The production is based on the book of the same name by Andrew Carvin, a Washington D.C.-based journalist who covered the seismic political and cultural shifts in the Middle East via social media as they were unfolding from 2010 to 2012.

Carvin participates in process

The Carvin connection came through former EMU professor Paulette Moore, who met him at a conference and invited him to Skype in the fall of 2014 with EMU students in her social media class. , assistant professor of theater, was intrigued by the connection with Carvin.

Poole had worked with an Arab cultural organization in Philadelphia earlier in his career and had traveled to Egypt shortly before the Arab Spring took off. He’d thought for several years that those events would make for powerful theater.

and social media classes, led by Poole and , initially adapted the book for the stage in the fall of 2014. To this process, Poole brings years of academic and professional experience: One of his specialities is devised theater and ensemble play development.

“I would come in with an outline, we would improvise some pieces, I would go back and write, and it just started to evolve,” Poole says. “We took recordings Andy Carvin did and blog posts outside his book and combined them to make the actual performance. The students have been a huge part in helping to shape what this piece has become from the beginning until now.”

A , with student actors reading from scripts, took place on campus in May 2015 with support from the Arts Council of the Valley and EMU’s . Carvin was on hand to provide comments and suggestions. Poole made adjustments after that, including some changes in the script and the addition of a second video camera on stage.

Multi-media

The resultant play is framed via a reporter who is interviewing Carvin, while a Greek chorus-style group speaks the Tweets from Carvin’s reporting and video images flash on three screens and even on the floor. Actors often speak directly to the cameras and sometimes go through the audience. A live score by Jim Clemens, which whom Poole has collaborated on a number of projects, helps to balance the intensity with more reflective moments.

VACA professor Jerry Holsopple’s motion graphics class created the cyperspace visualizations that play on two screens.

“This adds to the complexity of the show, as we experience the constant flowing information, much of which we don’t understand,” Holsopple says. “This confluence of information, confusion and intensity should keep the viewer on edge. The third screen will be a live camera from the stage itself, so in a way everything is mediated with screens.”

“It’s a very immersive theatrical piece,” Poole adds. “The audience should feel very much in the midst of it as Andy Carvin was as he was following all these events. All the people who appear in the play are real people, and 90 percent of the dialogue is from tweets, blog posts, and other sources. It’s kind of a big, epic piece.”

The play runs about 90 minutes with no intermission, and a 15-minute talkback session follows each performance. The show includes some profanity and violent imagery due to its real-life content.

All performances are at 7:30 p.m. except Sunday, April 10, which will be a 3 p.m. matinee. Tickets are available at the EMU Box Office or by calling 540-432-4582.

Cast and Crew

Director and Adaptor: Justin Poole

Video Design: Jerry Holsopple

Music Composition: Jim Clemens

Scene Design: Phillip Grayson

Costume Design: Holly Labbe

Lighting Design: David B. Vogel

Sound Design: Ethan Eldred

Stage Manager: Ezrionna Prioleau

Assistant Director: Rachelle Kratz

CHARACTERS

Makayla Baker: Reporter

Clara Bush: @angryarabiya

Bryce Hagan: Mo

Jeremiah Hines: Tom MacMaster

Caitlin Randazzo: Perditta

Rose Sanicola: Asmaa

Celeb Townsend: Andy Carvin

Rachel Cardwell, Macson MacGuigan, Kara Painter, Damon Pyles:  Camera Operators

Kaylin Richardson: Video Switcher

PRODUCTION ARTISTS

Assistant Stage Managers: Hailey Holcomb, Kara Painter, Katie Taylor

Technical Director: David B. Vogel

Dramaturge: Derrick Turner

Assistant Costume Designers: Grace Eldred, Belen Yoder, Cela Hoefle

Cyberspace Creative Team: Jacob Brown, Jonathan Bush, Rachel Cardwell, Claire Fry, Madeline Martinez, Kaylin Richardson, Caleb Townsend

Master Electrician: Jonathan Nofziger

Lighting Crew: Jeremiah Hines, Elisha Keener, Yesly Lim, Caitlin Randazzo, Rose Sanicola, Isaac Tice, Rein Wenger

Light Board Operator: Luis Longo, Angel Mallard

Live Sound Mixer: Josh Miller, Evan Knappenberger

Sound Board Operator: Ethan Eldred

Construction Supervisor:  Shannon Dove

Construction and Technical Crew: Jeremiah Hines, Hailey Holcomb, Elisha Keener, Yesly Lim, Kara Painter, Ezrionna Prioleau, Caitlin Randazzo

Public Relations Coordinator: Ezrionna Prioleau

Cast Photographs: Kara Painter

House Manager: Christian Parks

She’ll share her research about tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus), an endemic and rare reptile of New Zealand, in a seminar Friday, Nov. 6, at 4 p.m. in Suter Science Center 106.

“In many species, offspring sex is not determined by chromosomes but instead develops based on environmental conditions,” explains Grayson, who teaches in the biology department at University of Richmond. “My research on tuatara living in islands offshore of New Zealand examined the potential for increased environmental temperature and sex ratio bias to endanger an isolated population.”

Despite that populations may appear numerically stable, the sex ratio in tuatara populations may be “an underappreciated threat to long-term viability,” she said.

