The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual arts will present a staged reading of Oren Safdie’s Private Jokes, Public Places — a biting academic satire set amidst an architectural design review — at 7 p.m. Sept. 12 in the foyer of Givens Hall.
The performance is free and open to the public and is being presented in conjunction with the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.
A question-and-answer session with the cast, architectural students and faculty will immediately follow.
Private Jokes focuses on Margaret, a young Korean-American architecture student who must present her final degree project — a design for a public swimming pool — to a trio of opinionated, and frequently contentious, male professors.
Erhardt, a famous German postmodernist, spars with Colin, a tweedy British theorist and structural engineer, in bombastic, incomprehensible jargon. William, Margaret’s young American studio adviser, plays both referee and therapist while pursuing his own, if more personal, agenda.
“Private Jokes raises issues of immediate relevance to our students and faculty,” said Peter MacKeith, associate dean of Architecture and associate director of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, who proposed the production to the PAD last spring.
“What is the dynamic of a design review? What is the dynamic between men and women in the arts, between younger architects and older architects? These are not easy or uncontroversial questions, but there are essential discussions for the school to undertake.”
MacKeith added that setting Public Jokes in the Givens Hall foyer — site of actual architectural critiques — will duplicate the atmosphere of a real review. At the same time, he noted that the PAD cast and production staff “have brought a high level of enthusiasm to the play as well as important insights into how it can be used to examine our own studio culture.”
Justin Rincker, a graduate student in drama, directs the cast of five, which features alumna Jea Hyun Rhyu as Margaret; graduate student Dan Rubin as William; alumnus Gerry McAdams as Colin; and William Whitaker, senior lecturer in the PAD, as Erhardt.
Ann Marie Mohr, a graduate student in drama, will provide narration.
Safdie, a former architecture student at Columbia University, is the son of famed Israeli-born architect Moshe Safdie. Other credits include the film You Can Thank Me Later (1998) as well as the plays Jews & Jesus; Fiddler Sub-Terrain; Hyper-Allergenic; Broken Places; and Laughing Dogs & L.A. Compagnie.
Private Jokes debuted in 2001 at the Malibu Stage Co. then moved off-Broadway in 2003, playing at La Mama E.T.C. and the Center for Architecture of the American Institute of Architects.
For more information, call 935-6200.