DRC (or How I Learned to Act in Eight Steps)

Theater Mitu’s DRC (or How I Learned to Act in Eight Steps) is an homage of sorts—one that traces acting’s very history. The piece stems from a physical score built from the 1918 Wiene/Mayer/Janowitz silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The company will set the film’s arc to the words of seven of the most important and passionate thinkers on the subject of acting: Aristotle, Adolph Appia, Constantine Stanislavski, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski, and Anne Bogart. Rather than trying to rescind the roots and philosophies of acting, the piece accesses and accepts them. Amidst an impactful visual landscape, athletic staging, and live music and foley, MITU engenders a narrative that studies human interaction, emotion, and instinct via acting’s prodigious and always passionate lineage. Founded in 1997, Theater Mitu’s mission is to use the power of the theatrical to strengthen the soul of the community. They explore and transliterate ancient ritual and performance traditions to generate a vibrant theatrical vocabulary that they call “Whole Theater.” They define this as a theatrical experience whose form is rigorously visual, aural, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Whole Theater questions theatrical form and sets out to engage both audiences and artist in work that is dynamic, impactful, and un-ignorable.