Faculty Performance Production: Sarah Gancher’s “The Place We Built”

Course Description

Summary

Sarah Gancher’s award-winning 2016 play, "The Place We Built": “In a deserted neighborhood in post-communist Budapest, young bohemians squat in an abandoned building and build a bar. Reclaiming the Jewish identity their parents’ generation abandoned after the Holocaust, they create a vibrant new subculture that combines big ideas and intense debates with wild parties. Friendships form and fray, couples recombine, people change, the neighborhood is transformed. But when authoritarianism and antisemitism make a surprise comeback in the country at large, will the place they built survive?” “A tale of friendship, idealism, and coming of age, set against the backdrop of Hungary’s current terrifying slide into dictatorship—and the global rise of right-wing populism.” This faculty performance production will feature a multicultural cast, multimedia immersive staging, a live jazz/klezmer score, rapid shifts of time and place, devised performance, and ensemble acting.