Artist-in-Residence Workshop with Playwright Alexander Utz

Utz will present a staged reading of his new play, which he’s currently developing, called Gut. It is about the experiments conducted by William Beaumont on Alexis St. Martin, beginning on Mackinac Island and continuing until their time together came to an end. The presentation will include a brief introduction on how the play came to be, including how specific places in the story like Mackinac came to influence the telling of the story itself. Then the presentation will move on to a staged reading of the play, which will be performed outdoors (most likely in Marquette Park). Because a lot of the play deals with travel, the outdoors, and the idea of exploring frontiers in that time period, it should be very interesting to perform it outdoors, and something very powerful about enacting these historical events in one of the places they actually took place. After the reading, Utz will lead a discussion with the audience about the themes explored in the play, the process of writing it, and the potential for more development going forward.

This workshop will begin at the Station 256 Conference Room, located above the Mackinac Island State Park Visitor’s Center. This is a free event. #thisismackinac