Maker of Worlds
by Wendy A. Schmidt • directed by Jeri Frederickson • starring Amy Gorelow
A world premiere one-woman play presented by Theater for the New City, Crystal Field (Artistic Director) as part of the Dream Up Festival, September 2-7, 2019
Times:
September 2 @ 6:30 pm
September 3 @ 9 pm
September 4 @ 6:30 pm
September 5 @ 6:30 pm
September 6 @ 9 pm
September 7 @ 5 pm
Cabaret Theater
155 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th Streets) NYC
Martha, a deity, decides to destroy the world. She’s never gotten over the fact that 5000 years ago she inadvertently turned her best friend, Edith, into a pillar of salt outside Sodom and Gomorrah, and now it seems there’s nothing good left. Martha’s yoga instructor intervenes and counsels her to fight the system instead. But Martha’s husband Warren built the system, and somewhere on another plane, she’s still in love with Jim Morrison. Can Martha come to terms with her inner turmoil before causing a global meltdown? One woman plays six characters in “Maker of Worlds”, a play about creativity, Capitalism, and the divine in all of us.
Tickets are $12.
Cast and Crew
Written by: Wendy A. Schmidt
Starring: Amy Gorelow
Directed by: Jeri Frederickson
Fight Choreography: Amber Wuttke & Violent Delights
Stage Manager: Becky Warner
Assistant Stage Manager: Andre Mahdi
Production Design: Jeri Frederickson and Wendy A. Schmidt
Sound Design: Roy A. Freeman
Composer: Roy A. Freeman
Producer: The Pants, LLC
Theater for the New City
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York’s most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC’s Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Vin Diesel, Oscar Nuñez, Laurence Holder, Romulus Linney and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and COBU, the Japanese women’s drumming, and dance group.TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company’s 1997 production of BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 42 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor’s Stop The Violence award. Learn More
The Pants, LLC
The Pants (Playwrights.Anomalous.Network+Theater.Situation) is a playwright’s collective championing unorthodox theater works by womxn. Learn More
Three Cat Productions
“Maker of Worlds” was developed in 2018 through the generous support of Three Cat Productions in Chicago, Jason Paul Smith, Artistic Director.
Our team is based in Chicago. Greetings from the Third Coast/Second City/Outermost Borough!
Playwright’s Note
The mission of this play is to change the narrative about women, class, and cultural differences by reclaiming religious language for the good. We hope to further gender, economic, and racial equality by doing so. We come together with audiences to ritually participate in the change we want to see.
Progressives have had good reasons to abandon religious language, but in the process they’ve allowed a racist, patriarchal oligarchy to wield it entirely for evil. Cultural traditions have a unique emotional and intellectual power, and because the right’s interpretation goes unopposed, it’s one of their most powerful weapons.
We want to help audiences see their own myths in a new way that better reflects their experiences, delight them with humor and intellectual excitement, and illuminate the systems that shape the world we all live in, in order to perhaps challenge them.
Director’s Note
You can be a creator of worlds…Martha says. And, when we come together to participate in a theatrical performance, we create a world together. Today, you join us to create a world through six characters with interconnected lives. Our temporary world together plays with questions that I have been asking of myself and of the world every day. Will we be all right. How do we live with our flaws. Is there ever closure. As you participate in our theatrical world today, remember what creates your joy and feel challenged to uproot the things that are destructive. I hope you might rediscover the side of you that has been pushed down deep inside. Perhaps we can reclaim the parts of ourselves and of our world that need healing.
May you be a creator of worlds and a slayer of demons.
What’s a pillar of salt? Learn more about the subject matter.
Public domain sounds from freesound.com