Virtual play-reading co-produced with TheatreWorks Silicon Valley

Pandora

Now until March 19, 2021

The Getty Villa Museum presents a FREE virtual play-reading of Pandora, the story of Pandora’s Box by acclaimed playwright Laurel Ollstein, co-produced with TheatreWorks Silicon Valley.

In Pandora, Ollstein retells the Pandora’s Box myth from a feminist perspective and asks: What if a woman was suddenly created and dropped into the middle of the world now? Someone with no preconceived notions of anything—like beauty, love, or violence? And what if the rest of humanity and the gods could suddenly see the world through those clear eyes? Pandora examines how hope and curiosity can change one woman’s fateful actions.

“The Getty Villa is a gorgeous jewel in Los Angeles, and I am honored to collaborate with them on this reading of Pandora,” says Ollstein. “This workshop presentation enabled me to continue digging into this play that is incredibly relevant to the present times. The Pandora’s Box myth may be well known, but in this retelling, women don’t take the blame anymore!”

The FREE pre-recorded play-reading launches February 26 at 5 p.m. PT, and will be available to view on the Getty’s website until March 19 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Free advanced registration is required to obtain a password for viewing. To register go to https://www.getty.edu/museum/programs/performances/pandora.html .

Pandora is part of the Getty Villa Museum’s theater program, presenting reinterpretations of Greek and Roman classical plays through play-readings, theater labs, premiere presentations and the annual outdoor theater production.

Laurel Ollstein (Playwright) is an award-winning writer, director and teacher. Ollstein’s plays include They Promised Her the Moon, seen onstage at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in March 2020, as well as Esther’s Moustache, Dorothy Parker is in the Bath, OPA! The Musical, Unhappily Married in Valencia, Anatomy of a Brain Injury, and her acclaimed one-woman-show Laughter, Hope, and a Sock in the Eye. She is a founding member of Tim Robbins’s The Actors’ Gang. She has written commissions for Virginia Avenue Project, New Jersey Repertory Company, Playwrights’ Arena, and Clark Library, and she has developed plays with The Actors’ Gang, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Barrow Group, Cornerstone Theater Company, Powers New Voices Festival at The Old Globe, The Road Theatre Company, Miranda Theatre Company, and Playwrights’ Center. Recognition of her works includes grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and California Arts Council, as well as Ovation, Garland, and LA Weekly Theater Awards.

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is the recipient of the 2019 Regional Theatre Tony Award. Led by Artistic Director Tim Bond and Executive Director Phil Santora, the Palo Alto-based theater company serves more than 100,000 patrons per year and has captured a national reputation for artistic innovation and integrity. Since its founding in 1970, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley has become one of the nation’s leaders in cultivating and producing new musicals and plays, developing and premiering 70 works by new and veteran artists and 173 Regional Premieres. The company’s New Works Festival and Writers’ Retreat programs attract authors and composers of national stature (Rajiv Joseph, Stephen Schwartz, Beth Henley, Paul Gordon, Marsha Norman, Henry Krieger, Duncan Sheik, Jules Feiffer, Joe DiPietro, and Andrew Lippa, among many others), providing an artistic home in which America’s theater artists can create new works. In addition, the company has developed scores of works which have gone on to regional, Off-Broadway, Broadway, and West End productions.

Getty is a leading global arts organization committed to the exhibition, conservation, and understanding of the world’s artistic and cultural heritage. Working collaboratively with partners around the globe, the Getty Foundation, Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute are all dedicated to the greater understanding of the relationships between the world’s many cultures. The Los Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs share art, knowledge, and resources online at Getty.edu and welcome the public for free at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa.

The J. Paul Getty Museum collects Greek and Roman antiquities, European paintings, drawings, manuscripts, sculpture and decorative arts to 1900, as well as photographs from around the world to the present day. The Museum’s mission is to display and interpret its collections, and present important loan exhibitions and publications for the enjoyment and education of visitors locally and internationally. This is supported by an active program of research, conservation, and public programs that seek to deepen our knowledge of and connection to works of art.