Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts

Leaning into the Unknown: An Artist's Response to COVID-19 Act I
2020-09-19 20:00 - 21:30 (America/New_York) | Virtual
Leaning into the Unknown was a call to NJ-based artists in the performing arts to share work they were creating in response to the COVID-19 global health pandemic. Six artists were chosen to perform their new works in a FREE two day virtual event. Three artists will perform in Act I on September 19, 2020 and three artists in Act II on September 26, 2020.
Link to the event below under “website.”

Act One will feature: Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, Marina Carreira, and Christy E. O’Connor

"Life After the 'Po"- Theater and Alumni Showcase and Panel Discussion
2020-09-25 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
Moderated by Terra Vandergaw and Jaquair Gillette ‘07
Invited alumni share work and discuss their perspectives on being professional theater artists in these turbulent times. This event is free to the public. Link to be posted closer to the event date.
Registration link is below

Leaning into the Unknown: An Artist’s Response to COVID-19 Act II
2020-09-26 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
Leaning into the Unknown was a call to NJ-based artists in the performing arts to share work they were creating in response to the COVID-19 global health pandemic. Six artists were chosen to perform their new works in a FREE two day virtual event. Three artists will perform in Act I on September 19, 2020 and three artists in Act II on September 26, 2020.
Link to the event below under “website.”

Act Two will feature: The Moving Architects, Dimitri Reyes, and Mignolo Dance

Improvisation Workshop
2020-10-02 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
Led by Maria Vail
Learn more about improvisation and see participants dive right into improv exercises.

Registration link is below!

“Life After the Po”- Theater Alumni Showcase and Panel Discussion #2
2020-10-09 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
Moderated by Terra Vandergaw and Jaquair Gillette ‘07
Invited alumni share work and discuss their perspectives on being professional theater artists in these turbulent times.

Registration Link Below!

The Diaries of Adam and Eve
2020-10-23 20:00 - 21:30, 2020-10-24 20:00 - 21:30, 2020-10-25 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
Adapted by Ron Fitzgerald
Directed by Rebecca Glincman
This fresh adaptation of the story by Mark Twain is a hilarious exploration of the relationship between men and women.

Registration Below!

The Marple Academy of Dramatic Arts and Investigation
2020-10-30 20:00 - 21:30, 2020-10-31 20:00 - 21:30, 2020-11-01 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
It is your first semester at Marple Academy, you have no friends, and are uncertain about the insane workload that is surrounded by ridiculous requests that seem to have very little to do with your dual goals of becoming both a famous actor and a respected detective. AND you are unprepared to take Professor N.C. Drew’s Blackmail 101 midterm with Professor N.C. Drew. Can you guess the obscure answers to Professor Drew’s video puzzles? Will your powers of detection impress your fellow classmates? Will you reward yourself by having pizza bagels for dinner or end up crying into a pint of ice cream? Can you beat the clock to save your scholarship, overcome your imposter syndrome, and potentially save a life?
Directed by Dan Ciba
Drawn from writing exercises from the Basic Playwriting class, this interactive performance, based on virtual escape room and puzzle experiences, encourages teams of participants to work together to answer questions while following a series of original stories.
Link to the Game Below!
https://forms.gle/MBQ8KsGsWXAf86jP9

“Virtual Voices” - An Evening of Solo Performance and Devised Virtual Theater
2020-11-06 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
“Virtual Voices” – An Evening of Solo Performance and Devised Virtual Theater
Directed by Terra Vandergaw

Registration Link Below!

In Real Life: An Evening with Liz Magic Laser
2020-11-18 19:00 - 20:00 | Virtual
Liz Magic Laser is a cutting-edge artist whose career and success should be inspirational for the Ramapo community. Her performances and video-based installation work has involved collaborations with political strategists, market researchers, journalists, actors, dancers, therapists, surgeons, and motorcycle gang members. Her most recent projects, In Real Life (commissioned by FACT, Liverpool, UK) and Handle / Poignée (commissioned by Centre Pompidou, Paris), explore the efficacy of new age techniques and psychological methods used in both corporate culture and political movements. These works examine the techno-utopian logic of the scientifically managed self and the sociality that hyper-productivity forges.
Click Here for Liz Magic Laser’s Biography
Watch the Presentation Here on Wednesday, November 18, 2020 at 7:00pm!

Photo credit:
In Real Life , Liz Magic Laser, 2019, 5-channel HD video with sound (112 minutes, looped); custom seating (dimensions variable). Commissioned by FACT, Liverpool, UK. Photo by Rob Battersby.

Baltimore
2020-11-20 20:00 - 21:30, 2020-11-21 20:00 - 21:30, 2020-11-22 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
By Kirsten Greenidge
Directed by Lisa Strum
Sharp, funny, and searing, Baltimore is a timely drama about racism on college campuses.
Click This Link at Showtime to Join Us for the Production!

