Shelley
Mitchell in Talking With Angels
A play about faith that transcends
faiths at Havurah Shir Hadash
$18/advance,
$20/door, Teens
12-17/$10
Kids under 12 free with paying adult |
|
|
|
185 N. Mountain, Ashland
Saturday, March 8, 2008 • 8PM
"Extraordinary light emerges from the dark in Shelley Mitchell's
brilliantly realized production of Talking
WIth Angels: the astonishingstory
of revelation and redemption in the midst of the Holocaust." MICHAEL
MURPHY, FOUNDER OF ESALEN INSTITUTE
Talking With Angels is a profound experience for the audience.
Shelley Mitchell creates a partnership and a collaborative experience
unlike any other. I find the work that she does as an actress
to be in the realm of social and personal transformation and
am thrilled and delighted that she has taken her discipline so
much farther than most people would ever consider. TALKING
WITH ANGELS is a very special theater experience and one that should
be seen by as many audiences as possible. LYNNE TWIST
Mitchell switches seamlessly between the aged Mallasz and the
grace of the seraphs, interspersing ethereal matters with the
more earthly concern of the ever-increasing danger of living
in Nazi-occupied Hungary... Mitchell's consummate skill as a
performer illuminates this thoughtful combination of human bravery
and the divine. IRISH THEATER MAGAZINE - Sept. '06
TALKING WITH ANGELS Based on a True Story Budapest 1943: Four
unassuming young artists searching for meaning amidst the chaos
of the Holocaust, find transcendence in the face of tragedy.
Their remarkable philosophical conversations with mysterious
invisible forces comes to life in this luminous one-woman performance.
Based on a true story The drama unfolds around Gitta Mallasz's
courageous attempt to save her three Jewish friends and over
100 women and children from deportation by sheltering them in
a slave labor factory in the center of Budapest. As commander
in charge she was successful in saving almost all of the workers.
Hanna Dallos, Gitta's childhood friend and one of the workers
in the factory, was the conduit for the angels' message of personal
responsibility and self-awareness. Gitta and her three friends
all kept detailed diaries of the poetic and highly personal teachings
they experienced over a period of seventeen months from June
of 1943 until their deportation in December of 1944.
Gitta Mallasz survived the war and in 1960 smuggled the precious
diaries into France. The dialogues were made public in 1976 as
Dialogue avec L’Ange and immediately became a bestseller,
but the the book in its original language (Az Angyal Vàlaszol)
was banned by the Communist régime in Hungary until 1991.
The play is based on the original transcripts and brings the
experience of Talking with Angels to the 21st century.
SHELLEY MITCHELL – Performer/Adapter/Teacher Shelley Mitchell,
first adapted Gitta Mallasz's Talking With
Angels as a one act
play for the 1999 San Francisco Fringe Theater Festival. After
winning "Best" of the Festival Mitchell performed at
San Francisco’s Magic Theater in 2000. Encouraged by the
overwhelmingly emotional and positive audience response Mitchell
scheduled five showcase performances starting September 19, 2001
in New York City. With the tragedy that occurred on the 11th,
Mitchell and Robin Fontaine (the play's director) knew the play’s
message would resonate deeply with New Yorkers. Given the uncertainty
of air travel they drove from S.F. to NYC in three days to open
the play as scheduled at the Milagro Theater on Manhattan’s
Lower East Side. Despite the panic on Broadway the show sold
out and TALKING WITH ANGELS was invited back to NYC in May of
2002, funded in part by the Lifebridge Foundation and sponsored
by Parabola Magazine. Since then Mitchell has performed Talking
With Angels over 200 times at various theatres on both the East
and West Coast and in Ireland at the Dublin International Theatre
Festival. Click here for a complete list.
Shelley Mitchell was nominated as Best solo performer by the
Bay Area Theater Critics Circle in 1999 for Estelle Parson’s
adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo and Franca Rame’s
Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo. She trained in New York
City with Lee Strasberg and is a graduate of Circle in the Square
Theatre School. She is also an alumna of Emerson College in Boston
and New York University. Shelley Mitchell is artistic director
of The Actors Center of San Francisco where she teaches film
and theater acting.
For more information, visit www.talkingwithangels.com and www.shellymitchell.org. |
