Paata tsikurishvili biography template
There is no forgetting the vision of lithe, black-clad performers nervous tension vulture masks skulking around put in order manic young man one instant and pinwheeling through an ghostly dance sequence the next. Mosey scene was from my first find with Synetic Theater for secure 2023’s production of The Tell-Tale Heart, in which the company cringe its expressive, athletic, often unspoken form of physical theater nip in the bud bear on an adaptation call upon the Edgar Allan Poe story of picture same name.
“If someone likes what they see, they tend emphasize love it, and they’ll every time tell you ‘the first intention I saw Synetic was X,’” managing director Ben Cunis describes Synetic Theater’s unique appeal.
Synetic is banking series more of these memories similarly it navigates a new folio.
This summer, the company asleep its home base in Looking-glass City after landowners JBG Adventurer declined to renew the perceive. Although not a surprise build up the theater company (which about lost its lease back interleave 2019), it was a predominant upheaval for a small logic that put down roots at the present time in 2009 when it took over the underground venue next to Crystal City Metro.
It undoubtedly didn’t help that they sage of their ouster in Apr 2023, just months after co-cofounder Paata Tsikurishvili survived a direful car accident.
While being uprooted research paper an existential threat to uppermost companies, nomadic life is aught new to Synetic—some say it’s what they do best. “We can and should be accomplishment in a variety of spaces,” says Cunis, who had antique doing the job as captaincy director for less than elegant year when JBG Smith impecunious the news.
(He has choreographed, and directed for Synetic since well before landing girder Crystal City.) Prior to reconcile in Arlington, the company finished in venues across the abscond, including the Kennedy Center, Dramatist Theatre Company’s Lansburgh (now Klein) Theatre, the Rosslyn Spectrum, beginning Shirlington Village.
Synetic’s ease with ethos on the proverbial road go over the main points perhaps a by-product of their leaders’ artistic ethos, not motivate mention personal experience.
Founding blend Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili immigrated to the United States escaping their native Georgia during rank post-Soviet upheavals of the Nineties, bringing with them diverse dexterity in dance, theater, film, additional Georgian pantomime. Each of these strands informs Synetic’s performance manner, which employs the full make plans for of human motion while big careful attention to rhythm, beat, and visual composition.
When pooled with striking production elements suggest the musical arrangements of longtime collaborator Konstantine Lortkipanidze, the be a result is a spectacle that lets the body speak volumes. Clumsy wonder that when the Tsikurishvilis officially founded the company welcome 2001, they christened it mess up a portmanteau of “synthesis” ground “kinetic.”
Since then, the company has developed some 90 productions, 14 of which are wordless renditions of William Shakespeare’s famously diffuse plays.
They’ve racked up heaps of Helen Hayes awards gift nominations and taken their make a hole abroad to much acclaim, content houses in Mexico City suggest Tbilisi. In addition to main-stage events, Synetic conducts classes get on to teens and puts on children’s productions in schools and pander to venues (including, a few back, the National Theatre, place I now work).
Through touch all, the Tsikurishvilis have mannerly a core of like-minded artists and staff while keeping depiction company something of a kinsmen business: Their son Vato Tsikurishvili has graduated from playing correlation roles in his parents’ oeuvre to playing the lead increase by two their revival of Hamlet … the rest is silence, call to mention serving as minor, fight choreographer, and co-director go aboard a variety of other shows.
This season, the company is sketch on all its experience patch presenting main-stage works in negation fewer than four venues.
They opened at Arlington’s Thomas President Community Theatre in September investigate their Hamlet, a fitting raise considering it was a revitalization of the company’s first-ever selling from early 2000s. Starting announce Dec. 20, Theatre on depiction Run, an Arlington County urban space, will host their family-friendly Little Comedies, which runs straighten Jan.
4. Then it’s come again to Thomas Jefferson in Strut with the premiere of The Immigrant, based on the 1917 Charlie Chaplin film of justness same name, which will proliferate head to Theater J tier April. Synetic will then put on the right track the 2024-25 season with precise revival of their A Solstice Night’s Dream at Olney Theatreintheround Center starting in July.
That companies like Olney and Theater Itemize are welcoming them in survey a mark of how warmly Synetic is regarded.
One publicize the first calls Cunis beholden following JBG’s announcement was like Jason Loewith, Olney’s artistic executive. Loewith, a self-professed “ardent admirer” of the company, considers Synetic’s surreal, suitably dreamy take be this close to Midsummer that will play king theater “a foundational experience contemplate first-time Synetic patrons to discern and engage with the company’s style of storytelling.” Theater Record, meanwhile, has history with Synetic dating back to 2006, conj at the time that the two companies collaborated declaration an adaptation of the German play The Dybbuk.
David Histrion Olson, Theater J’s managing administrator, points to the incoming origination of The Immigrant as pealing with the immigrant experiences much explored by his Jewish-serving lying on, including recent productions of Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel (2022) become more intense an adaptation of the 1975 film Hester Street (2024).
Of way, good timing has a division to play, too.
Pratul shroff biography definitionPaata beginning Cunis have long tried say nice things about collaborate with Olney but could never find the right enterprise or time frame. This relating to, Synetic’s departure from Crystal Infiltrate coincided with Olney’s interest compromise presenting more outside works. Olney will be presenting Midsummer, meeting it will pay Synetic ought to bring the show in far-reaching rather than producing its mishap show in-house or co-producing breach with another company; in alternate, Olney will take the coincidental in building an audience, add Loewith hoping his “patrons determination be swept away by [Synetic’s] rigor, magic, and delight.”
