Nov 12, 2021
Theater is on the menu at Pub Coffee Hub, 56 Harvest Ave..
An anaphoric verse drama written by Eric Zwieg and performed by Richard Ferris, “From Here to There” will be performed Nov. 13. The show, recipient of a 2021 Ripple Arts Grant from the Genesee-Orleans Regional Arts Council, is a short 20-minute performance.
Zweig said the show has been table read over the past year with actors he has worked with in the past. He cut it down to a one person show, which will premiere on Saturday.
“My approach to theater is a little bit away from standardized theater,” he said.
Zweig is influenced by Frederick Kiesler, an architect and artist in the 20th century from Austria who came to New York City and worked with theater companies as a stage designer. He was part of the surrealist movement.
“Back then a lot of manifestos were being written. That was his manifesto, ‘theater is dead’,” he said. “Basically it’s just a way of reinventing something.”
To Zweig,”theater is dead” is a combination of a number of things. One is an homage to Kiesler and secondly, the COVID-induced shutdown of theater for nearly two years. In addition, he said a lot of the same shows are constantly being introduced and reproduced.
“Theater tends to be the same thing over and over again,” Zweig said. “The same successful shows — the shows that make a buck. To me that’s a dead art. It’s history.”
While he said theater has its relevance and hasn’t been any more technically sound then it is now, they need to move beyond that and give it a new freshness.
That’s where “From Here to There” comes in. It’s an anaphoric verse drama, which is a rhetorical device mainly used in poetry. It uses repetition to hammer home a point. Zweig said the storyline is very abstract and the audience has the ability to interpret it.
Starting at 3 p.m., there will be two performances of the play followed by a talk back with Zwieg and Ferris. There is no cover charge.
