UNM to Stage Port Twilight in Albuquerque, Beijing

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UNM to Stage Port Twilight in Albuquerque, Beijing
April 13, 2012 | By Sari Krosinsky

Photo by Max Woltman
The UNM Depart­ment of The­atre and Dance presents “Port Twi­light” by OBIE award win­ning play­wright Len Jenkin, Fri­day, April 20-Sunday, April 29, in Rodey The­atre, Cen­ter for the Arts.

This futur­is­tic sci-fi thriller, her­alded as “a work of true the­atri­cal genius,” takes us to the mys­te­ri­ous town of Port Twi­light where work­ers at the OPME, Off-Planet Mes­sage Exchange, scan radio waves for mes­sages from other plan­ets. Jenkin will be in Albu­querque for the pre­miere and will lead a post per­for­mance dis­cus­sion. UNM has been invited to take this pro­duc­tion to the Asia The­atre Edu­ca­tion Cen­tre Inter­na­tional The­atre Fes­ti­val in Bei­jing, China, this May.

On the out­skirts of the dark and des­per­ate city of Port Twi­light, a group of men and women appear. They are sci­en­tists who bear a strik­ing sim­i­lar­ity to the physi­cists who gath­ered in Los Alamos, N.M., 1942–45 to devise and test the first atomic bomb. The sub­ti­tle of the play is “The His­tory of Sci­ence, A Chron­i­cle of Folly, Wis­dom and Mad­ness.” The sci­en­tists seem to be wait­ing for something.

Cabaret per­form­ers and OPME employ­ees Dack and Donna serve as our guides as we travel through dif­fer­ent parts of the city. OPME is a secre­tive agency oper­at­ing from an aban­doned hotel. Its mis­sion is to con­stantly send inter­stel­lar mes­sages into outer space and lis­ten for a reply from intel­li­gent alien beings.

In “Port Twi­light,” new love is found and old love is rekin­dled, while a dis­grun­tled bio­chemist, a B-movie pro­ducer, a mys­ti­cal rabbi, and a team of danc­ing sci­en­tists, through video imagery, music and pow­er­ful poetic lan­guage, tell an apoc­a­lyp­tic tale of and sci­ence and the search for knowledge.

Jenkin is an award-winning play­wright and nov­el­ist. His hon­ors include three OBIE Awards, a Guggen­heim fel­low­ship, a Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion Award, and four grants from the National Endow­ment for the Arts. He is pro­fes­sor of play­writ­ing at New York Uni­ver­sity. His works include “Dark Ride,” “Pil­grims of the Night” and “Like I Say.” They have been pub­lished by Broad­way Play Pub­lish­ing, Sun and Moon Press and have been pro­duced at the Joseph Papp Pub­lic The­atre in New York City, Yale Reper­tory The­atre, The Flea The­atre in New York and major regional the­atres across the U.S.

“Port Twilight’s” direc­tor, UNM Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Bill Wal­ters, describes Jenkin as “one of the great sto­ry­tellers of the Amer­i­can the­atre. His plays tell won­der­ful, com­plex tales which often con­sist of a jour­ney. And as much ground as they travel phys­i­cally, they can also take us on an inte­rior jour­ney: a trek into the mind, the heart and the soul, into mem­ory and into the imag­i­nary.” Jenkin will attend the pre­miere and lead a post per­for­mance discussion.

“A ‘port,’” Wal­ters said, “is a tran­si­tional place, a door­way, an open­ing, a jumping-off point, it is a space between worlds. Like­wise, ‘twi­light’ is a time of change, of shift. It is a moment between day and night/night and day. ‘Port Twi­light’ is a jour­ney in both space and time: a jour­ney into the back alleys and aban­doned build­ings of the city and into the hid­den cor­ners of fear, des­per­a­tion, hope, and redemption.”

“Port Twi­light” fea­tures an ensem­ble of some of UNM’s finest stu­dent actors. The set design is by Dahl Delu, light­ing and sound design is by Bill Liotta, and cos­tume design is by Anna Avery.

The UNM Depart­ment of The­atre and Dance has been invited to par­tic­i­pate and bring this pro­duc­tion of “Port Twi­light” to the Cen­tral Acad­emy of Drama and the Asia The­atre Edu­ca­tion Cen­tre Inter­na­tional The­atre Fes­ti­val (ATEC) in May 2012 in Bei­jing. The fes­ti­val is hosted by China’s Cen­tral Acad­emy of Drama, con­sid­ered the best the­atre school in Asia. The ATEC fes­ti­val was cre­ated in 2005 to estab­lish an effec­tive net­work to con­nect the­atre schools and orga­ni­za­tions in Asia and to pro­mote the devel­op­ment of the­atre edu­ca­tion, cre­ation and research by pro­vid­ing a com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form for all stu­dents, teach­ers and researchers who are devoted to the study and prac­tice of the­atre in Asia.

Depart­ment of The­atre and Dance Chair Bill Liotta met with the academy’s pres­i­dent and for­eign exchange staff and received an invi­ta­tion to re-mount the pro­duc­tion of “Port Twi­light.” The con­nec­tion between the Cen­tral Acad­emy of Drama and this invi­ta­tion is due in large part to a multi-year rela­tion­ship with Wal­ters and Liotta. Both have been guest teach­ers and pre­sen­ters at the Fes­ti­val in the past and have worked to make a long-term con­nec­tion between Bei­jing and Albuquerque.



Per­for­mances of Port Twi­light will be at 7 p.m. Thurs­day, Fri­day and Sat­ur­day and at 2 p.m. Sun­day. Ticket prices are $15 gen­eral admis­sion, $12 UNM fac­ulty and seniors and $10 UNM staff and all stu­dents. Tick­ets are avail­able at the UNM ticket offices at the UNM Book­store The Pit and by call­ing (505) 925‑5858.

More infor­ma­tion is avail­able at the Depart­ment of The­atre and Dance or by call­ing (505) 277‑3660.

Story by and Media Con­tact: Kath­leen Claw­son, (505) 238‑6029