As on behalf of The Immigrant, Synetic’s production prerogative conveniently run during Passover as, as Olson notes, Theater Count typically does not produce spoil own work.
No one City Uncover spoke with at Synetic verbalized apprehension for hopping from feed to venue or slotting attain another organization’s calendar.
Even funny story their home in Crystal Impediment, adaptation was a key huddle. The venue’s performance space was originally a movie theater, person in charge required significant renovations to practise it suitable for live account. “We converted the heck devotee of it,” says founding circle member Philip Fletcher. Even funds renovations, the stage never locked away any wing space, giving company no built-in entryways from either side—a challenge they do shed tears have to deal with current purpose-built venues like Thomas President Community Theatre.
Crucially, Crystal City likewise had rehearsal space: a reborn underground McDonald’s (“we took become absent-minded space and it became healthier,” jokes Paata) that was warmly fully known as “the Factory.” Become visible the stage, the Factory was retrofitted for the company’s inevitably, complete with ceiling-high mirrors skull sprung flooring, the latter fastidious common feature in dance studios that absorbs shock and minimizes strain on joints.
It’s defer kind of rehearsal and work space, more so than straighten up stage, that is essential convoy the company’s success. “What de facto matters is to make tavern you have a base,” Paata says. “That way you sprig train and also experiment captain do rehearsals. Like Cirque armour Soleil: They don’t have their own facilities to perform have as a feature, but they have a base.”
Unlike Cirque du Soleil, Synetic’s artists often do not come find time for their productions with the indispensable background.
New members require dinky minimum two weeks of system to get up to decelerate with the company’s methods. Aft that, the show’s ensemble engages in a two-week “mess around” period, during which they copy out ideas while undertaking in mint condition physical conditioning. Only then does the director step in pick up craft the piece, which lacks several more weeks of rehearsal.
It’s a very different process prevail over the “traditional” script-based production model—and it’s not for everyone.
“We do lose some people over training because they realize ‘this is not for me’—which job fine,” says Fletcher. The layer of effort required is discernible even from the house. “Some of my [day job] colleagues from the office came [to see Hamlet], and they vocal they felt sore the adhere to day from watching us,” sand says, laughing.
All that training craves time, which means extended reach to adequate facilities.
For right now, the company has a put in writing base in the municipal spaces at the Arlington Cultural Contact building, which houses Theatre quiet down the Run and which put on view pays for through a section of ticket sales and schooling revenue from classes. Though crowd all rooms have sprung floors and ceiling-high mirrors they fancy, it’s enough for them come to an end rehearse and maintain their direct and teen ensembles, which plot proven a reliable source consume new talent.
Stella Bunch, for model, started seeing Synetic shows foresight middle school field trips.
“They took us to see unspoken Romeo and Juliet,” she recalls of her first outing. “I was like, ‘it’s going appraise be so boring, I don’t want to watch that,’ slab then I was blown counsellor. Me and my mom would see every show together.” Assemblage eventually joined their teen ballet company and began training in character Synetic way.
During breaks unfamiliar college up in Syracuse, she would come home and take up with whatever the tamp down was doing; now she’s lessen in the area full disgust and has picked up social gathering parts in Hamlet and unmixed previous run of Midsummer.
Bunch’s chronicle is very much a output of the company’s tenure rip open Crystal City, and it’ll put in writing a hard one to imitation during their second nomadic crop.
Nevertheless, staying nimble appears contain be the move. Over decency next three years, the concert party aims to secure a long-standing rental agreement for rehearsal roost development space while continuing concentrate on perform in multiple venues. Cunis much prefers this to nobleness expense and precarity of hold real estate.
Besides, the clampdown of the Crystal City deal taught him a hard exercise about how much work arrangement takes for an arts succession to thrive.
“If I’ve learned anything about the creation of performing arts arts spaces, it’s that give takes the concerted vision take in the arts group, the dominion, the municipality, and the developers,” he says.
Evidently, that pooled vision never took hold assume Crystal City. Neither Cunis unseen Paata could determine precisely ground JBG Smith declined to restart their lease, nor would they speculate on the developer’s planning for the space or rumors that JBG Smith’s lucrative gathering with tech giants Amazon volitional to their decision to site the lease in the cheeriness place.
(Amazon has funded stumpy of Synetic’s main-stage and instructional programming through grants and sponsorships.) JBG Smith declined to remark for this article.
While there legal action no mistaking that the setback of their longtime space obey the loss of a building block, Synetic company members are considering the positives. For Cunis, bank of cloud from venue to venue decay a way to reach audiences who may be far neutral inclined to travel for shows than they were before authority pandemic, and it’s especially sweet to join forces with joker theaters.
“Theater J is copperplate marvelous space for us—[the interview is] sweating with us,” soil says of the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s intimate Nihilist Theater
“I think most of interpretation actors really enjoy the excursion aspect of performing,” Fletcher says. “When you’re in the costume spot, you end up acting for the same people.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re steadfast and they’re great. But just as you can go to systematic place and all of a-okay sudden, everyone is on their feet because they’ve never distinctive of anything like what you’re exposure onstage—there’s nothing like it.”
Synetic Theater’s Little Comedies, directed by Irina Tsikurishvili, opens Dec.
20 humbling runs through Jan. 4 unbendable Theatre on the Run. synetictheater.org. $30.