(via Michelle Tabnick PR)

 La MaMa presents 

in association with Overtone Industries 

ICELAND

a re-Creation Myth

an interdisciplinary opera theater work by O-Lan Jones and Emmett Tinley

Executive Producer of the Iceland Project, Michael Harris 

March 24 – April 2, 2023

(Photo credit: Stacia French; Performers (L to R) Angela Yam as The BIRD & Nancy McArthur as Vala)

(via David Gibbs, DARR Publicity, www.DarrPublicity.com)

Molière in the Park, in partnership with Prospect Park Alliance and LeFrak Center at Lakeside, will present the English language world premiere of Molière’s TARTUFFE OR THE HYPOCRITE, reconstructed by Georges Forestier, translated by Maya Slater, and directed by MIP’s Founding Artistic Director Lucie Tiberghien.

The show runs May 6 – 27 (opens May 11) at Prospect Park’s LeFrak Center in Brooklyn – enter at 171 East Drive between Ocean Avenue & Lincoln Road. Tickets are free.

For more info visit https://www.moliereinthepark.org

Presenting a never seen before “Tartuffe” seems unimaginable. Yet, that’s what audiences will get a chance to see in Prospect Park this May when Molière in the Park stages the English language world premiere of Molière’s original “Tartuffe,” written in 1664, and immediately banned by the King of France.

Lost to history, this original play was reconstructed by Georges Forestier, a renowned French historian, through a process of historical genetics, and premiered at La Comédie Française in Paris in 2022. Now, it will be presented in English for the first time ever on the Molière in the Park stage. Join MIP for a more confrontational but just as hilarious TARTUFFE OR THE HYPOCRITE, censored and lost because it dared to expose the willful denialism and folly of extreme religiosity.

Photo: Moliere in the Park co-founders Garth Belcon & Lucie Tiberghien – photo by Russ Rowland

Lucie Tiberghien states, “I never thought I’d be able to say Molière in the Park is presenting a new play by Molière. Yet this is what we’re doing, at a time when the two factors that led to the banning and disappearance of the original script have re-emerged in the U.S. with furious energy: censorship, and willful denialism. Theater for all, as free entertainment, as a catalyst for empathy in our communities and as a conduit for political and social discourse is what we set out to offer when founding Molière in the Park. This English language world premiere, penned 359 years ago, gives us a distinct and immediate chance at providing all 3; an exciting AND terrifying prospect because… how exactly have we evolved in those 359 years?”

Cast to be announced at a later date.

(From RTE, 3/21; Photo: Sean O’Casey with Irish actress Siobhan McKenna in March 1953.)

Druid Theatre has announced plans to stage three landmark works by Seán O’Casey later this year.

The Galway-based company will present ‘Druid O’Casey’, featuring the trilogy of The Plough and the Stars, The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock.

The plays cover the period from the 1916 Rising, through to the Civil War, detailing a key period in the country’s history, as seen through the eyes of characters and families living through those times.

The production will have its premiere as part of this year’s Galway International Arts Festival, running for the entire duration of the two week event at the Town Hall Theatre.

Druid says the undertaking will allow audiences to experience O’Casey’s work like never before, with the three plays performed together in one day.

A number of single-play performances will also be staged.

The production will be directed by Garry Hynes and will feature a cast of 18 actors.

Members of the Druid ensemble will be joined by actors including Bosco Hogan, Hilda Fay and Zara Devlin.

After the July premiere in Galway, the plays will tour to the Lyric Theatre in Belfast and the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

Ms Hynes said it had been a long held ambition of hers to combine the three O’Casey works into one theatrical saga.

(Read more)

(Michael Paulson’s article appeared in The New York Times, 3/16/2023; via Pam Green; Photo: Stephen Sondheim’s long-in-the-works Luis Buñuel musical will be staged in September at the Shed.Credit…Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times.)

His long-gestating final show, now titled “Here We Are,” is coming to the Shed; it is inspired by two Luis Buñuel films.

Stephen Sondheim’s long-in-the-works Luis Buñuel musical, which he described as unfinished just days before his death, will be staged in New York this fall, giving audiences the chance to see the final show by one of the most important artists in musical theater history.

The musical, now titled “Here We Are,” is inspired by two Buñuel films, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel.” Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics; the book is by the playwright David Ives (“Venus in Fur”), and Joe Mantello (“Wicked”) will direct.

The show, scheduled to begin performances in September, will be a commercial Off Broadway venture, produced by Tom Kirdahy (“Hadestown”) in a 500-seat theater at the Shed, a multidisciplinary arts venue in Hudson Yards. The Shed, a nonprofit, is being described as a co-presenter.

It is not entirely clear when Sondheim began working on the show, but he first discussed it publicly in 2014, and there were delays and setbacks in the years following. He talked about it occasionally during public appearances; for a time it was called “Buñuel,” and then “Square One”; it was backed at various points by the commercial producer Scott Rudin and by the nonprofit Public Theater. And there were workshops over the years, including one in 2016, and one in 2021 featuring Nathan Lane and Bernadette Peters; casting for the production at the Shed has not been announced, but there are no indications that Lane and Peters have remained with the project.