Basic Directing Final Scenes
2020-12-04 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
Scenes directed by the Basic Directing class

Registration Link Below!

Made In Jersey: Elizabeth Walsh
2020-12-10 20:00 - 21:00 | Virtual
Made in Jersey will feature a series of New Jersey based performing artists sharing new works-in-
progress. After each broadcast, audiences will be able to join the artist in a live chat where they can ask
questions.
Microtonal musician, Elizabeth Walsh presents her multi-disciplinary work “Dream Window” using video
projection, spoken word and percussive instruments. In this piece, Walsh revisits a work from 2010:
“Dream Window” where she looked at dreams as experienced by several different people. Now, ten
years later, she explores her own dreams. While the pandemic has driven us all inside, it has
encouraged Walsh to look inward as well. Lately, she sees a geography to her dream universe. She states
“I revisit the same locations over and over again; they are essentially real places, but with a very
different look. Here, I examine a few of the places in my dreams, and ask myself why I keep returning to
them over again.” Walsh sees comfort these days by living in an alternative universe – dreams, gaming,
books – but feels it’s so important to be awake and focused too, so that we can all move past the current
nightmare and into our dreams of the future.
Click Here on December 10 at 8:00pm for the Performance

Faculty Film Series- "Loyalty Code"- Kelly Dolak
2021-02-02 19:00 - 22:00 | Virtual
Loyalty Code is an inquiry into our universal struggles between loyalty and doing what’s right. The feature documentary provides an inside look at the Penn State family and the lengths they go to protect their family, preserve their traditions, and restore the legacy of football coach Joe Paterno. Four Penn State students with clashing perspectives on loyalty and belonging navigate us through the moral codes of loyalty, morality, and self-interest. This film will make you rethink loyalty.
Kelly Dolak is a writer/ director who began her career in NYC working in cable television for MTV, Nickelodeon, AMC and The Discovery Channel. The show she worked on for AMC, “Behind the Screen” won a daytime Emmy award. She also produced segments for Al Jazeera English and her short film work has appeared on PBS. Her first documentary feature, POSTCARDS FROM TORA BORA, about the impact the wars in Afghanistan have on an individual family, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and screened at more than 30 other festivals worldwide. She produced the documentary OUR LIPS ARE SEALED that won the audience award at the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Most recently she won a Zeiss Lens Best Cinematography award for her short film RELENT. LOYALTY CODE, about loyalty and the Penn State child sexual abuse scandal, is her second feature film and is available on Amazon Prime.
* This film is currently available on Amazon Prime. If you have an Amazon Prime account, please feel free to view in advance.

Register Here for the Live Q&A and for Link to Film

Broadway Visiting Artists
2021-02-05 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
A panel of Broadway professionals will discuss developing new works for digital platforms. The panel includes director/choreographer Luis Salgado (Cirque de Soleil, In the Heights) , playwright Eric Ulloa and actress Leah Hoffman.
Registration Below!

Faculty Film Series- "A Condor in the Reeds"-Marta Noemí Bautis
2021-02-09 19:00 - 21:00 | NJ
In this film three generations of Mapuche women in Southern Argentina share the story of their fifty-year struggle resisting the eviction attempts by the Argentinian Army. Through daily life scenes, views of the landscape, testimonies and archival materials, this documentary shows the determination of this community to defend their ancestral lands and reveals a cosmovision where human beings live in harmony with nature and with everything it it. Their story is part of the collective history of the Mapuche people. Inhabitants in a land rich in natural resources, pristine sources of water and great touristic value, the Mapuches have been forced to defend their communities and culture for hundreds of years, since the Spanish Conquest Wars, to the genocidal “Campaign of the Desert” in the XIX century, to the eviction attempts by large international interests in the present times.
Marta Noemí Bautís, director, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her social documentaries tell stories of struggle and hope, and they have been screened at numerous international festivals, among them the New Latin American Cinema Festival, in Havana, Cuba, the Latino Film Festival of Sydney, in Australia, and the Latino Film Festival of San Diego, in California. Ms. Bautís is a faculty member in the School of Contemporary Arts at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

Register Here for the Live Q&A and Link to Film

Made in Jersey: Michelle Myers
2021-02-11 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
Made in Jersey will feature a series of New Jersey based performing artists sharing new works-in-
progress. After each broadcast, audiences will be able to join the artist in a live chat where they can ask
questions.

