Smith College presents Moment February 24, 2012

What: Moment by Deirdre Kinahan When: February 24-25, March 1-3, 2012 at 8:00 pm
Where: Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre, Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts, Green St., Smith College, Northampton, MA. Tickets: $8 Adults, $5 students/seniors, $3 Smith students - with Smith ID at Box Office only. Thursday, March 1 is dollar night for students. Order Tickets Online:
http://www.smith.edu/smitharts. Purchase tickets by calling or emailing the Box Office: 413.585.ARTS (2787), [email protected]. The Box Office ticket window will be open from 1-4 p.m. Monday-Friday during the week of a show and beginning one hour before show time. Ask about our special tweet seats on Thurs March 1, where you'll have the chance to tweet online reactions to the play. You'll be "in the Moment" for sure. CONTACT US FOR MORE INFORMATION!

“Smith College Department of Theatre presents Moment, a play that depicts the unending repercussions an act of violence can have on all whom it touches.”
Northampton, MA. Smith College Department of Theatre presents a workshop production of Deirdre Kinahan’s Moment on February 24-25 and March 1-3 at 8:00 pm in Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre. Directed by Ellen Kaplan, Moment, portrays a family that lives in a fog of denial but can’t escape the explosive “trauma in a teacup” that tears them apart. The play is lightning fast and frighteningly funny; it’s clear-eyed and compassionate, and – like Nial– the play pulls no punches. Moment, written by astonishing Irish playwright Deirdre Kinahan, was a major hit in London last year.
Nial killed 12-year-old Hilary fourteen years and he’s paid for his crime. He’s finding success: a great career and a beautiful new wife, but his family is shattered by the shame. His Mam, Teresa, dopes herself into a fog of lies, intent on pretending how ‘normal’ they are. She flutters and babbles on about happy families, acting the part of a naughty kitten when she’s really a drowned cat. Sister Ciara keeps things afloat, but sister Niamh is determined to destroy Nial’s perfect new life.
Nial and his new wife come for tea. And in one room on one afternoon, the trauma of a long-buried crime can no longer be contained; we are thrust into the aftermath, we see what comes of taking a life. Why does a boy kill? Why does a teenager murder his kid sister’s friend? And how does the boy’s family keep from breaking apart after the ‘worst’ is over?
Director Ellen W. Kaplan is particularly interested in the ways violence affects everyone it touches. She says of the play, “Each character is put under a microscope and becomes a scaffolding upon which is built an intensely emotional field where the dynamics of the family play out.” Moment is about a family that can’t bear the truth. It’s taut and bright and funny – we all see ourselves in the loving and hating, the rivalries and grudges, the joys and miseries that go on in family kitchens. But the barbed ripostes turn vicious, bursting into explosions of rage that expose this family’s complicity in violence.
Moment is car crash theatre, a perfectly crafted play that explores the way we cope with trauma. It looks at how a family carries the burden of guilt as much as does the perpetrator himself. Inspired by real-life, high profile cases in Britain (Wayne O'Donoghue and Patrick O'Dwyer, among others), the play explores how families operate in a world of denial. “They spin around and pretend that it all hasn't happened,” says playwright Deirdre Kinahan. “(As if…that it is all OK. When it plainly isn't.")
Do we ever, really, get a second chance?
About the Playwright.
Deirdre Kinahan is Artistic Director of Tall Tales Theatre Co. and a playwright. She has written many plays: BogBoy (Tall Tales & Solstice Arts Centre at Solstice and Project Arts Centre 09), Moment (Tall Tales & Solstice, Solstice, Project Arts Centre, Bush Theatre and national Irish Tour09/11), Salad Day (The Abbey Theatre 09), Hue & Cry (Bewleys Café Theatre & Tall Tales, Glasgow, Romania, Bulgaria, Paris and New York 07-10), Melody (Tall Tales, Glasgow, national tour 05-08), Attaboy Mr Synge (The Civic Theatre 2002 national Tour), Rum & Raisin (Tall Tales & Nogin Theatre Co. 2003 national tour), Summer Fruits (Tall Tales, national tour 01-03) , Knocknashee (Tall Tales & The Civic Theatre, national tour 01), Passage (Tall Tales, The Civic Theatre 01) and Be Carna (Tall Tales, national tour and Edinburgh Fringe Festival 99).

For children: Maisy Daly's Rainbow (Tall Tales & Solstice 08), Rebecca's Robin (Bewleys Café Theatre 07), Snow Child (Livin Dred 06) and The Tale Of The Blue Eyed Cat (Livin Dred 05) and for radio: Bogboy (RTE1 08).
Deirdre is currently writing a new play for the Abbey theatre and has two plays in development.
About the Director.
Ellen W. Kaplan is Chair of Theatre, former Director of Jewish Studies, and Professor of Acting and Directing at Smith College, a Fulbright Scholar in Costa Rica and twice a Fulbright Artist-in-Residence in Hong Kong. In Israel, she has performed and directed at the Khan, Sherover and Jerusalem Theatres and Hebrew University, taught at Tel Aviv University and worked with intercultural theatre companies around the country. In summer 2010, she directed an English language version of Cao Yu’s masterpiece, The Wilderness, at Shenyang University in China, which then came to Smith on tour. Recent acting includes the Clown in Antony & Cleopatra at Blackfriars Theatre in Virginia; directing credits include Pirates of Penzance at Smith; The Sisters Rosensweig at New Century Theatre, Bellow on Stage at The Egg, Albany, NY, and a New England tour of Gathering the Waters, a solo work by Teresa Whitaker.
Her plays include Soul of the City, a finalist for the Massachusetts Playwriting Fellowship (2009) which was featured at the Great Plains Theatre Lab; With Dream Awakened Eyes, a one-woman show based on the work of Charlotte Salomon, which has been performed in the US and in Bucharest, Romania. Her play about living in Israel during the 2nd intifada, Pulling Apart, a finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, was produced in New Haven and received a Moss Hart Award. Ellen’s two short plays about prison life, adapted from original stories, were published in Tacenda, and won a BleakHouse award.
She has translated several plays, including her adaptation of Cuentos de Eva Luna, which she directed at Smith College; it was staged in part by Amalgamotion Theatre, in Limerick Ireland, the following winter. Ellen’s plays have been performed at Theatre Matrix, LA; Cleveland Public Theatre; Meredith College in Raleigh, NC, and internationally, in Ireland, Romania and Israel.
She has published a book, Images of Mental Illness in Text and Performance, and is working on The Ties Don’t Bind, about Jewish-American identity in contemporary theatre. Other publications include essays in Our Voices: An Anthology of Jewish Women’s Writing; poetry in The Deronda Review and WordMyth; scholarly journals in Jewish History, Theatre Topics, Studies in Theatre and Performance, and a book chapter (in Spanish) on the work of Argentine playwright Nora Glickman. Media work includes Mixed Blessings, a documentary about Jews and Gypsies in Eastern Europe; radio dramas, and a CD-ROM on writer Juan Rulfo.
Much of Ellen’s work focuses on theatre in zones of conflict, and the intersections between expressive arts and social trauma. She has worked with incarcerated women, elders, adjudicated teens, and ABE students, using theatre as a tool for developing literacy and creativity. Her Presidential Seminar combines Smith students with incarcerated women, in a study of women and violence.

Official Website: http://www.smith.edu/smitharts