DIRECTING

ODU Rep/Old Dominion University 

Presented as part of the mainstage performance season for the Theatre program at Old Dominion University 

Director: Brittney S. Harris

Set Designer: Jim Lyden

Costume Designer: Meredith Magoun

Lighting Designer: Sean Blue

Sound Designer: Marcus Pratt 

Esther, an African American seamstress in 1905 New York, is a practical woman with quiet dreams. She hopes for lovely things— fine fabric, beautiful words, a loving touch, while supporting herself making exquisite negligees and corsets for women across the social strata. When a distant suitor reaches out through poignant and sensitive letters, her life changes. Through friendship, betrayal, and hope, she stitches herself a new life, a crazy quilt from the pieces, homely to look at but warming to the soul.  

Director Vision

Layers. Limitations. Liberation.  Intimate Apparel began as a recombination of a fictious family story about Lynn Nottage’s great-grandmother’s life as an African American seamstress in the early twentieth century and a photograph of “a beautiful white wedding corset embossed with orange blossoms.” It is a history play that necessarily and importantly does not recount its period and history but rather creates the past. The play’s characters are made up of those overlooked by traditional history: stories scarcely told and identities slandered by socio-cultural stereotypes and prejudices. 

Our redefining of Nottage’s breathtaking text aims to comb out the desires within and expose them at their seams. I’ve come to describe our production as a patchwork quilt of woven narratives stitched together over time through the themes of gender, race and class, and religion. We seek to open a space within which to examine, through a different lens, the silhouettes of the “history of the present” and its complicated tensions wrought of contradictory desires. In so doing, the thoughts that begin these notes blossoms into a bigger question: who’s history are we creating on stage? A migrating dreamer from the South? An immigrant’s journey? An ex-slave’s? High maiden of society? A “lady of the night”?  

For 6 weeks, the entire cast and production team have diligently rehearsed, revised, and rehearsed again still within the confines of a pandemic wrought world: adding our own revisions to Nottage’s play and the play, in turn, has restitched our thoughts, self-conceptions, and worldviews.

See images

Zeiders American Dream Theater

A devised/new play development. Presented as part of the City of Virginia Beach Cultural Affairs to re-launch their Globally-Inspired Gatherings summer season. 

Director: Brittney S. Harris

Producer(s): Sibel Galindez, Hilary McAndrew Plate

The “Hidden History: The Banjo” premiered as a celebratory piece about Juneteenth as a salute to freedom through expression and creativity. This performance includes an array of music, dance, and spoken word poetry from talented local artists, devised over the span of 4 weeks. 

See images

ODU Rep/Old Dominion University 

A devised/new play development. Presented as part of the mainstage performance season for the Theatre program at Old Dominion University. 

Director: Brittney S. Harris

Producer: Deborah Wallace

Digital Set Designer: Jim Lyden

Costume Designer: Meredith Magoun

Sound Designer: Marcus Pratt 

Symptomatic: IRL centers on embodying the psychological dilemma and chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and national regulations. This show intends to amplify the complex narrative that embraces the absurd contradictions of the COVID-19 and its diagnoses/treatments and its adverse effects on our social lives and livelihoods 

A stylized devised, interactive ensemble piece about self-diagnosing without an accurate understanding of the prognosis, everyone’s symptoms are different and varying (beyond the health ailments). The symptoms of isolation, confinement, detachment, need of connectivity, etc. Adjusting to constant virtual interaction, psychological effects: emotional distress.

• Exploring the thematic elements of Theatre of Absurd and variations of Augusto Boal’s methodology of Forum Theatre and Viewpoints (adapted by Anne Bogart) relation to space and time.
• Themes of connectivity, social distancing/isolation, individualism, artistic expression/lack thereof during the implementation of COVID-19 national regulation.
• Live-streamed with pre-recorded material: executed through about 15 to 20 “scenes”: monologues, innovative virtual scene work, and filmed montages/excerpts
• 7-week rehearsal period (40 to 45-minute script and production development)

See images

ODU Rep/Old Dominion University 

A devised/new play development. Presented as part of the mainstage performance season for the Theatre program at Old Dominion University. 

Director: Brittney S. Harris

Set Designer: Terry Flint

Costume Designer: Meredith Magoun

Lighting Designer: Jeffrey Shook

Sound Designer: Justin McLawhorn 

Echoes centered on deliberately targeted the generational echoes of caution and criticism that ring in every woman's ears: that "mother within" whose cautions and criticism benefit only their oppressors.

This show explored the thematic elements of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf and variations of Augusto Boal’s methodology of Rainbow of Desires. By utilizing the Boalian technique Rainbow of Desire and the stylized method of Ntozake’s “choreopoem”, an ensemble cast will create and devise original text/literature (poetry/rap, choreography, etc) identifying with issues of racial and gender oppression, social status and relationships, and diversity.

The performance had community outreach elements including a panel discussion titled ‘Young Women Talking Change the World: Telling Stories to ignite Social Change.’

See images

University of Georgia

Presented as part of the studio stage season for the Theatre program at University of Georgia.

University of Georgia

Devised/New Play development. main preface for the project was to embody the essence of Black Theater, script development, devised over the course of the Spring 2016 semester at University of Georgia.

See images