{"id":731,"date":"2012-07-11T14:51:28","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T21:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/66.147.244.222\/~cohoprod\/?p=731"},"modified":"2012-11-12T13:32:24","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T21:32:24","slug":"continuum-by-patrick-wohlmut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohoproductions.org\/old\/archives\/continuum-by-patrick-wohlmut\/","title":{"rendered":"Continuum by Patrick Wohlmut"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Playwrights West in association with CoHo Productions presents\u00a0Continuum<\/em>, by Patrick Wohlmut
\nAugust 10 \u2013 September 1, 2012
\nThursdays-Saturdays, 8:00 p.m.; Sundays 2:00 p.m.<\/h4>\n

FINAL WEEKEND!! Thursday, Aug. 30-Pay-what-you-will; Friday, August 31, Saturday, September 1 – $25 general\/$20 student\/educator\/60+.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone said Peter would be a brilliant astronomer.
\nThen he bet his career on a disproved theory about the planet Jupiter.<\/p>\n

Everyone said Craig would be a brilliant mathematician.
\nThen he disappeared.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s years later and Peter\u2019s newest round of research funding has been stolen \u2013 by Craig.\u00a0Peter desperately wants to know why, but Craig won\u2019t let him have the answer. Lies,\u00a0memories, pain, and the deep friendship these two men once shared propel them into\u00a0a cat-and-mouse game that neither man knows how to resolve\u2026and that threatens to\u00a0overturn the foundations of both their lives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Continuum<\/em> was commissioned by Portland Center Stage through a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation<\/a>. The play was featured in JAW: Made in Oregon in 2011.\u00a0Playwrights West<\/a>\u00a0worked together with the community to fund this production via\u00a0kickstarter<\/a>\u00a0and now\u00a0it will be fully realized in its\u00a0run at CoHo.<\/p>\n

About Playwrights West<\/strong>
\nPlaywrights West is a non-profit organization comprised of eight professional Portland\u00a0playwrights recognized for the high quality of their writing. The company focuses on\u00a0presenting top-level productions of its members\u2019 plays while supporting development\u00a0of original work in Portland. In 2012, their collaboration with Shaking the Tree, The\u00a0Tripping Point<\/em>, received 5 Drammy Awards, including 3 for member writers.<\/p>\n

Playwrights West is: Karin Magaldi, Ellen Margolis, Andrea Stolowitz, Andrew\u00a0Wardenaar, Patrick Wohlmut, Eugenia Woods, Nick Zagone, and Matthew B. Zrebski<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Patrick Wohlmut<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Patrick Wohlmut on Continuum<\/em><\/strong>
\n\u201cMany people tend to think of themselves as presenting different faces to different\u00a0people at different times. I think the truth is more complex than that, more rooted in the\u00a0Buddha\u2019s observation that (depending on who translates it) either \u201cWhat we are is what\u00a0we have thought,\u201d or possibly, \u201cWhat we think, we become.\u201d I think our personality\u00a0encompasses the full sum of anything we are in the habit of thinking, and that different\u00a0situations bring out different parts of us. We don\u2019t have many faces; rather, like Walt\u00a0Whitman says, we are all large, and contain multitudes that may seem contradictory\u00a0depending upon the situation in which we find ourselves. However, those aspects are not\u00a0contradictory \u2014 they are all, in fact, us. That means that different people and situations
\nreflect us in very different ways. The world is a hall of mirrors, and we see different\u00a0aspects of ourselves in everything.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I tend to appreciate \u2014 and try to use \u2014 an aspect of playwriting that Paul\u00a0Castagno describes in his book, New Playwriting Strategies. He describes a trend set by\u00a0playwrights such as Len Jenkin and Mac Wellman, where character-specific dialogue is\u00a0eschewed in favor of sometimes rapidly shifting vocal strategies, meaning that several\u00a0speech genres \u2014 ways of speaking \u2014 can emerge in the course of a scene, an act, or a\u00a0whole play. I\u2019m not a die-hard adherent of this strategy of writing, because I think that\u00a0people do tend to fall into specific speech patterns; it\u2019s not all chaos. However, there\u2019s\u00a0something in that flexibility of character that attracts me and rings true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out this interview<\/a> with Patrick about Continuum<\/em>\u00a0conducted by Mead Hunter, and featured in his\u00a0blog.<\/p>\n

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