By Bill Schlotter

Working with some of the most prominent theater artists in the nation, students taking UCSB’s three-week Summer Theater Lab will display their talents in nine performances between Friday, July 22, and July 29—all free and open to the public.

Ranging from “Stanley,” OBIE award-winner Lisa D’Amour’s one-person adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” to new plays, music, and dance, the performances will showcase a spectrum of creative collaboration. (See the Calendar for specific times and places.)

Naomi Iizuka, a nationally recognized playwright and a professor of dramatic art at UCSB, founded the Summer Theater Lab in 2004. Her vision was of a hands-on experience where students and leading theater artists work together to create new theater pieces.

“In theater, an apprentice-mentor kind of learning takes place,” says Iizuka. “Students need to work very closely with master theater artists. If you want to be a playwright or an actor, you can’t just read or see a play. You have to be in the middle of that collaborative process of creating a play.

“What is so exciting and unique about the UCSB Summer Theater Lab,” she adds, “is that students actually get to work closely with these remarkable theater artists at an early stage of the creative process.”

Iizuka, who is also director of the UCSB Playwriting Program, heads the list of acclaimed artists teaching at this year’s Summer Theater Lab. One of the most prolific playwrights of her generation, Iizuka has had her work produced widely across the United States. Among her plays are “At the Vanishing Point” and “36 Views.”

When Iizuka began teaching at UCSB, she wanted to create the Summer Theater Lab to bring her students together with the country’s most talented theater artists.

“The goal is to begin new collaborations across disciplines as well as to mentor a new generation of theater artists,” she says. Some of this year’s theater lab professionals include: Luis Alfaro, playwright and solo performer; Eve Beglarian, cutting-edge, New York-based composer; Ricardo A. Bracho, playwright and artist in residence at UCSB’s Center for Chicano Studies; Campo Santo, a San Francisco-based theater ensemble; Lisa D’Amour, playwright and performance artist; Jonathan Moscone, artistic director of the California Shakespeare Theater; Johanna Meyer, experimental choreographer; Stephanie Nugent, choreographer and assistant professor of dance at UCSB; and Lisa Portes, who currently runs the MFA program in directing at DePaul University in Chicago.