The third in Pilgrim Theatre’s ambitious and successful series, "Crossing Borders III," will bring together an extraordinary array of performative voices for its Spring Theatre Festival at the Boston Center for the Arts.  Performance dates are March 14 through April 7.

The Festival’s title this year is "Voices." Each of the four productions involved in the Festival proposes a different and fascinating use of the voice.  In one, a courageous artist confronts his aphasia (vocal impairment due to stroke) and creates a performance; another challenges bureaucracy in search of the meaning buried under what is NOT spoken; cabaret performers traverse geographic and historical borderlines in song; and a calmly intelligent woman confronts a cockroach and discovers her passionately wild side.

Pilgrim Theatre, a Resident Theatre at Boston Center for the Arts, has won an NEAChallenge America award to bring the Deaf and Deaf-Blind communities to the festival this year. 

MARCH 14 - 17
"Crossing Borders III" kicks off with Gene-Gabriel Moore’s solo performance in "Struck Dumb," written by Jean-Claude van Itallie and Joseph Chaikin. Now in his 54th year in the acting profession, Moore is 72 and a stroke survivor. He has spent the last 14 years learning to live and work with aphasia. During that time he also founded and directed his own theatre company, Not Merely Players, an international professional theatre whose central focus is on people with disabilities and the performing arts. "Struck Dumb" is a co-production of Moore’s company and 7 Stages, the renowned theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, under the artistic direction of founder Del Hamilton, who directs Moore in this production.

Playwright van Itallie writes: "It has been said that one does not usually recover from aphasia, but that, by dint of hard work and time, one recovers with aphasia.  Intelligence is intact, but speaking takes a little more time, speaking is often very difficult.”

"Struck Dumb" was commissioned in the 1980s by the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and performed by the late director, actor and theatre visionary Joseph Chaikin, first at the Taper and then at American Place Theater in New York City. The character is drawn from Chaikin’s own life experiences managing a series of strokes and resulting aphasia.

Wendell Brock of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said of Moore’s work that “the production is an intimate act of faith between Moore and his audience…one of those rare soul-baring theatrical experiences where life and art are so interlaced that you almost forget where the actor leaves off and the character begins.”

Following the Sunday matinee performance, there will be a post-show reception and symposium looking at aphasia and the creation of the production with actor Gene-Gabriel Moore, playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie, Jerome Kaplan of the Boston Aphasia Society and members of Pilgrim Theatre. 

MARCH 21
Pilgrim Theatre’s "Kafka’s The Trial: An Extraordinary Rendition”  - a comedic solo performance create by Kermit Dunkelberg - will play March 21. Pilgrim Theatre’s original theatrical exploration intends an “extraordinary rendition” of Kafka’s tale of domestic surveillance and undisclosed charges. 

Someone must have been telling lies about Yusef K., because he's been arrested without having done anything wrong. Guilt and innocence become immaterial when a bureaucracy has the strength not only to create the laws, but to choreograph the trials and compose the verdicts.  Where is truth to be found when one is uncertain not only of one’s crime, but whether one has even committed a crime at all? 

MARCH 28 - 30
As March is Cabaret Month, the Festival will celebrate March 28 - 30 by presenting cabaret artist Belle Linda Halpern in "Songs on the Brink: A Cabaret."  Offering a pointed, funny and profound journey through the songs of Tin Pan Alley, classic cabaret and Broadway, she will be joined by Ron Roy at the piano as well as special guest Jeffrey Korn.  Halpern appeared last season as the decadent Josephine in Pilgrim’s "N (Bonaparte)."  Previously she, Ron Roy and Kermit Dunkelberg created Pilgrim Theatre’s long-running "Moon Over Dark Street.

APRIL 4
The final production of the festival arrives on April 4 with the NaCl Theatre (North American Cultural Laboratory) production of "The Passion According to G.H.," a solo performance adapted from the Brazilian novel by Clarice Lispector. Directed by Brad Krumholz, Tannis Kowalchuk portrays G.H., a woman whose normally uneventful life is turned upside down by the discovery of an enormous cockroach in her home. The whimsical and physical performance delves into personal and universal themes of existence, spirituality and awareness. A limit of 28 spectators are invited to witness the lively and intimate show-- a Kafka-esque transformation of the human psyche. 

Each Festival production will be ASL-interpreted by Joan Wattman. For ticket information, call 617-933-8600 or visit www.bostontheatrescene.com.

-- OnStage Boston