Playdate: An Evening With BA Capstone

The 2024 Senior BA students would like to invite you to a Playdate!! Bring your blankets, stuffed animals, and pillows as we celebrate the path that got us to where we are!

Femmes en colère

Fantasmi

An original rewriting by the Vetrano-Randini company of two one-act plays by Pirandello, ‘Sgombero’ and ‘L'uomo dal fiore in bocca’, whose threads are intertwined with surreal dialogues and lightning-fast quotes drawn from the repertoire of Totò and Vicé, fantastic and poetic characters from Franco Scaldati's theater. - Luigi Pirandello: L‘uomo dal fiore in bocca – Sgombero – Colloqui coi personaggi - Franco Scaldati: Totò e Vicé

The Starlings

Shadow plays flicker, birds call, and colour leaks into grey walls. In Starlings, live action collides with puppetry and poetic visuals as a teen girl transforms loss into light, reviving the fractured bond with her father through the fragile power of art.

The Seagull

Nina, a young actress who finds herself in an emotional turmoil during her opening night, struggles with a rehearsal that challenges her limits.

A Santa Joana dos Matadouros

Inspired by the work of Bertolt Brecht and filmed in Porto's former industrial slaughterhouse, A Santa Joana dos Matadouros is a meta-cinematic essay about the labor market in times of economic crisis in Europe. The film explores the possibilities of cinema in its relationship with theater and brings together a cast of professional actors, amateurs, renowned artists from various disciplines, and a group of unemployed residents of Vale de Campanhã.

The Tales of Hoffman - National Opera Company (INBAL)

Opera in three acts, a prologue and an epilogue, by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), with a libretto in French by Jules Barbier (1825-1901), based on a work that Barbier himself and Michel Carré (1821-1872) had written based on stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). Approximate duration: 2 h 45 min Recommended for those over 15 years old. The young poet Hoffmann, accompanied by Nicklausse, his alter ego and confidant, is in a tavern next to the theatre where Mozart's Don Giovanni is being performed. During the opera's intermission, some diners arrive at the bar who, upon seeing the poet, encourage him to sing and tell them the story of his famous love affairs. Hoffmann finally gives in and shares with them the stories of Olympia, Antonia and Giulietta. They, absorbed in the poet's stories, remain in the tavern, forgetting about the opera performance.

By Fire

Anya is a wide-eyed uncorrupted understudy who has to replace the actress she idealises in the role of Medea, as she navigates within a morally distorted theatre company.

Reinventing Marvin

Telling the true story of Marvin Bijou, a young boy from a working-class family in a small village, who suffers constant bullying at school and home for being ‘different’ – too sensitive and too feminine. A chance encounter with a drama teacher opens the doors to a world that offers him the chance to escape his situation.

Le visiteur

National Theatre Live: Vanya

Andrew Scott brings multiple characters to life in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, filmed live in West End, London. Hopes, dreams, and regrets are thrust into sharp focus in this one-man adaptation which explores the complexities of human emotions.

Investigations of a Breakup

Sophia struggles with overthinking her life as a poor, nihilistic drifter. Exiled to a life of solitude, she has the chance to change it all upon meeting Liza one night... Did she let her in or was she destined to burn it all? The aftermath of their breakup is explored through three different angles.

Teach Me How to Cry

Unable to tap into his emotions on stage, a middle-aged struggling actor is given one last chance to prove himself, and in turn, takes a class with an acting coach who promises to transform his performance.

Pulling The Strings

‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌ ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌While performing the role of Oedipus, a puppet decides to break the cycle and not accept his fate, defying the creator who pulls his strings.

Ghostlight

When a construction worker unexpectedly joins a local theater's production of Romeo and Juliet alongside his estranged teenage daughter, the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life.

Misterman

Enda Walsh's play Misterman, written for a solo performer, is a study of one man’s descent into religious mania in small-town Ireland.

