A whimsical exploration of the power of connecting, Cho's sweet comedy is ultimately a celebration of life & love & the things that get lost in translation.
"...a tour de force... passionate, wise and wonderful." -Talkin' Broadway
MMSC's Summer Season Continues
An Entire Weekend of Readers Theatre
Three different days, three different plays
July 17, 18 and 19
On Saturday, July 18 at 8PM
The Language Archive by Julia Cho

Winner of the 2010 Susan Blackburn Prize

Love is a looney business in Cho's beguiling comedy. 

You might think that, surely, a linguistic scholar who can speak dozens of languages is an expert in a communication. But alas, in The Language Archive you will discover that George may be able to speak Esperanto, but he cannot communicate. Of the many paths of communication available to us, we learn, perhaps the hardest one to traverse is the language of love. This comedy is a penetrating play that will linger on and on, leaving you with many questions about your own language archives.

 

Directed by Christine Crawfis and featuring Rick Meyer, Mary Beth Boylan, Janet Nurre, Doug Woolley, Julie Eads Woolley, AnnaMarie Paolercio, and Jeff Battersby.  

 


"Quirky, but a ravishingly well-written piece that is
smart, funny, deep and tender."
  OC Weekly

George is a brilliant linguist, consumed with preserving and documenting dying languages. But at home, he cannot find the words that will preserve his disintegrating marriage. His archival assistant is mute with adoration for him; and his newest subjects, an elderly couple who are the last speakers of an obscure language, refuse to utter a word to one another.    

 

Cho's magical prize-winning comedy, loaded with life's contradictions - love and loss, happiness and pain, endings and beginnings - asks whether love is a universal language or, like Esperanto, just a well-intentioned dream.

Cho says that the first impulse for The Language Archive was an obituary that mentioned how the last speaker of a certain language had passed away. It was the first obituary of that kind that Cho had seen. Soon afterward, she started reading books and articles about decaying languages. George was the first character to emerge. "What came was the voice of this person who cared so much about these languages that were dying and wanted so badly to save them."


The Language Archive - A Perfect Play for MMSC  


While languages dwindle or communication fails, Cho's terse language thrives. She notes "I like empty space. I like silence. I like room on the page. I feel that what I love best is making an audience have to imagine things for themselves. I'm trying to leave room for someone to come meet me part of the way."   


 
Additional Information & Tickets
The Language Archive is the second of three different productions during our special Readers Theatre Weekend - July 17, 18 & 19.
All performances are on the big stage at
County Players at the Falls Theatre in Wappingers Falls.

These will be MMSC's only performances during the summer of 2015. Don't miss this opporunty to see (and hear) us on a BIG STAGE with a set, lights and sound. 
Might never happen again!