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A Stopping Place, a new one-man play written and performed by Stephen Powell, will be featured on Sunday, February 3rd at 3pm, in the 3rd Annual SaraSolo Theater Festival, a festival celebrating the Solo Performer, at Crocker Memorial Church in Sarasota, FL. A Stopping Place, directed by Clara Pagone, is the first original play by Stephen Powell, and brings to the stage a riveting exploration of the lasting effects that trauma inflicts on the individual, told through the personal meditations of a lone, anonymous character. Tickets are $15 for general admission and can be purchased online through SaraSolo.org.
A Stopping Place was awarded Best Storytelling Show at the 2016 United Solo Festival, the world’s largest solo theater festival, at Theatre Row on 42nd Street in New York City (unitedsolo.org/us/the-2016-united-solo-awards-have-been-announced). The world-premiere showed in June at the 2016 Planet Connections Festival, earning 4 Award Nominations: Outstanding Performance in a Solo Show, Outstanding Overall Production of a Solo Show, Outstanding Direction of a Solo Show, and Outstanding Scenic Design (planetconnections.org/2016-award-nomineeswinners/).
A Stopping Place is a play about connection: those bridges we form with one another, and those we don’t. Using memory, alienation, and metaphor, a nameless character confides in, and insulates himself from, the audience, who discover a man trying to confront something profound and impossible to articulate. Through his hardship, he explores the contours and limits of the bonds between the self and the other, the individual and society. Can we ever truly know another person, and what they hold in their past? Can we ever truly heal ourselves?
At the core of A Stopping Place is the ubiquity of trauma. No single person is unscathed by some form of violence, by neglect, by coercion. Each of us develops mechanisms to cope with these scarring memories in order to move beyond them. And remaining unspecified in the play, the struggle the audience witnesses transforms into their own struggle. In recent years much attention has been paid to the social safety net in America, as well as to mental health and to domestic violence. A Stopping Place addresses the common theme of trauma underlying these vital social issues.
Stephen Powell is the playwright and performer in A Stopping Place, his first original play. He trained at Stella Adler Studio, and is a graduate of Harvard University. His major work includes playing Hal in Proof by David Auburn (STS Playhouse), Telling the Bees, a collaborative piece with Sina Heiss and Lonesome George Productions, and two summer seasons at Theater Barn. He has worked extensively with the graduate directors and playwrights of Columbia’s School of the Arts, most recently in 7 Deadly Sins (dir. Palina Jonsdottir), a modern adaptation from Brecht’s musical ballet, and in The Conflabbergation, by Becca Plunkett.
Clara Pagone (Director) is a screen and stage actor who has trained internationally. She came to New York to join SITI Company’s Inaugural Conservatory class, and is now a Phoenix Theatre Artistic Associate. Selected credits include directing How to Direct From Inside (a sold-out run at Midsumma Festival at La Mama Melbourne) and performing her own one-woman show, Mrs. Marx, at the Sarasolo Festival in Sarasota, FL.
A Stopping Place will run for one performance on February 5th at 3:00pm at Crocker Memorial Church, located at 1260 12th Street in Sarasota. Tickets are $15 for general admission and can be purchased online through TicketAssistant at gottavan.strikingly.com/#tickets. and tktassistant.com/Tix/Request.php?ID=P18.SU3§ion=G The show is appropriate for ages 15 and up. For more information, visit www.seestephenpowell.com.
The SARASOLO THEATER FESTIVAL is an annual theater festival celebrating solo performers held in Sarasota, FL. Through a variety of one-person shows, the festival explores and celebrates the uniqueness of the individual.
Director Clara Pagone and performer Stephen Powell are available for interviews.
To arrange interviews please contact Stephen at [email protected].
