School is supposed to teach you how to solve future problems – but what if the problem is something you want to solve for something new? GROUP PROJECT is a new play written and directed by Lindsay Goss in collaboration with a cohort of Temple University theater students. The play itself depicts a group of high school students, abandoned by adult supervision, who find themselves facing an ordeal they feel doomed to fail. Do they have what it takes to pass? What if they don’t?
GROUP PROJECT will be presented live and in person September 8-18, 2022 at the Randall Theater, 2020 N. 13th St., Philadelphia, PA. This production is part of the 2022 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Tickets can be purchased through this ticketing link.
To create this new work, Goss asked cast members questions about how they imagine the future and their place in it. Their responses shaped her thought process, and although Goss says she tends not to do work that explicitly addresses specific issues, for this piece she wanted to balance that inclination with her students’ clear desire for a piece that felt relevant, engaged. and targeted urgently right now. “I wanted to honor both impulses,” says Goss, “This piece explores and depicts the intense contradiction of trying to live in the present when you have no idea what the future will be like and you’re said, more or less, to keep calm and carry on.”
Goss drew on multiple references and inspirations to create GROUP PROJECT, including iconic portrayals of high school students in films such as Dead Poets Society and the John Hughes canon, speeches given by young people like the environmental activist Greta Thunberg and the Spanish Golden Age play Fuenteovejuna, by Lope De Vega, which depicts a collective peasant uprising against their abusive ruler. “I had a feeling it might find its way,” Goss shares of this final piece, “although for a while it seemed like it wouldn’t. And then it happened, but not all quite the way I expected!”
One of the GROUP PROJECT goals for Goss is to understand how society might handle crisis conditions. Director Goss says the play explores “a youth-occupied world that’s supposed to be orderly, safe and functional – but the adults are absent or incompetent or just don’t take responsibility”. Does the theater provide a good model for determining and prioritizing needs? According to Goss, “everyone seems to hate group projects, but that’s literally what theater is, and that’s literally what we’re going to have to do if we’re going to solve any of the crises we’re facing today. ‘today’.
Director Lindsay Goss is a theater historian, performance theorist and theater artist. Her work explores how popular discourses of authenticity and identity are grounded in historical anxieties about the actor in proximity to politics, and how these anxieties shape the fields of theater history, activism and contemporary performance. His current manuscript focuses on the theatrical tactics deployed by civilians and soldiers in building a GI movement against the Vietnam War (including the FTA, an anti-war variety show run by Jane Fonda) and argues for a reassessment of the role of performance and spectatorship in theorizing contemporary activist movements. His academic work has been published in TDR, Contemporary Theater Review, Performance Research and Afterimage. As a director, actor and teaching artist, she has worked with companies in Minneapolis and St. Paul; New York; and Providence, Rhode Island. More recently, his imagined work has appeared in Abu Dhabi and London. She directed the world premiere of Marisela Treviño Orta’s play Somewhere at Temple in the spring of 2020. Lindsay received her PhD in Theater and Performance Studies from Brown University and her BA in English Literature from Macalester College.
GROUP PROJECT by Temple Theaters is Temple Theaters’ first show of the 2022-23 season and is part of the 2022 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. All evening performances (Thursday through Saturday) are at 7:30 p.m., with matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and the Sunday. ASL interpretation will be available for the evening of Saturday, September 17. Tickets can be purchased on the Fringe Festival website.
Temple University is currently hosting events in accordance with regional, citywide, and CDC guidelines, and following the August 13, 2021 mandate from the City of Philadelphia requiring full vaccination in institutions of higher education for all students, staff, faculty and contractors (unless specifically exempt). We encourage members of the public to be masked and recommend that the public be prepared for the possibility of mandatory masking if protocols change. Visit the university’s COVID-19 Resource Center or check the Temple Theaters website or social media accounts for updates before attending your performance.
Production team
Director: Lindsay Goss
Scenographer: Eliot Curtis
Costume designer: Rachael Linker
Lighting Designer: Maddy Connors
Sound Designer: Tanner Richardett
Director: Erin McHugh
Cast
Jackson Adams, Jaylyn Anderson, Grace Browning, Devon Duffy, John Fiorvanti, Nia Golden, Alé La Paz, Madelin Madamba, James Maloney, Taryn Murphy, Zoe Necowitz, Bari Secondino, Talia Speak
