RIFFS ON A TEXT: adapting and digesting the work of Koltés

EDIT 9.23.25: Original October dates have been POSTPONED. New dates in December are as followed: December 4, December 8, December 11, December 15. More details below.

 

Come take a bite out of Bernard-Marie Koltès’ In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields— a play about an illicit deal conducted in the shadows. Koltès’ absurdist plays about  power, intimacy, colonialism and commerce have become classics in France and Germany, after his untimely death in 1989.  

Together, James Ijames and Dan Rothenberg will use this source text to offer performer-creators and writers a series of explorations and prompts to “translate” Koltés’ charged, lyrical encounter into movement, music, and new settings. Unraveling, reassembling, and riffing on the source material, participants will explore the existing text as performers and also generate new scripts and scenarios as writers, improvisers, and collaborators.

About James Ijames

James Ijames is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony Award-nominated playwright, a director and educator. James’ plays have been produced by Flashpoint Theater Company, Orbiter 3, Theatre Horizon, Wilma Theatre, Theatre Exile, Azuka Theatre (Philadelphia, PA), The National Black Theatre, JACK, The Public Theater (NYC), Hudson Valley Shakespeare Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre, Definition Theatre, Timeline Theater (Chicago IL) Shotgun Players (Berkeley, CA) and have received development with PlayPenn New Play Conference, The Lark, Playwright's Horizon, Clubbed Thumb, Villanova Theater, Wilma Theater, Azuka Theatre and Victory Garden. 

James is the 2011 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Artist recipient, and winner of two Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Direction of a Play for The Brothers Size with Simpatico Theatre Company and Gem of the Ocean with Arden Theatre. James is a 2015 Pew Fellow for Playwriting, the 2015 winner of the Terrance McNally New Play Award for WHITE, the 2015 Kesselring Honorable Mention Prize winner for ....Miz Martha, a 2017 recipient of the Whiting Award, a 2019 Kesselring Prize for Kill Move Paradise, a 2020 and 2022 Steinberg Prize, the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama recipient  and a 2023 Tony nominee for Best Play for Fat Ham.

James was a founding member of Orbiter 3, Philadelphia’s first playwright producing collective.

 

About Dan Rothenberg

Dan is a co-founder and co-artistic director of Pig Iron Theatre Company. He has directed almost all of Pig Iron's original performance works, including the OBIE Award-winning Chekov Lizardbrain and Hell Meets Henry Halfway. Pig Iron's work has toured to 15 countries on four continents, with stops at the Humana Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Under the Radar, TR Warszawa, Konfrontacje Teatralne Festival, and Tokyo Performing Arts Market. Dan has directed three critically acclaimed premieres by Toshiki Okada for the Play Company in New York City, a national tour for the Acting Company, and collaborations with the alt-comedy group Berserker Residents, new music outfit Bowerbird, and Sweden's Teater Slava. Pew Fellow; USA Artists Fellow. Dan teaches physical theater at the Pig Iron MFA and Certificate Programs.