'A Thousand Ways: An Assembly' brings patron performances to Eisenhower

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Obie Award-winning theater artist duo 600 Highwaymen will bring “A Thousand Ways: An Assembly,” created by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone, with Andrew Kircher, to the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State.

The unmoderated performance will encourage attendees to explore the lines between strangeness and kinship, distance and proximity, and how the most intimate assemblage can constitute a radical act.

During the one-hour event, a group of no more than 16 strangers will construct a shared and moving life experience available in multiple, unmoderated patron performances in locations throughout Eisenhower Auditorium:

• 1:30, 3 and 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.
• 2:30, 4:30 and 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 20.
• 4:30, 6 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, Nov. 8 and 9.
• Noon, 1:30 and 3 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10.

Visit 600 Highwaymen online for more information.

In each performance, a small group comes together to build on a story of perseverance based on a shared group of notecards in a timely and unique theatrical work based on the inception of a live experience. In a literal full-circle conclusion, the attendees craft parting messages as instructed by the cards.

Penn State Office of Scholars Programs students recently participated in the experience as an opportunity to help them in their transition to the college experience.

“It was fun but different from anything I’ve ever done before. It was very introspective and broke the boundaries as scholars, as college students and as peers. It really made us think about us as humans,” one student said.

600 Highwaymen has presented its Obie Award-winning works at major museums, theaters and festivals throughout the United States and internationally. The artists also are members of In Situ, a European organization aimed at realizing artistic expression in public spaces.

Everyone walks away from “An Assembly” with a different take, Browde said in a recent Center for the Performing Arts interview.

“But if there was something that I hope people gain from it,” she said, “it is the ability to listen to a stranger in a different way, to come into a space with someone who you don't know, and to slow down the muscle that we sort of tend to go about our daily lives with which has to do with “Do I know you, do I not know you?”

Acknowledgements

Support for accessibility services is provided by the William E. McTurk Endowment for Program Support and the Gerald B. M. Stein Memorial Endowment.

“A Thousand Ways: An Assembly” was commissioned by The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, Stanford Live at Stanford University, The Public Theater and Festival Theaterformen. “An Assembly” was developed through a residency with the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and with A. P. E. Arts in Northampton, Massachusetts. Original support for the production was provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia.

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