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Tusk Tusk features young actors is meaty roles
From our classrooms to our professional stage, at Piven Theatre Workshop our goal is to treat young people like artists. Piven's current production of Tusk Tusk, under the direction of our Artistic Director Jennifer Green, highlights our mission to nurture young artists. The Chicago theatre community is taking note:
From TIME OUT Chicago:
"It's a serious piece about young people that's not children's theater," Jennifer Green says of Polly Stenham's play Tusk Tusk.
Green, the artistic director of Piven Theatre Workshop, is helming Tusk Tusk's U.S. premiere at the Evanston theater. The play tracks a trio of young siblings who fear their mentally unstable mother may have abandoned them.
"One thing that we're trying to do at Piven is look at pieces that are really multigenerational, that find for performers that bridge from training into a professional experience," Green says. With its meaty roles for young actors, Tusk Tusk fit the bill. "It's risky to write and it's risky to do," Green says of asking young performers to shoulder an adult play. "You quite possibly are dealing with actors who've never really experienced what a professional run is like, the rigors of doing four shows a week over a long period. It's a two-hour show, and they're holding the stage pretty much every second, balancing dialect and fight choreography and really gritty emotional resources." "These parts are really demanding for performers of any age," Cygan says. "It's scary to watch these kids spiral into dark places. [Piven]'s been a wonderful place to get to explore this; we feel very cared for." Read the whole piece here. | 
