University Calendar

VILLA

by Guillermo Calderón

translated by William Gregory

featuring visiting artist Leonor Lopehandía and MSU theatre students    Alexandra Doggette and Antoinette Fasino

Photo credit: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

In Guillermo Calderón’s VILLA (2011), three young women debate the future of the site of a former villa turned into a torture barracks by the military dictatorship.  Originally performed inside the infamous Villa Grimaldi, this “spare, intense” play by one of Chilean theatre’s fiercest new literary voices grapples with the legacy of atrocity using “stark lyricism and dreamlike imagery” (LA Times).

VILLA was originally produced as co-production between Teatro Playa and Santiago a Mil International Theater Festival.

The reading will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Lopehandía, the student actors and guest dramaturg Sarah Rose Leonard, Literary Associate at Signature Theatre, NYC.

Leonor Lopehandía Montecino is returning to Montclair State University for the third consecutive year to lead a series of intensive voice and speech workshops for the Department of Theatre and Dance.  She completed her studies at the "Theater Club" School in Santiago and received her post-graduate training in acting at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. As an actress she has appeared in numerous independent theater and media productions, beginning her professional career in 1994 at the Siré Augustine Theater of the University of Chile. In 1998, she founded La Borja Theatre Company with Mauricio Moro and Sebastian Leon with whom she worked both as an actress and producer in Santiago and Temuco. She received a FONDART award in 2000 for Seven Mirages of a Fragmented History, a CUMBIA award in 2006 for Uncertain Celebrations in 2006 and a LIRA award in 2006 for Five Stories About Poor Poets. With renowned Chilean actor Héctor Noguera, she co-founded the Universidad Mayor's School of Theater in the city of Temuco, serving as professor of Voice and Speech and theater faculty coordinator.  Since 2007, she has been a Professor of Voice and Coordinator of General Training at the Universidad Mayor's School of Theater in Santiago. 

Special thanks to the Office of Arts and Cultural Programming.