Four original plays offer innovative and unexpected ways to experience art

Dana Coen

Ekphrasis is a rhetorical device in which one artistic medium attempts to define the essence of another, giving a work further life by telling its perceived story. The Ackland Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill presents ekphrastic theatre in an upcoming series of live performances, enabling art at the Ackland to be experienced in unexpected and thought-provoking ways.

Each performance of Activated Art comprises four ten-minute plays, each inspired by a different work of art in the Ackland Art Museum’s permanent collection. These original plays, written by three authors from two UNC campuses, construct dramatic narratives perceived in painting and sculpture and will capture the art work’s most essential nature. Playwrights Dana Coen, Marianne Gingher and Daniel Wallace are professors in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Clyde Edgerton is a professor at UNC-Wilmington.

The plays—funny, thoughtful, and sometimes iconoclastic—will be performed in the Ackland’s galleries, in front of the art that inspired them. A discussion with the playwrights and directors follows the two Friday evening performances.

Marianne Gingher

The four plays presented at each Activated Art performance are:

“The Last Word” by Dana Coen

“Wisdom” by Clyde Edgerton

“Washing” by Marianne Gingher

“Widget” by Daniel Wallace

Performances:

Friday, 24 February, 8:00 p.m.

Saturday, 25 February, 8:00 p.m.

Sunday, 26 February, 5:00 p.m.

Friday, 2 March, 8:00 p.m.

Saturday, 3 March, 5:00 p.m.

Sunday, 4 March, 5:00 p.m.

Tickets: $10

Seating is limited. Tickets may be purchased in person at the Ackland Museum Store, on the corner of Franklin and Columbia Streets, in downtown Chapel Hill, or by phone: 919.962.0216.

The Playwrights:

Dana Coen is the acting director of the writing for the screen and stage program and an adjunct assistant professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. He has written over forty hours of prime-time television, and served as co-executive producer of the Fox series Bones and the CBS series JAG, where he spent eight seasons. His plays Internal Bleeding, Tinkle Time, Bunches of Betty, and Sympathy have been produced in New York and Los Angeles.

Clyde Edgerton is the author of ten novels, a memoir, short stories, and essays. Three of his novels—Raney, Walking Across Egypt, and Killer Diller—have been made into films. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and now is a professor of creative writing in the MFA program at UNC-Wilmington. He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristina, and their children.

Marianne Gingher has published seven books including Bobby Rex’s Greatest Hit, named a National Library Association “Best Book of the Year.” She is a Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor in the department of English and comparative literature at UNC-Chapel Hill. Gingher is also the co-author of two puppet plays, African Queens and Little Town, Big Stars, and established, along with Deborah Seabrooke, the Jabberbox Puppet Theater, a venue for adult puppet comedy in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Daniel Wallace is the author of four novels including Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician and Big Fish, which was adapted into the Tim Burton film of the same name. His stories, essays, and drawings have been published in many magazines and journals. He is the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English in the department of English and comparative literature at UNC-Chapel Hill. He lives in Chapel Hill with his wife, Laura.