DIRECTOR'S NOTE
Welcome to this Zoom experimental production, we’re glad you’re here. The world is shifting, things are constantly changing, so making the choice to come to a Zoom production means a lot, we appreciate you being here with us.
The journey of this production started in March 2020 with the idea of bringing people together through theater when we felt the most far apart due to the pandemic. The original experiment was postponed to be in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement to use our time, energy and voices for the much needed social revolution.
Now… six months (though it feels like a decade) has passed, and while the Zoom experiment production has evolved, the mission has shifted. We are still online, performing from our homes around the world, but there’s a new mission: Illuminating individuality and intersectionality within different communities. How are we different AND connected? How can similar communities like college campuses, workplaces, families, congregations, the military, simultaneously have people of like-mind yet vastly different viewpoints and experiences? And where does love enter the equation?
Today, the world feels like it is splitting at the seams, and where once we thought we knew our friends, families, and dear ones, we now find vast divides of thought, opinion, and beliefs. It’s shocking, heartbreaking, confusing, empowering, distressing and so much more.
How are we ever going to find a way to love one another again when the information we learn sometimes drives us apart?
Honestly, I don’t know... but the cast and I have collaboratively worked on this piece exploring finding connection AND valuing individuality in different communities.
It’s not an answer, but it’s a start. Our production explores how love and information is the intertwined DNA of our communities, and maybe, someday, we will use love and information to radically change the world.
Enjoy the show.
- Andrew Coopman
October 13, 2020
DRAMATURG’S NOTE:
Caryl Churchill has been called many things. She has been compared to Pablo Picasso, deemed “novel” and “innovative” by dramatists, is often regarded as one of the greatest living playwrights of our time and, in 2018, The Guardian dubbed her as “theatre’s great disruptor.”
Churchill’s Love and Information is, indeed, a disruptive exploration. We invite you to experience this play through both its form and content. Each fleeting moment offers insight into two fundamental pillars of our modern life: love and information. Although, that insight may cause more confusion than it does clarity. Time is a lost concept, meaning may feel insignificant, something might be too close for comfort. But nothing is redundant, it’s all a part of the puzzle, and you don’t have to piece it all together just yet.
This is the first time Love and Information has premiered on Zoom. In this strange time, this kaleidoscopic collection of scenes that can come as quickly as they go and evolve into something unexpected feels more apt than ever. But, as New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley put it, “Don’t forget that love, as well as information, is part of the play’s title and that love comes first.”