First Reading of Retrospective, A New Play

First Zoom Meeting of Our Players

Top (l-r) Gifford Elliott [Director], T.J. Elliott [Playwright], Jeremiah Alexander [Clint]

Bottom (l-r) Kat Reeve [Pippa], Jasmine Dorothy Haefner [Z], Daniel Thompson [Rory]

And so it begins: fine actors working with an astute director starting the transformation of text to performance, figuring out how to make theater live. The Hilton Als quote about theater seems both instructive and inspiring:

“Theatre isn’t real. It’s a refraction of reality, containing feelings and thoughts that are put forth, first, in a primary text, which the actor interprets—an interpretation that the director supports or edits, in an attempt to help build, in a made-up world, an atmosphere of verisimilitude.”
Hilton Als

We have a new play, Retrospective, but at this moment it’s still that primary text and even that continues to shift. After our first rehearsal yesterday, January 12th for its first public reading that will take place on January 16th 2025 at 7PM in Manhattan, our playwright, T. J. Elliott spent several hours in his hotel room in midtown Manhattan trimming and altering that text.  The after effect of the reading will likely be even more editing and tightening. Past happy experiences have taught us that the quality of the audience at a first reading provides significant and actionable insights into the further development of a play. If you’d like to be part of that audience, just ping us at knowledgeworkings@elliotttj

Retrospective concerns a famous painter who may or may not be dreaming of an encounter with his first wife amidst a retrospective of his work and the appearances of others from his past. We are lucky and gratified to have Gifford Elliott directing our cast of Daniel Thompson, Kat Reeve, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner, and Jeremiah Alexander. (Jerry and I first worked together as actors in 1978; Dan and I met in theatre in 1979!) 

If you would like to attend what will be about a ninety minute reading, then just email knowledgeworkings@gmail.com and we will send you a Google calendar invite. If you attend, you will part of the process of production as noted in another essential quote below:

“The play does not exist in the theater as a written text until it has been absorbed in the process of  production. Drama is  ‘translated’ or transformed into the person of the actor — “the body of the art of the theater”, as Stark Young put it.”

Harold Clurman, On Directing