This weekend, the New York Theater Workshop will perform two collections of short stories, which it has been working on during the past week.
On Friday night, the group will present three short stories written by Fanni Green who is helping to direct the play.
"The Polk Trilogy" is about Shelby, a woman, who interacts with various local town people she meets, according to a press release.
Green said yesterday that this will be the first time her stories will be put on stage.
"For me it's about explaining and talking with actors how we can bring these stories to the stage," she said. "I don't know what will finally happen when we get up there &emdash; if there will be a whole lot of movement."
Green said she is excited to put the play on with the actors from the New York Threater Workshop who recently arrived in Hanover. She said they have sat around and read the stories out to see how the characters interact.
"We are taking a look at the different parts …" she said. "We are all story tellers so we are continuing to investigate the best way to tell a story."
Green said the group will also perform two poems and one "thought" about how "a group of people behave in a Church."
Curtain call is at 8 p.m. in Faulkner Recital Hall.
The second performance, on Saturday night, is a combined effort between the actors of the workshop and students in Drama 65.
James Nicola, the group's artistic director, said he has been working with the students enrolled to produce a stage piece based on 10 short stories by Luigi Pirandello.
Nicola said the short stories are situated in Sicily and that the group researched various parts of Sicilian life.
He said the group has been rehersing together since Sunday when the theater workshop's actors, directors and writers arrived in Hanover.
Nicola said the plays will give a "preponderance of the Sicilian life at the turn of the century" and how local people dealt with the harsh world of industrialization.
Nicola said the characters exhibit "the sense of 'I can't keep up with things.' "
He said he is not too concerned about how it will go off on Saturday night at 7 in the Collis Center's Common Ground.
Nicola added that the plays will have some dynamic to them because the time to work on the plays is "so intense."
"There will be flashes of brilliance admist things that don't go too smoothly," Nicola said. "It's quick and intense and that makes it exhilirating"
"We ask audience to participate in a different way," Nicola said. "We ask them to be the test audience and for them to give their comments and feedback."
He said the audience will be asked to participate in a discussion after the play to talk about what was good and bad.
