Playback Theatre is a unique style of theater in which audience members are invited to tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted, or "played back" on the spot. A Playback conductor helps each willing audience member tell a story — casting actors as people, places, things, animals, feelings — whatever the story requires. Then, without consultation, the Playback actors play the story back using only cloth, boxes, music, and themselves. The results are often as unexpected as they are engaging. And, not surprisingly, one person's story is often the inspiration for the next.
No Playback performance is like any other and no one knows quite what to expect when they walk through the doors. That's the spontaneous nature of Playback, for actors and audience alike. Unlike comedy improv, Playback performances mirror the mood and tone of the stories that get told, whether comical or mundane, tragic or heroic. Playback performances are a theater experience unlike any other in the Capital District.
Playback as a form of theater was developed in 1975 in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York by Jonathan Fox, and is currently represented by hundreds of companies and individuals spread over more than 25 countries around the world. The Pentimento Playback group, which takes its name from a term describing the "bleed-through" effects produced on an artist's canvas when one image is painted over another, sprang out of a series of workshops sponsored by the Circle Theatre Players conducted by social worker Lori Barraco Smith. The group began public performances in 1992 in Averill Park. Since then, Pentimento Playback has performed in a wide variety of public and private venues. The current company is comprised of a mix of actors and storytellers whose day jobs range from state workers to educators, artists, health care and human service workers. Working together over a long period of time, the group has developed a certain sensibility to one another that allows them to pull off their brand of spontaneous theatre with entertaining results. Click here to Meet the Company.
Pentimento Playback Theatre holds public performances on the second Friday of every month (except January and July) at 8:00 p.m. We perform at Zuzu's Wonderful Life, located at 301 Hamilton Street, Albany NY, phone (518) 426-1269. Admission is $10.00 for adults, $8.00 for kids/students/seniors. To be added to our email list and receive regular discounts to monthly performances, just send an email to Shelby.
In addition to public performances, Pentimento Playback does private performances for a variety of occasions. Past venues include schools, hospices, correctional facilities, private parties and celebrations, retreats, conferences, community events and meetings---anywhere there are people with stories to tell. The Company also conducts workshops providing an inside look at the Playback style of storytelling for interested groups and organizations.
For more information about Pentimento Playback, including contract performances, please send an email to John or call him at (518) 766-2039.