The Carleton Players have delayed the premiere of their winter production, Martin Crimp’s groundbreaking play “Attempts on Her Life," in order to accommodate final staging demands. Performances will begin Friday, Feb. 15 at 7:00 p.m. and at 9:00 p.m. in the College’s Weitz Center for Creativity Theater. Additional performances will be held nightly on Saturday, Feb. 16 (7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.), Thursday, Feb. 21 (7:30 p.m.), Friday, Feb. 22 (7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.) and Saturday, Feb. 23 (7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.). All performances are free and open to the public, but reservations are encouraged and can be made at http://carleton.tixato.com/buy. Audiences should note that this production contains mature subject matter.
Considered to be Crimp’s most highly-regarded, as well as his boldest and most innovative play, “Attempts on Her Life” was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1997. The production has been called “phantasmagorical” and “fascinating” in its effort to challenge the audience’s conception of the nature of a play. The title character, Ann, never appears on stage, and the play consists of apparently fragmented scenes giving contradictory descriptions of who or what Ann is. Ann is the quintessential “other”—throughout the course of the play, various people collaborate and compete to describe her in different ways, based on their own personal needs. Is she an artist, a physicist, a mother, a terrorist...perhaps even a car? Is she dead? Alive? The play examines modern consumer culture as it careens from Hollywood to Africa and beyond and immerses the audience in a multimedia environment. “Attempts on Her Life” has been hailed as a “masterpiece” in England.
More information on the Carleton Players' production can be found at apps.carleton.edu/curricular/thea/.
As noted above, the play has no visible protagonist, but its Carleton cast includes first-year student Sam Chao (Skokie, Ill.), sophomore Kate Cieslowski (Minneapolis), sophomore Josh Davids (Seattle), senior Chris Densmore (Williamstown, Mass.), sophomore Charlotte Foran (Williamston, Mich.), first-year student Veronica Garcia (Chicago), junior Max Henkel (Edina, Minn.), first-year student Stu Lourey (Kerrick, Minn.), sophomore Bethany McHugh (Maplewood, N.J.), junior Annaliese Minette (Minneapolis), first-year student Hayden Tornabene (Castle Pines, Colo.) and first-year student Dylan Wells (Denver, Colo.).
“Attempts on Her Life” marks the Carleton directorial debut of Roger Bechtel, an associate professor of theater. Bechtel has previous directed and acted Off-Broadway and at a number of regional theaters including the Theater for a New Audience (New York), the Yale Repertory Theatre (New Haven, Conn.), the McCarter Theatre (Princeton, N.J.), the Utah Shakespeare Festival (Cedar City, Utah), the Snowmass Aspen Repertory Theater (Aspen, Colo.) and the Attic Theater (Detroit, Mich.). He is currently the artistic director of Big Picture Group, a Chicago-based theater company specializing in multimedia productions that explore modern culture.
For more information about this event, including disability accommodations, contact Patt Germann at (507) 222-4342. The Weitz Center for Creativity is located at 320 Third Street East in Northfield.