FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Great Barrington, Mass.—For the third consecutive year, the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center invites participation in New York Theatre Workshop’s Mind the Gap, a free intergenerational collaborative performance-making program, June 23 through June 27. Mind the Gap’s primary goal is to use theatre as a creative tool to increase empathy and communication between generations and starts with the premise that we always have something to learn from each other, regardless of age.
The program will culminate in a public performance in which the collaborative work is performed by the participants at the Mahaiwe’s Indigo Room at 20 Castle Street, on Friday, June 27 at 7 p.m. Reservations for this performance can be made at the Box Office, 413-528-0100 or mahaiwe.org.
Apply
Prospective participants can apply by visiting mahaiwe.org/applymtg. Application deadline is Friday, May 9. Participation will be finalized by May 31. Youth stipends are $250 per person.
About Mind the Gap
New York Theatre Workshop’s Mind the Gap is a free intergenerational theatre program in which youth [14-21] and elders [60+] interview each other and collectively create a performance piece inspired by each other’s life stories and guided by New York Theatre Workshop’s teaching artists. No theatre experience is required to participate in the program.
Mind the Gap is not an acting class; performance is merely the tool through which to mind the gap between generations. During the program participants explore the past, present and the future, using intergenerational interviews as inspiration. Participants are treated as artists, and all participants are seen as equal in the process.
Through the workshop, participants are able to: investigate, listen and empathize with someone of another generation, while using playwriting as a tool to understand and represent their unique experience; broaden their perspective, see the other generation in a new light, and take on the task of telling someone else’s story with respect and understanding; and share their stories and ultimately see them interpreted through another’s eyes making meaning out of their personal narratives and gaining insights into their own lives.
Mind the Gap at the Mahaiwe is sponsored by Massachusetts Cultural Council, Barr Foundation, The Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation, Berkshire Bank, the Feigenbaum Foundation, Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn Foundation, Cain Hibbard, and NBT Bank.
Teaching Artists
Mind the Gap will be facilitated by two teaching artists from New York Theatre Workshop: Noor Hamdi and Marty Chandler.
Noor Hamdi (they/them), who is proudly queer and Syrian American, is a New York-based actor, teacher, teaching-artist, and writer. They’ve performed on Broadway (Skin of Our Teeth, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz), Off-Broadway (including Cartography, directed by Kaneza Schaal), regionally, and internationally, as well as in various films (including Desert Warrior, directed by Rupert Wyatt, and Sherman, directed by Darine Hotait) and TV. Noor is always happy to popularize queer and SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) narratives, and especially the intersection of the two, and is currently workshopping their One They Show. They’re also a clown, circus artist, polyglot, gamer, and eternal academic.
Marty Chandler (they/them) is a Filipino-American improviser, writer, and collaborative theater maker who is passionate about arts education. They are currently the Education & Engagement Associate at New York Theatre Workshop and a teaching artist with Ping Chong & Company. They have a B.A. in Theater & Performance Studies and Psychology from Yale University, where they attended as a QuestBridge Scholar and promoted access to education by working in Undergraduate Admissions. As an artist, they have performed at the Providence Fringe Festival, worked with The Orchard Project in the Core Company ensemble, and received the Yale Marina Keegan Prize for Excellence in Playwriting. They currently perform in a house sketch team at the PIT Theater and in the Second City NYC Grad Revue program.
About New York Theatre Workshop
New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) empowers visionary theatre-makers and brings their work to adventurous audiences through productions, artist workshops and education and community engagement programs. NYTW nurtures pioneering new writers alongside powerhouse playwrights, engages inimitable genre-shaping directors, and supports emerging artists in the earliest days of their careers. NYTW has mounted over 150 productions from artists whose work has shaped the very idea of what theatre can be, including Jonathan Larson’s Rent; Tony Kushner’s Slavs! and Homebody/Kabul; Doug Wright’s Quills; Claudia Shear’s Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde; Paul Rudnick’s The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla; Martha Clarke’s Vienna: Lusthaus; Will Power’s The Seven and Fetch Clay, Make Man; Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest, Far Away, A Number and Love and Information; Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s Aftermath; Rick Elice’s Peter and the Starcatcher; Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová and Enda Walsh’s Once; David Bowie and Enda Walsh’s Lazarus; Dael Orlandersmith’s The Gimmick and Forever; Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me; Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play; Kristina Wong’s Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord; Aleshea Harris’s On Sugarland; and eight acclaimed productions directed by Ivo van Hove. NYTW’s productions have received a Pulitzer Prize, 25 Tony Awards, 2 Grammy Awards and numerous Obie, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards. NYTW is represented on Broadway with Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, developed with and directed by Rachel Chavkin; and the Broadway engagement of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Maria Friedman and choreographed by Tim Jackson.
About the Mahaiwe
Located in downtown Great Barrington, Mass., the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center is the year-round presenter of world-class music, dance, theater, classic films, Live in HD broadcasts, and arts education programs for the southern Berkshires and neighboring regions. The intimate jewel box of a theater opened in 1905. Since 2005, the performing arts center has hosted over 1,500 events and welcomed over half a million people through its doors. More than 27,000 students from 77 different schools have benefited from the Mahaiwe’s school-time performances and residencies. For more information, see mahaiwe.org.
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