The “most incendiary” experimental theater company of the past half-century (The New York Times), Mabou Mines is an institution of the American avant-garde. For over fifty years, they’ve staged brave new plays and taken “startlingly original” slants on classic texts (Theatre Journal). Their perpetual revolution continued in a two-week residency at Duke, from February 14 – 27, 2011, when the innovators prepared a new, dream-vision take on Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, under the direction of the “wizard-director” Lee Breuer (The New York Times).
Their creative process culminated in two staged readings of Williams’ heartbreaking masterpiece on February 27, 2011 at the Sheafer Lab Theater, done workshop-style with scripts in hand — allowing the country’s most celebrated ensemble to examine this American classic through its singular looking glass.
Mabou Mines’ residency at Duke informed the company’s development of the play, Glass Guignol: The Brother and Sister Play, which premiered in December 2017.
“In the title roles, Greg Mehrten and Mitchell deliver deliciously manic performances, aided by a score that spans gigue to tango.”
The New Yorker
Presented in association with Duke University’s Theater Studies Department.
Mabou Mines’ residency at Duke was funded, in part, with a visiting artist grant from the Council for the Arts, Office of the Provost, Duke University.