Professor , who with his wife Kathy has led three to New Zealand in 2010, 2012 and , invited Grayson to speak. The groups he’s led focus on conservation biology and the effects of invasive species, in addition to work with the indigenous Maori people, and the 2015 summer group met with Grayson’s colleagues (she was back in the States by that time) and toured the lab where she had worked.

“Tuatara are a great case study for the ‘Conservation Biology’ class as well as my first-year ‘Concepts in Biology’ class, as we are currently studying evolutionary biology and will be focusing on invasive species, which is the primary threat to tuatara, later this semester,” he said.

From the Valley to Tuatara-Land

Grayson grew up in Harrisonburg, the daughter of two professors. Her mother, Joann Grayson, is a professor of psychology at James Madison University (JMU) and an expert in the field of child and family abuse. Her father, , is a scenery and lighting expert who retired after 26 years at JMU and is on the adjunct faculty at EMU.

In her youth, Grayson says she thought about studying environmental law, but her love of interacting with animals and the environment won over. She graduated from Davidson College in 2003 and decided to take a year off, unknowingly sowing the seeds of a future post-doctoral fellowship when she attended a conference in Australia on amphibians and reptiles. “The head of the tuatara research project mentioned that I should get in touch if I ever wanted to work on tuatara.”

At University of Virginia, she focused her dissertation research on migratory trade-offs of amphibians. But she never forgot the tuatara, and in 2010, six years later, she emailed the director of the project that she had met so many years ago in New Zealand.

That led to a grant proposal with the National Science Foundation, and in 2011, “we packed up our family to move to New Zealand for a year and a half.”

Travel and research challenges

Grayson says the experience of living and working in a different country, and best of all for the biologist, “seeing different ecosystems,” was rewarding, but also challenging. Based out of Victoria University of Wellington, she had to learn “a whole new research system and the logistics of doing research in a totally different place.”

“Tuatara are highly protected in New Zealand and the permitting process to conduct research is quite extensive, as well as the logistics of getting to the islands where they live,” she said. “This was much different than walking up to a pond in your backyard with a net to catch salamanders!”

Grayson’s current research also examines the spread potential of gypsy moth, an invasive forest pest, at the southern invasion front.

Phil Grayson, adjunct faculty member and resident designer for EMU’s theater department

Being at “the right place at the right time” takes patience, luck, and an incredible amount of preparation. Some people spend their whole lives waiting for fate to deal them a winning hand, only to wind up waiting tables as a career.

Phil Grayson just walked into L.A. and got lucky. He is now a scenery designer for EMU’s theatre program. Before he designed huge rocks to work as a setting for “Women of Lockerbie,” he was making a career with NBC.

“It may have been divine intervention,” he says as he recollects, 36 years later. On that day in 1973, he stepped into an office looking for a job. The man at the desk hung up the phone and turned to see Grayson standing in the doorway.

“They needed a follow-spot operator at NBC for a Democratic Party telethon,” says Grayson. “That’s how I got started in television.”

Phil Grayson, a theatre professor and set designer at ˛ÝÝ®ÉçÇř, has an interesting background. Having spent time behind the scenes at ABC and NBC, plus 27 years working backstage and in the classroom at James Madison University, Phil now enjoys his “retirement project” (as he calls it) at EMU.

Although Grayson began his backstage career in 1973, his start in show business was years earlier, when he made training videos for fast food restaurants.

“I developed a skill by doing it,” Grayson says. Most of his trade can only be learned by hands-on work. Before his move to Los Angeles, Calif., Grayson lived with his wife in St. Louis. As she got a degree, he worked at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis as master of properties.

He did four shows a season. He specifically remembers managing props for the production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” During a dream sequence that a character has onstage, the character’s finger needs to extend to three feet right before the audience’s eyes. Taking a glove, an archery arm guard, a fishing sinker and a few other pieces, Grayson constructed an extending finger.

Once Grayson got his foot in the door in Los Angeles, he remained busy throughout 1973. Grayson worked for “The Price is Right” and got involved at CBS on a stage hand crew. He worked with Golden West Broadcasting and Ralph Edwards productions. He helped producers of the resurgence of the show “Name that Tune” as a props developer and built a magic theater in Busch Gardens in L.A. where a young David Copperfield performed.

Despite all this experience, Grayson reveals that television was “artistically unsatisfying.” Interested in theater architecture, Grayson got involved in the Odyssey Theater Ensemble. The first show Grayson designed for was Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt.”

Soon, Grayson was offered a job at Madison College, now James Madison University, as a theatre professor and stage designer. From 1975 to 2002, Grayson helped out with two productions a semester while teaching three or four classes. In 2002 he retired, but then he was offered the same job part-time at EMU.

In the time that Grayson has been at EMU, he helped build a stage in the old EMU gym and designed for numerous shows. Jerry Holsopple, a friend and colleague of Grayson, says, “I find Phil so fascinating. He does so many things and is fun to hang around.” Holsopple goes on to point out that Grayson owns a chicken farm with a barn full of stuff.

“Phil has forgotten more things than I will ever know,” states a smiling Heidi Winters-Vogel, theatre department chair at EMU. Vogel has worked with Grayson on four shows, and is now woking with him on the current show at EMU, “Women of Lockerbie.”