Angle PRO is TAP’s professional theatre wing. Under Irene Kapustina’s direction, Angle PRO focuses on producing theatre that plays with form, challenges cultural boarders, transfers social and political contexts, and aims to bring about a deeper understanding of the theatre that seems distant in space and/or time by re-contextualizing it to the parameters of today’s realities.

IN THE WORKS:

New Play Development. Stay tuned for the upcoming work-in-progress presentation dates.

Original Play Based on the Life Stories of Refugees: Community Platform Building for Refugees through Drama

TAP has received a small grant to begin the process of producing a professional production of a play based on the life stories of refugees. The project will result in the play’s production at an off-Broadway venue in New York City in 2017.

Our project’s main goal is to portray the humanity and individuality of displaced people as people, humans, not refugees. The main focus of the project is to involve refugee populations to speak (through performance) directly to their hosting communities. We believe that simple news reports of the violence, no matter how horrible, do not have the same effect as storytelling does. And we will use drama to get out the story of Syrian and other refugees in a way that is emotionally compelling so that we can get the rest of the country to empathize, and therefore take action.

As the first stage of the project, TAP will conduct interviews nationally and internationally with various refugee populations about their displacement and general life experience and use the interview transcriptions as the basis for the script. TAP will also partner with community organizations to engage with local refugee populations and conduct script development sessions. Together we will work on creating a theatre piece that will speak about refugees’ histories and journeys, various aspects of resettlement process, highlighting the barriers and difficulties needed to be overcome, as well as their achievements, victories, and general human experiences.

During the second stage the play will receive a professional production at an off-Broadway venue in New York City.

And as our third and final stage, TAP will organize community events nationally and internationally that will center around reflection on the play’s content. Guided by TAP’s facilitators, event participants will contextualize the scope of the crisis within their own realities in order to develop an empathetic understanding and to identify concrete steps they can take to help.

Chekhov Study 1.0. Life in Questions and Statements

Created and Directed by Irene Kapustina

Chekhov Study 1.0. Life in Questions and Statements is an original play that depicts the life of Anton Chekhov using the text of his short stories and correspondence. The play tells the writer’s human story while tracing the evolution of his work.