In an interview days before his death in late 2021, Sondheim described it this way: “I don’t know if I should give the so-called plot away, but the first act is a group of people trying to find a place to have dinner, and they run into all kinds of strange and surreal things, and in the second act, they find a place to have dinner, but they can’t get out.”

Sondheim described the show as incomplete, as did some of his collaborators in the days following his death. It is not clear what state it was in when he died, and what kind of work has been done to it since.

(Read more)

(Dalya Alberge’s article appeared in the Guardian, 3/18; via Pam Green.)

The acclaimed actor – who is to receive a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Olivier Awards – says the demise of repertory theatre is putting paid to the vocal prowess

The demise of repertory theatre, where young actors once learned their craft in a resident company, has taken its toll on vocal technique with words “becoming less important” in live performance, according to one of the nation’s most acclaimed stars of stage and screen.

Sir Derek Jacobi told the Observer that “the use of voice, the magic of voice, has all but disappeared [in the theatre]”.

He called for actors and directors “to bring back a sense of vocal expertise, to make the words more important than the sight”. He said: “One of the magic things in the theatre – the uniqueness of the theatre – is the sound. The voice that can fill an auditorium from the front row to the back of the gods is thrilling.”

He added: “It’s the use of voice to express feeling and to lift the words off the page and inhabit them and give them a soul and a sense of feeling and a life.”

Jacobi, who honed his craft with the Birmingham Rep, is about to receive the lifetime achievement award at this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s most prestigious stage honours.

Organised by the Society of London Theatre, the ceremony takes place on 2 April at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

It pays tribute to Jacobi’s “remarkable” 60-year career on stage and screen, with acclaimed performances in Shakespeare, both in film and theatre, on the small screen – including I, Claudius and Last Tango in Halifax – and in films such as The King’s Speech.

Jacobi won Olivier Awards for Cyrano de Bergerac and Twelfth Night, and in 1994 was awarded a knighthood for his services to theatre.

He was a founding member of the Royal National Theatre, enlisted by Laurence Olivier himself.

People think they can enter the world of acting by the back door … without putting in the basic groundwork

“He saw me at the Birmingham Rep. The first job he gave me was playing Laertes to Peter O’Toole’s Hamlet, and I stayed with him for the next seven years,” Jacobi said.

He joked that Olivier could also be “a bugger”, even making him cry in one rehearsal. “I was taking over from Albert Finney, a big star. Olivier came to watch the rehearsal. and was vitriolic to me. He hated what he saw and told me so. I was no Albert Finney and I needed to be told that.”

Asked whether Olivier gave constructive criticism, he recalled: “At the time, I thought no. I went away and cried. But of course it was. He wouldn’t destroy just for the sake of destroying. He was better than that. If he destroyed, he created at the same time.”

Of his three years with the Birmingham Rep, he recalled: “We [performed] a new play every four weeks. When I first went, I was absolutely the complete amateur. I was surrounded by very good professional actors and it was a great learning experience.”

(Read more)

(Jessica Murray’s article appeared in the Guardian, 3/8; Photo: Patsy Browne-Hope and Frank Hickman in rehearsals for The Lotus Eaters, the first episode of NT Public Acts’ new five-part Odyssey, at Restoke in Stoke-on-Trent. Photograph: Jenny Harper.)

In episodes developed with communities around England, the production aims to tell ‘a story of resilience and healing and hope’

In his opening monologue for The Lotus Eaters, the first episode of the National Theatre’s forthcoming multi-location production of The Odyssey, actor Tony Dudley enthuses about a statue of Perseus in Trentham Gardens on the fringes of Stoke-on-Trent. It’s one of many ways the production is rooted in the place it was created, in order to reimagine the Greek epic for audiences across England.

“We love doing impossible things, and we wanted to do something we’ve never attempted before,” said Emily Lim, director of Public Acts, the National Theatre’s community arts programme, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary with The Odyssey, presented in five episodes. “The idea of telling one story across the whole country, with lots of different communities living in lots of different places, but ultimately coming together through shared purpose and shared imagination, felt really exciting.”

Dudley, 37, a local amateur actor who has long held a passion for Greek mythology, is a narrator for the play, which sees the Lotus Eaters’ island replaced by a nightclub. “It’s remixing the Odyssey for modern culture,” said Dudley. “It’s about being brave and saying ‘Let’s make something of this, and put a spin on it for the modern age.’” He is part of arts organisation Restoke, one of a number of partner groups the National Theatre has collaborated with on the project

After the performances in Stoke-on-Trent, the story continues in Doncaster, Trowbridge and Sunderland, with each community taking on a different episode of the tale, before performers from all groups unite at the National Theatre in London for the final instalment.

“If you’d have told my 18-year-old self one day you’re going to be on the stage at the National, I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Stoke resident and former theatre technician Charis Jones, 50, who plays part of Odysseus’s crew. “It’s been a wonderful experience, and our episode feels very much ours, with all our stories. With a different cast it would be a completely different show.”

(Read more)