National Theatre Live: The Playboy of the Western World

Pegeen Flaherty’s life is turned upside down when a young man walks into her pub claiming that he’s killed his father. Instead of being shunned, the killer becomes a local hero and begins to win hearts, that is until a second man unexpectedly arrives on the scene...

National Theatre Live: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

A new staging of Christopher Hampton's celebrated adaptation of the classic novel, where among the glittering salons of the super-rich, one misstep can mean ruin. Marquise de Merteuil is a master in the art of survival. Alongside the magnetic Vicomte de Valmont, they turn seduction into strategy and weaponise desire. But when their alliance collapses into rivalry, the battle between them threatens to destroy everyone in their path. Filmed live at the National Theatre, Marianne Elliott directs this thrilling game of love, lies, and social warfare.

SOIS

Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops

In March, 2017, at a small town, six boys and girls are selected through auditions. They work hard to prepare for a play, but the play is suddenly cancelled. These young people are disappointed at the news. One girl says "let's practice." The six boys and girls want to stand on stage no matter what.

Synecdoche, New York

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

The Young One

A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.

Rogue Agent

Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.

Play Dirty

During World War II in North Africa, a group of British commandos disguised as Italian soldiers must travel behind enemy lines and destroy a vital Nazi oil depot.

Salomé

After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.

Broke

A bronc rider in denial about his fading rodeo career battles against brain injury and a sudden blizzard while reflecting on how it became so difficult to achieve his dreams.

The Last Bus

Widower Tom, on the recent passing of his wife Mary, uses his free bus pass to travel the length of Britain from John O'Groats in Caithness to Land's End in Cornwall, their shared birthplace, using only local buses. It's an incident-fuelled nostalgia trip and his encounters with local people make him a media phenomenon. Tom is totally unaware and to his surprise on arrival at Land’s End he’s greeted as a celebrity.

Chloe

Catherine and David Stewart are a well-to-do couple living in a posh area of Toronto, but all is not well in paradise. Catherine suspects that David is cheating on her, so she hires an escort named Chloe to meet David and see if he gives in to temptation — but events spin out of control when Chloe spills the details of her torrid encounters.

Madeline's Madeline

Madeline has become an integral part of a prestigious physical theater troupe. When the workshop's ambitious director pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation rips out of the rehearsal space and through all three women's lives.

National Theatre Live: Hamlet

As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father's death but paralyzed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.

The Cut

A retired boxer intends to return to the ring for one last shot at the title, but first he must make the weight. Holed up in a room in Las Vegas with an unscrupulous trainer, he embarks on an intensive and illegal weight-cutting program.

Bosco

Based on the true story of Quawntay “Bosco” Adams. Sentenced to 35 years for attempted possession of marijuana, Adams miraculously escaped from a Federal maximum-security prison while under 24-hour surveillance in solitary confinement with the help of an older woman he met through a lonely-hearts ad.

The Beaver

Suffering from a severe case of depression, toy company CEO Walter Black begins using a beaver hand puppet to help him open up to his family. With his father seemingly going insane, adolescent son Porter pushes for his parents to get a divorce.

Nine Days

A bureaucrat interviews five souls to decide which of them will be given a life on Earth. But he soon faces an existential challenge of his own.

King Lear

An aging King invites disaster, when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters, and rejects his loving and honest one.

Bastard Out of Carolina

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

Man with No Past

Waking up in an unfamiliar city, a man with no memory must confront the mysteries of his own identity. However, his desperate search to uncover the past pits him against a powerful enemy, leading to a showdown that ultimately reveals the truth.

2073

Inspired by Chris Marker's iconic 1962 featurette La Jetée; the year is 2073—a not-so-distant dystopian future—and the setting is New San Francisco, the scorched-earth tech-dominant police state where democracy and personal freedom have been well and truly obliterated.

What Maisie Knew

In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.

Battle of the Year

A down-on-his-luck coach is hired to prepare a team of the best American dancers for an international tournament that attracts all the best crews from around the world, but the Americans haven't won in fifteen years.