Summer in the SITI

SITI Company welcomes 60 international artists to its four-week annual summer workshop at Skidmore, where students have the chance to collaborate and develop as theater professionals and audiences get an opportunity to view new work. A founding belief of the SITI Company is that through the practice of collaboration, a group of artists working together over time can have a significant effect upon contemporary theater and the world at large. 

These performances at Skidmore are free and open to the public:

Friday, June 14, 8 p.m.—Bernhard Theater
Café Variations: A series of vivid and visceral explorations of love and identity come to life in this unabashedly romantic celebration of café culture.

Thursday, June 27, and Friday, June 28, 7 p.m.—Black Box Theater
Student showings: Participants of the SITI workshop perform theatrical ventures that emphasize international cultural exchange and collaboration.

Friday, June 28, 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.—Bernhard Theater
Theater demonstrations: The SITI Company and workshop participants demonstrate their training in a morning showcase of the Suzuki Method and an afternoon presentation of the Viewpoints Method.

The Suzuki Method is a rigorous physical and vocal discipline for actors. It was created by internationally acclaimed director Tadashi Suzuki and his company. The Viewpoints Method is an improvisation technique first articulated by choreographer Mary Overlie, who broke down issues of time and space into six categories—the method’s “six vewpoints.” SITI and its artistic director Anne Bogart have expanded and adapted Viewpoints for actor training.

Founded in 1992 by Bogart and Suzuki, SITI began as an agreement to redefine and revitalize contemporary theater in the U.S. through an emphasis on international cultural exchange and collaboration. Originally envisioned as a summer institute in Saratoga Springs, SITI expanded to become a year-round company based in New York City with a summer season in Saratoga.

In New York City, the company regularly performs at New York Live Arts (formerly Dance Theater Workshop) and conducts training programs at its home studio. The company is known nationally and internationally as a top-level artistic collective that generates groundbreaking theater while training artists from around the world. SITI and its members have received numerous honors, including the Fox Foundation Fellowship for Distinguished Actor and the Obie, Drama Desk and Eddy awards.

SITI recently premiered Café Variations at Arts Emerson in Boston, and further developed the touring version at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland and at the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Café Variations was developed during the SITI Company’s summer 2010 workshop and residency at Skidmore. Other recent projects include Trojan Women (Getty Villa, Los Angeles), American Document with the Martha Graham Dance Company (Joyce Theater, New York City), Antigone (Dance Theater Workshop), Under Construction (Humana Festival of New American Plays), and Virginia Woolf's only play, Freshwater (Women’s Project, New York City).

The SITI Company receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. Café Variations is funded in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts National Theater Project, with lead funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

(SITI Company photos by Michael Brosilow and Paul Marotta)