Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Contact: David Saltz, 706/542-2091, saltz@uga.edu; Randall Packer, rpacker@zakros.com

UGA theatre and film studies department to present multimedia project created at historic Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery

Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia department of theatre and film studies will present artist Randall Packer and tenor Charles Lane in a screening and panel discussion of Packer’s new multimedia theatre work, Religion of the Lie (Orf’s Baptism), produced in collaboration with UGA students working in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery, an African-American historic site in Athens.

The screening and panel are scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 1, at 8 p.m. in room 53 of the Fine Arts Building at the corner of Lumpkin and Baldwin Streets. The event is open to the public with an optional donation to the Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery Restoration Fund.  The panel will include UGA theatre professors David Saltz and Freda Giles and members of the East Athens community.

Religion of the Lie (Orf’s Baptism) is the latest installment of Packer’s epic multimedia work-in-progress, A Season in Hell, a commentary on the path of the United States in the post-9/11 era produced under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Art and Technology. According to Packer, “the current work confronts deteriorating conditions resulting from some fundamentalist forms of religious ideology.”

Packer explains that the character Orf, who like the mythological Orpheus transgresses boundaries between the living and the dead, is an aesthetic being traveling from the “Other World” to visit the all-black Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery to speak with the dead.

Three UGA theatre students will portray the souls that Orf summons in the cemetery. “The souls represent positive, courageous examples of deep religious faith and spirituality in the face of unspeakable injustice,” explains Saltz, department head of theatre and film studies.

A team of undergraduate and graduate students also are working closely with Packer and Lane to help write the script and to design costumes, scenic elements, audio, lighting, video and computer animation. The students are enrolled in a theatre and film studies course titled “Producing the New Script,” taught by Saltz. “This is a great opportunity for our students to work with internationally recognized artists on a unique multidisciplinary project,” says Saltz.

The Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery is an African-American cemetery founded in 1882. It was abandoned in the 1960s, with no organization claiming ownership or taking responsibility for its upkeep. In recent years, the East Athens Development Corporation has spearheaded an effort to restore the cemetery.  Michelle Dodson, an MFA student in dramatic media who serves as the multimedia project coordinator, points out that “many of the people buried in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery lived under slavery. What I find most moving about this project is the way it recognizes these long-neglected souls and gives them voice.”

The production of Religion of the Lie (Orf’s Baptism) is presented in conjunction with America on the Brink, an exhibition at ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, running Sept. 9 through Nov. 5, which features installations by Packer and the U.S. Department of Art and Technology.

Packer is internationally recognized as a pioneering artist, composer, educator and scholar in the field of multimedia. His work has been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the world including Europe, Asia and North America. He is assistant professor of multimedia at American University in Washington, D.C. His book and accompanying Web site, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality (W.W. Norton 2001 / www.artmuseum.net), has been adopted internationally as one of the leading educational texts in the field. He is concerned with the aesthetic, philosophical and socio-cultural impact of new media in an increasingly technological society.

Lane is a native of Los Angeles. He has spent his career traveling across the boundaries of opera, concert music, cabaret performance and experimental music. He has worked with world-renowned artists, performers, directors and conductors, including performance artist Guillermo Gomez Peña, choreographer Donald Byrd, directors Robert Benedetti and Beatrice Manley, tenor Placido Domingo, and conductors Pierre Boulez, Essa Pekka Solomon, and Simon Rattle. He has performed concert works written for him with leading contemporary music ensembles, including the New Music Ensemble, California EAR Unit and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. He is a member of the Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Master Chorale, performing in numerous productions with leading conductors and directors, including Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin, directed by Maximillian Schell; John Adam’s El Niño, directed by Peter Sellars; and Wagner’s Parsifal, directed by Robert Wilson and conducted by Kent Negano.

For more information about the U.S. Department of Art and Technology, visit www.usdat.us. For more information about University Theatre or UGA’s department of theatre and film studies, visit www.drama.uga.edu.

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