Critical Mass Performance Group, a Los Angeles theater ensemble, is developing a performance piece while in residence through June 6 with PlayMakers Repertory Company at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Led by 2014 Doris Duke Artist Nancy Keystone, the company’s artistic director, Critical Mass comes to PlayMakers as part of an annual residency program providing support for the company’s creative research and development with access to PlayMakers’ professional staff, production shops, rehearsal halls, performance spaces and the intellectual resources of UNC.
They are working on a new project exploring the idea of surveillance — collaborating with scholars, experts in technology, surveillance culture, constitutional law and religion, and PlayMakers’ creative artists. The project will combine live feed video, music and performance in the unique vocabulary that has made Critical Mass one of the most celebrated ensembles in the country.
The group will present a showing of the work created during their two-week residency at 7:30 p.m. on June 6 at the Frey Rehearsal Hall in the Center for Dramatic Art on Country Club Road. The event is free, however space is extremely limited. Seats may be reserved by calling the PlayMakers Box Office at (919) 962-7529.
Critical Mass is the latest participant in the PlayMakers residency program, now in its fifth year, which is supported by a $250,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Previous participants have been Austin’s Rude Mechanicals, Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company and New York’s SITI Company and The TEAM.
Based in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, PlayMakers is the Carolinas’ premiere resident professional theater company. Subscription packages are currently available for PlayMakers’ 2015-2016 season. For more information, visit www.playmakersrep.org.
