August 25, 2022 – Live Arts Theater’s 2022/23 Transformations Season opens with Caryl Churchill’s innovative brain-teaser of a play, LOVE AND INFORMATION, directed by Live Arts Artistic Director Susan E. Evans. LOVE AND INFORMATION will have 16 performances in the Founders Theater, September 30 through October 22, 2022, at Live Arts Theater, 123 E. Water Street, in Charlottesville. Tickets are $27 for adults or $24 for students and senior citizens are available through the Box Office at boxoffice@livearts.org, by phone at 434-977-4177 x123, or online at livearts.org/tix. LOVE AND INFORMATION is presented by Silverchair and Barbara & Jay Kessler.
Live Arts will host two special events for LOVE AND INFORMATION: An opening night reception following the performance on September 30, 2022; and a post-show audience talk-back on Thursday, October 6, 2022 (7:30pm curtain).
Director Susan E. Evans calls LOVE AND INFORMATION a “phenomenal play” that allows the creative team to decide how to shuffle and arrange the order of scenes—and even choose which random scenes to insert. “This is a play with no defined characters, no clear delineation of who’s speaking to whom, and no indication of where the characters are in time and space,” says Evans. “Only playwright Caryl Churchill could pull that off with such poetry, such cohesive integrity, and depth.”
Caryl Churchill constantly reinvents herself as a playwright. She is at once eternally probing and intellectually fierce, while also down-to-earth and familiar. LOVE AND INFORMATION is, quite intentionally, overstuffed with Too Much Information. “In the course of about two hours, we are introduced to more than 100 characters in over 50 self-contained plays-in miniature. Each playlet asks us how we maintain human connectivity and make sense of it all amidst the glut of data and noise in our everyday lives. The scenic snippets in LOVE AND INFORMATION portray fragments of, and the fragmentation of, life. We leave with questions, as we puzzle over the moments before and after,” Evans says.
“ … Churchill suggests, with compassionate urgency, that our insatiable appetite for knowledge needs to be informed by our capacity for love.” The Guardian
LOVE AND INFORMATION showcases 10 super-versatile local performers in a panoply of roles: Ben Atkinson, Christina Ball, Eliza Banaszak, Max Esparza, Mylène Freeman, Hope King, Jane McDonald, David Minton, John Rabasa, and Nik Scott. The production also features a powerhouse creative team: Etta Feigert (production stage manager); Kerry Moran (scenic designer); Joshua Reid (lighting designer); Becky Brown (sound designer); Amy Goffman (costume designer); and Daryl O’Connor (properties designer).
Performance History
Originally produced at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2012, LOVE AND INFORMATION had its off-Broadway premiere in 2014 at the Minetta Lane Theatre.
About the Playwright
Caryl Churchill is one of the most influential and significant contemporary dramatists working today. In a 2018 article, The Guardian said that the pioneering British playwright “has made every theater trip an adventure into the unknown, with a relentless urge to experiment that hasn’t abated over almost 40 plays.” She has written widely for the stage, television and radio, and her works combine deep social commitment, political conscience, and critique with theatrical experimentation. From 1972 to the present, her stage plays, many of which originated at the Royal Court or Joint Stock, include: Owners; Light Shining in Buckinghamshire; Vinegar Tom; Cloud Nine; Three More Sleepless Nights; Top Girls; Fen; Serious Money; Mad Forest; The Skriker; Blue Heart; Far Away; A Number; A Dream Play after Strindberg; Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza; Love and Information; Escaped Alone; Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp.; and What If If Only.
About the Director
Susan E. Evans joined the talented Live Arts team in June 2021 and directed ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST to close Season 2021/22. Prior to that, she held several positions in the San Francisco Bay Area where she served as artistic director at Eastenders Repertory Company (directing We Won’t Pay, We Won’t Pay, Frozen, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (co-director), the world premieres of Charles Polly’s Twyla Trilogy, and many others); the Douglas Morrisson Theatre (Private Lives, Dividing the Estate, All My Sons, Eurydice, An Ideal Husband – Munson adaptation, The Skin of Our Teeth, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession); and Town Hall Theatre (The Revolutionists, Sense & Sensibility, The Cherry Orchard). Other Bay Area directing credits include Contra Costa Civic Theatre (Well); Actors Reading Writers; and collaborations with solo artist Carolyn Doyle and playwright Scott Munson (The Brecht Project). She is a proud graduate of the Drama Studio London @ Berkeley and an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. www.susaneevansdirector.com
About Live Arts
Live Arts is a volunteer-powered, nonprofit community theater in Downtown Charlottesville. Founded in 1990, Live Arts is celebrating 32 years of forging theater and community. The 2022/23 Transformations Season is made possible by season sponsors Elizabeth and Joe LeVaca, media sponsors C-VILLE Weekly and WTJU 91.1FM, pay-what-you-can sponsor Ting, education sponsor The Local, and IT partner PJ Networks Computer Services. The season is sponsored by Allison Partners, The Caplin Foundation, Chaski Global, Pamela Friedman and Ronald Bailey, Barbara and Jay Kessler, Latitude 38, The Madwoman Project at CACF, Panorama Consulting, Silverchair, Strauss Construction, Woodard Properties, George Worthington and Cameron Mowat, and philanthropic gifts by hundreds of theater lovers in our community.
Live Arts is supported by grants from Albemarle County, City of Charlottesville, the BamaWorks Fund of Dave Matthews Band at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, the DN Batten Foundation, Bank of America Foundation, and Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
