IAS hosts director's lecture and staged plays

A scene from "The Dinner Party."
A scene from "The Dinner Party."

IAS hosts director's lecture and staged plays

calendar icon04 Apr 2013    

The Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium at the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts celebrates its fourth annual season this spring with an exploration of “The Ancient World Seen Through Modern Eyes” looking at how the performing arts have returned consistently to classical antiquity and ancient mythologies to make sense of the contemporary.

As a part of the season, IAS presents New York City’s award-winning Target Margin Theater live at the Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lincoln on April 23 and 24 at 7:00 p.m. in a double-bill performance of “The Argument” and “Dinner Party.” The productions are updated (and sometimes irreverent) interpretations of classic works by Aristotle and Plato, respectively.

“I am thrilled to bring David and his company to Lincoln for the first time ever this month. They enjoy an international reputation for updating classic works. TMT will delight and intrigue audiences,” said Rhonda Garelick, founder and artistic director of IAS.

"THE ARGUMENT" - written and performed by David Greenspan. Fresh from his OBIE award winning performance in his latest collaboration with Target Margin, as Mephisto in last season’s Faust, the multi-talented David Greenspan writes and stars in a one-man play. Based on both Aristotle’s “Poetics” and the essays of Gerald F. Else, The Argument is a passionate student’s love-letter and farewell to his teacher – reminding us of the personal pathos that binds us to the Greeks.

"THE DINNER PARTY" - with Han Nah Kim, Diana Konopka, Mary Neufeld, Steven Rattazzi, Greig Sargeant, Stephanie Weeks, Ian Wen. An artful and loose adaptation of Plato’s “Symposium,” “Dinner Party” takes on love from every angle, delving into the original text with gusto to bring out the philosophy and lust, language and appetite, and the abstract challenges to our dearly held prejudices.

Target Margin Theater will perform live at downtown Lincoln’s Johnny Carson Theater at Lied Center for Performing Arts on April 23 and 24 at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $12 for adults, $6 for students and free to UNL students, staff, and faculty. Tickets are available through the Lied Center Ticket Office online at liedcenter.org and at (402) 472-4747. UNL students can see the performance free of charge by reserving a ticket at marketplace.unl.edu/liedcenter/.


David Herskovitz to present lecture

  • Photo of David Herskovitz
    As a part of the season, IAS is pleased to present David Herskovits, award-winning director of Target Margin Theater, for a free, public lecture on Thursday afternoon, April 11 from 3:30-4:45 p.m. at the Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center, room 202, on UNL’s City Campus. Advance reservations are encouraged by calling the IAS office at (402) 472-5186.

    “David is a brilliant and charismatic man, who speaks with deep clarity, wisdom and humor about his life in the theater and about his innovative directorial methods. His talk will be of great interest to theater students, theater lovers, and anyone fascinated by the worlds of the stage and literature,” said Dr. Rhonda Garelick, IAS founder and artistic director.

About the Company

Target Margin Theater (TMT) was founded in 1991 by David Herskovits on the principle that works of art return us to real truths more powerfully by their divergence from a strict illustration of reality. Through classic and contemporary texts, the company seeks to continuously expand its conception of what can take place in a theater, creating aggressively re-imagined versions of classics and new creations inspired by existing sources. The company casts its work with the broadest range of people, including racial, gender and age diversity. TMT has had a significant impact on the field in New York and nationally by identifying, supporting and influencing a generation of new artists including founding artistic director of The Elevator Repair Service John Collins, Tony-nominated designer David Zinn, set designer Louisa Thompson, award-winning playwright Rinne Groff, directors Trip Cullman and Carolyn Cantor, lighting designer Mark Barton and Tony Award-winning actor John Lloyd Young. TMT has created more than 40 mainstage productions, including 10 world premieres, seven company-created works, three U.S. premieres and five new translations. TMT’s productions have garnered four OBIE Awards, enlisted the talents of hundreds of designers and employed over 500 Equity actors. Extending outside of New York, TMT has presented at the Spoleto USA Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, Mass MoCA, the Emelin Theatre and the Bonn Biennale in Germany.


About David Herskovits

Herskovitz is the founder and artistic director of TMT. His recent Target Margin directing credits include “Second Language” at The Chocolate Factory; “The Really Big Once” at The Ontological; “A Family of Perhaps Three” at The Chocolate Factory; “Ten Blocks on the Camino Real” and “As Yet Thou Art Young and Rash” at The Ohio Theatre; “Old Comedy” at Classic Stage Company; and “The Argument” & “Dinner Party” at The Kitchen. He also directed the company’s production of Goethe’s “Faust” Parts I and II, which opened to wide acclaim at Classic Stage Company in April 2006 after three years of development. Other recent directing work includes productions at Cleveland Public Theater, the Institut Internationale de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mezieres, France, Spoleto Festival USA, Lincoln Center, and Mass MoCA. His 1998 production of Mamba’s Daughters by Dorothy and DuBose Heyward won an OBIE for the TMT. Other productions include classics from Shakespeare to Ibsen, opera and music-theater, modern writers such as Gertrude Stein and Marguerite Duras, and neglected works with literary and historic significance. He has published essays in The New York Times, Theatre Magazine, and Performing Arts Journal, among others. David was a member of the 2006 OBIE awards committee and has served on the New York State Council on the Arts Theatre Panel and the South Carolina Arts Commission, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and various other grant-giving institutions.


About IAS

The Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium of the Hixson-Lied College at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, directed by Professor Rhonda Garelick, is devoted to bringing new and exciting work to UNL and Lincoln, and to fostering appreciation and understanding of the performing arts. IAS is sponsored by a generous grant from the Hixson-Lied Endowment, and presented, in part, with the Lied Center for Performing Arts. Information on all IAS 2013 events can be found at unl.edu/ias.