Productions
Texting the Sun
Now booking for fall 2010
Texting the Sun
is a free touring production investigating the complex issue of Media Literacy, designed for grades 6, 7, and 8.
This relevant, thought-provoking production explores the challenges of navigating our media-saturated reality. Through the eyes of adolescents, “Texting the Sun” spotlights the dilemmas posed by the relentless barrage of media influences: news cycles, advertising campaigns, social sites, video games, cell phones, and instant messaging. How are they to know what is real or unreal? Fact or fiction?
“Texting the Sun” tours January 12-June 4, and September 14-November 19, 2010. Our schedule is filling up quickly. To bring this free performance to your school, follow the booking instructions below. All Educational Theatre Program productions and workshops are FREE to schools.
Recent Media Literacy News
Read the 1/20/2010 NY Times article on the new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-18-Year Olds.”
View the 3/2/2010 KOIN ‘Keep it Local’segment on “Texting the Sun.”
Read the 3/18/2010 Oregonian article, “Texting the Sun play aims to help media-immersed young people find balance.”
Read the 4/9/2010 OPB News story, “Texting the Sun: Confronting Cyber-Problems With Theatre,” and listen to Think Out Loud’s 4/9/2010 episode on the media and kids, titled, “How Much Media is Too Much?”
Booking
“Texting the Sun” is now booking for fall 2010. Available dates run September 14-November 19 2010, and the performance running time is 55 minutes. If you want to be notified about fall tour dates, email bridie@octc.org. To bring this performance to your school, follow these steps:
- Check the Zip Code finder here to confirm that Kaiser serves your area.
- Check the 2010 performance schedule and make sure your desired time and date have not already been booked.
- Fill out and submit the Online Booking Form.
- You will be contacted for confirmation and arrangements by The Educational Theatre Program. If you have questions, please contact Bridie at 503-228-9571, x 116, bridie@octc.org.
Workshops
For the first time, we will be offering supporting workshops facilitated by our teaching artists (the “Texting the Sun” actors). Workshops may either precede or follow your performance. For more information, please contact Bridie at 503-228-9571, x 116, or bridie@octc.org.
Frequently Asked Questions
2010 Performance Schedule
Click here to view 2010 performance schedule
Biography
Matthew B. Zrebski (playwright) is a writer, director and composer. As Artistic Director for Portland’s Stark Raving Threatre, Matt oversaw production of 31 plays. In 2005 he began teaching playwriting for Literary Arts through their Writers in the Schools program. Currently, he is the playwriting instructor for The Greenhouse School of Theatre at Portland Center Stage, and instructor and co-coordinator for Portland Center Stage’s Visions and Voices “in the schools” playwriting program. He holds a BFA from Southern Methodist University.
Some thoughts from the playwright on theatre for youth.
As a playwright, staying in touch with the “young voice” is thrilling. And as theatre often provides a large tent under which people of various strips may commune, it often serves to save young outcasts from a downward spiral. The number of kids I have seen find their voice, their esteem, their passion through theatre number too many to count. I can’t think of anything more exciting—and maybe more important. It fills me with great purpose.
Being asked to write “Texting the Sun” has been a perfect example of this. In paying close attention to what 13- and 14-year-olds are writing and talking about, I hope to have accomplished a theatrical work that never preaches, never patronizes, but always begs us to take a closer look at what is happening around us.