Eddie Yankow

 

CURRENT & RECENT PROJECTS

 

 

Here you can find images, videos, and summaries of past and present work, beginning with the most current or recently completed project.

Click here for Directing Resume 

Click here for Upcoming Projects

 

Goosebumps!

The Musical 

East Coast Premiere

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Based on the Novel by R.L. Stine

Book & Lyrics by John Maclay

Music & Lyrics by Danny Abosch

Assistant Directorship

Directed by Laura Gallagher Byrne

Produced by Dreamland Nantucket - October/November 2017

This exciting new musical for young actors adapts the children's novel The Phantom of The Auditorium by R.L. Stine as part of the beloved Goosebumps! series published by Scholastic. The story charts the adventures of middle school buddies Brooke and Zeke as they finally get the leads in the school play, but unfortunately for this duo, their dream show is cursed by a ghost. Zeke and Brooke, along with their cast mates and teachers must rise against the ghost to put on the scariest middle school play and reverse the curse! 

This production was with local Nantucket youth and adult talent as a part of Dreamland Nantucket's education program. Dreamland's education program teaches young actors about their craft through the vocational experience of rehearsing and performing in plays and musicals for young actors and audiences while also incorporating local and visiting artists, and local schools to create comprehensive educational experiences through theatre for the community at large. 

 
 
 

FIFTH PLANET

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by David Auburn

Produced by IC Players  — April 2016

Performed at Ithaca College's Ford Observatory

This production, "charts the friendship between two observatory workers as it waxes and wanes over the course of a year." (Dramatists Play Service). The relationship between the two characters, Veronica and Mike, is rich with things left unsaid thanks to Auburn's chillingly minimalistic writing, but nothing left unfelt. Their story is one of wrestling with out baggage as we search to find amiable, honest companionship in a hostile world.

This production was staged outside of Ithaca College's Ford Observatory in approximate real-time to the action of the play, with some abstractions of locations. This was done to enhance the reality of the world of the play and the realism of Auburn's text. However, for scenes meant to occur away from the observatory, the abstraction and surreality in their setting in these moments worked to enhance the text and overall telling of the story.  

(Photos by JRomeo Photography)

 

 

SEMELE (Opera)

by G.F. Handel

Assistant Directorship

Directed by R.B. Shlather"

Produced by Ithaca college MainStage in the Hoerner Theatre — February/March 2016

"THE ITHACA COLLEGE SCHOOL OF MUSIC AND DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE ARTS WILL TEAM UP TO PRESENT HANDEL’S OPERA “SEMELE,” A CLASSIC STORY OF JEALOUSY AND FATAL ATTRACTION FROM ROMAN MYTHOLOGY." - SUSAN MONAGAN, ITHACA COLLEGE THEATRE ARTS DEPT.

This opera exemplified the raw emotional desires of both the mortal and immortal characters in the Roman mythology pantheon, while simultaneously turning the world of the play into a surrealist universe of abstract shapes and vibrant color in conjunction and juxtaposition to the brilliantly composed score. This world hyperbolized all ideas of gender, sexuality, desire, physics and metaphysics in concert with high octane emotionality within the music. 

HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=TXRK4EWIWNA

 

 

RED 

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By John Logan

Produced by IC Players — May 2015

Performed at Ithaca College's Handwerker Gallery

This historical-fiction piece tells the story of legendary abstract expressionist, Mark Rothko's work on the murals for the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram's Building in New York— the biggest commission in art history. He works intensely alongside his young assistant, Ken, who bravely challenges his mentor. Through this, Rothko comes to realize his greatest job is also his undoing as Ken shows him of the rise of the new guard of artists, as Rothko's generation fades. The play is a portrait of the power of art, growing up, and covertly: fathers and sons. 

This production was staged in Ithaca College's Handwerker Gallery in accordance to Rothko's aspiration of his murals: to have the world of the piece envelope the viewer, from the focal points to the peripheries—an inescapable and overwhelming universe dominated by the piece. The show was staged amidst the Ithaca College Art Dept. Senior Showcase, which complemented a line used both by Rothko and Ken: "the child must banish the father, Respect him, but kill him."

(Photos by Madi Van Dam)

 

RECENT TRAGIC EVENTS 

By Craig Wright 

Produced by the NorthField Mount Hermon Theatre Deptartment — April 2013

performed in the David Rowland Studio Theatre 

This plays tells the story of a blind date between Waverly, a young woman in advertising and Andrew, a airport bookstore manager...on September 12th, 2001. The date gets shifted to a night in with pizza because Waverly has not yet heard from her twin sister who lives in New York.  As they both wait in Waverly's apartment for her sister's phone call, the two realize they've been connected by a series of extraordinary coincidences—though not all of them are positive.  The date plunges into hilarity and surreality by visits from Ron, Waverly's good-nautred, stoned, musician neighbor and his "lady-friend" Nancy, and Waverly's great-aunt, author Joyce Carol Oates—portrayed by a sock puppet. Through audience participation and a coin toss, the play taunts the audience with the question of fate versus free will, and the fluidity and illusory power the individual has. 

Recent Tragic Events, was a senior directing project at Northfield Mount Hermon. 

Performance Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6zEFGy2arU

(Photos by Glenn Minshall, NMH Flickr)

 

SAVAGE/LOVE

By Sam Shepherd & Joseph Chaiken

Produced by the Northfield Mount Hermon Theatre Deptartment —  December 2012

Performed at the Lois Chilles Theatre 

This brilliant collection of poetry for the stage tells the stories of how we fall in and out of love. The poems universally tell stories of romance and heartbreak in both the lucidity and fervor appropriate for the complexities of love. 

To turn universality in to specificity in keeping with directing based upon location, this staged reading of Savage/Love was set on the campus where the play was produced, with the stage set up like a classroom; and the scripts were hidden inside textbooks every student who saw the show would recognize.

(Photos by Glenn Minshall, NMH Flickr)

Performance Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mysmxNKoG2U