as searing and searching a text as Samuel Beckett ever wrote. With scalding intensity, the play clamors to discover: who are we when we are our whole selves, when we speak and hear all of our voices in a moment—in their rages and echoes and mis-rememberings and deprecations and desires?
It lasts for fifteen minutes. And forever.
Barrymore award-winner Catharine Slusar stars. Mark Lord directs.
Most performances will be followed by a post-show talk with the artists.
Support
Not I is supported by the Bryn Mawr College Faculty Research Fund and Plaisir D’Amour Petit Théâtre in Sauve, France, where an early version of this project was developed.
Festival Co-Producer: Michael Lillys
Mark Lord teaches courses in acting, directing, playwriting and performance theory, as well as providing direction and guidance to students in the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Theater Program's two plays per year. Under Lord's leadership, many of these student productions have earned widespread acclaim; Philadelphia Weekly gave a scene from his Play of Embraces top honors in its list of the Philadelphia area's "Ten Best Theatrical Moments of 2001."
Catharine Slusar teaches many kinds of acting classes and directs students in Performance Ensemble courses. A Haas and Barrymore award-winning actor, Slusar is well-known to Philadelphia audiences through her work with Theater Exile, FringeArts, InterAct, and the Arden Theater, among others. Internationally, she has performed in Moscow, Norway, and France. As a director, she likes to play with extreme physicality and often works in several languages. Her research focuses on the power of the embodied mind and the transformation of our notion of self — socially, politically, and personally. She has a B.A. from Yale and an M.F.A. from Goddard.