In her performance memoir “Mudang Magic,” Michelle Myers explores how words can hang onto grief and how memory can create a landscape of both loss and healing. The vulnerability of her storytelling and performance allows Myers to meditate on the entwining of experience as both emotional departure and spiritual return as she shares her reflections on her relationship with her mother and of losing her mother to cancer. Myers’ performance plumbs the depths of memory and delves into the idea that, sometimes, to know who we are, we have to retrace our steps. Utilizing spoken word poetry, storytelling, and song, “Mudang Magic” joins her and her mother’s stories in a way that acknowledges that with loss comes not only deep pain but revelation and renewal.
Click Here On February 11 at 8:00pm for the Performance

Faculty Film Series- "Days of Atonement" Shalom Gorewitz and Darryll Rudy
2021-02-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Virtual
Warning: This film contains profane language, reference to marijuana (legal for personal use in the state of Vermont), and descriptions of violence.
A docudrama about a convicted murderer, released from prison because he is dying of cancer. During his remaining time his mission is to make amends with some of the people he hurt, including the sister of the man he murdered. She demands $5000 to see him. His former cellmate offers him one more job to raise the money.
This film was recorded with an Apple iPhone in and around St. Johnsbury Vermont. Most of the performers are not professional actors and some of them have criminal records. The film is based on improvised conversations and activities by a one person crew attempting to maintain social distance during the process of making the film. There was only one take of each scene.
Shalom Gorewitz and Darryll Rudy were students at California Institute of the Arts at the same time in 1971-72.
Gorewitz studied media, Rudy was a theater major. Almost 60 years later they met in St. Johnsbury, VT. Both have had good careers as artists and educators. Gorewitz has been a professor at Ramapo College since 1982 and in addition to professional performance, Rudy often worked with prisoners using theater as a healing device. During the pandemic summer of 2020, Rudy and Gorewitz decided to collaborate on this project that documents the last months in the life of a violent offender who has used positive, character building prison resources and unexpected freedom to seek forgiveness from some of the people he hurt during his youth.
Register Here for Live Q&A and for Link to Film

Life After the Po: Alumni Creative Conversations
2021-02-19 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual
Co hosts Terra Vandergaw and Jaquair Gillette talk shop with Theater alums Kevin Sebastian, LJ Hickmon, Josh Ritter and Jackie Byrne.
Registration Link Below!
Register Here

Faculty Film Series- "Blue Hole" Neel Scott
2021-02-23 19:00 - 21:00 | Virtual
“Blue Hole”- Four teenagers on a summer afternoon hike discover a secret hidden away for many years. Along the way, they are forced to examine their own lives, as well as face the realities of death and the impressions that one leaves behind.
Neel Scott is an Associate Professor of Digital Filmmaking at Ramapo College and a director, editor, and sound designer whose films have played at over 50 international film festivals. His credits include Coming Closer (director, Berlin Film Festival), Conversion (editor, Sundance Film Festival), Blue Hole (director, Palm Beach International Film Festival), and Love Hunter (sound designer, Warsaw International Film Festival).
Register Here for Live Q&A and for Link to Films

Thomas Edison Film Festival
2021-03-09 10:00 - 22:00, 2021-03-10 10:00 - 22:00 | Virtual
On Tuesday and Wednesday, March 9 and March 10, 2021 the Berrie Center for the Performing & Visual Arts at Ramapo College is pleased to host a virtual custom-curated program featuring animated selections from the Thomas Edison Film Festival 40th anniversary season. Following the two days of viewing, Festival Director Jane Steuerwald will lead a Zoom talk about the films at 6:00 p.m. on March 10 including Professor Ann LePore and filmmaker John C. Kelly. All events are free and open to the public. The Vimeo link to view the films will go live at 10 a.m. on March 9 and remain live through 10 p.m. on March 10.

Films include The Ephemeral Orphanage by Lisa Barcy, Chicago, IL; The Chimney Swift by Frédéric Schuld, Hamburg, Germany; One of Their Own – by Allen Colombo, LA, CA; Metro6 by Geoff Hecht, San Francisco, CA; Metamorphosis by Wang Xi, LA, CA; Lost Lula – by Steven Vander Meer, Arcata, CA; Whirlwind by Adolfo Ruiz, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Green Grass by Michael Greco, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; A Family That Steals Dogs by John C. Kelly, Knoxville, TN; Three by Soyeon Kim, Lake Balboa, CA; and Beyond Noh by Patrick Smith, NY, NY and Kaori Ishida, Osaka, Japan.
Film List and Synopses

Link to Films
Zoom Discussion Link

Stop Kiss
2021-03-19 20:00 - 22:00, 2021-03-20 20:00 - 22:00, 2021-03-21 20:00 - 22:00 | Virtual
STOP KISS by Diana Son, Directed by Mary Ellen Allison
“A poignant and funny play about the ways, both sudden and gradual, that lives can change irrevocably,” says
Variety. Diana Son’s Stop Kiss is a modern tale of cosmopolitan obscurity and of finding love where you least
expect it. It is an unabashed look at struggles of sexual identity and longings for connection as it shines a light
on themes of assault and homophobia.
Watch it on YouTube at Showtime!
