la jolla playhouse announces four productions for scintillating 2014
Transcription
la jolla playhouse announces four productions for scintillating 2014
2910 La Jolla Village Drive La Jolla, CA 92037 LaJollaPlayhouse.org LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE ANNOUNCES FOUR PRODUCTIONS FOR SCINTILLATING 2014/2015 SEASON, FEATURING MULTIPLE TONY AWARD® WINNERS PAGE TO STAGE MUSICAL: CHASING THE SONG BY MEMPHIS CREATIVE TEAM WORLD PREMIERE PLAY AND TWO NEW PRODUCTIONS OF CLASSICS: KINGDOM CITY, THE BALD SOPRANO AND BD WONG IN THE ORPHAN OF ZHAO La Jolla, CA — La Jolla Playhouse announces four shows for its 2014/2015 season, boasting numerous Tony Award-winning playwrights, directors and actors. The season kicks off with a Page To Stage workshop production of Chasing the Song, a jubilant new musical by the team behind the Tony Award-winning musical Memphis, featuring book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro, music and lyrics by David Bryan and directed by Playhouse Artistic Director Christopher Ashley. The season also features a world-premiere play and two adaptations of classic texts: The Orphan of Zhao, in a new adaptation by James Fenton, directed by Carey Perloff, co-produced with American Conservatory Theatre and featuring Tony-winning actor BD Wong (Playhouse’s Herringbone, TV’s Law & Order: SVU); the world premiere of Kingdom City by Sheri Wilner, helmed by Pam MacKinnon, 2013 Tony Award-winning director of Broadway’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and a bold new production of Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, directed by Gabor Tompa, head of Directing, UC San Diego’s Department of Theatre and Dance. “La Jolla Playhouse is dedicated to serving as a home for artists, and never has that been more evident than with this upcoming season,” said Ashley. “I’m so pleased to be working again with Playhouse favorites and frequent collaborators Joe DiPietro and David Bryan on their latest project and to be able to continue the show’s developmental journey that began last year during our inaugural DNA New Work Series. Ashley continued, “We also welcome to the Playhouse several internationally-acclaimed, awardwinning directors and playwrights – not to mention our dear friend BD Wong – giving these exceptional artists a chance to hone their work in an environment of support that only the Playhouse can provide.” Chasing the Song The creators of the Tony Award-winning musical Memphis follow the evolving American music scene into the early 1960s in this rock ‘n’ roll-inspired new musical. Elegant Edie’s team of hitmakers is upended by the arrival of the newest aspiring songwriter — Edie’s daughter Jinny. As Jinny strives to earn her place in the male-dominated world of songwriting, American rock ‘n’ roll finds itself under siege from the incoming British Invasion. The Orphan of Zhao BD Wong returns to the Playhouse in a luminous reinvention of a classic Chinese legend. In the aftermath of a violent coup, an epic story of self-sacrifice and revenge plays out as a young orphan discovers the shattering truth behind his origins. Often described as the Chinese Hamlet, this gripping tale was the first Chinese play to be translated in the West and has inspired countless operas, plays and movies. Kingdom City When displaced New York director Miriam finds herself in Kingdom City, Missouri, she reluctantly agrees to direct a high school production of The Crucible. As the students fall deeper into their roles, the play unlocks their own unspoken desires, creating a firestorm in this small, predominantly Christian town. Pam MacKinnon, 2013 Tony Award winner for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, helms this comic and smart world premiere in which a 20th Century classic play inspires a 21st Century showdown. The Bald Soprano Acclaimed Romanian director and head of Directing at UC San Diego’s Department of Theatre and Dance Gabor Tompa directs this modern masterpiece by the “Shakespeare of the Absurd.” Ionesco’s seminal “anti-play” is as fierce and funny as it was during its initial premiere nearly 70 years ago. Tompa brings his trademark physical inventiveness and audacious theatricality to this farcical satire of the middle class. Tickets to the 2014/2015 season are available only through a subscription purchase by calling the box office at (858) 550-1010 or online at LaJollaPlayhouse.org. Additional subscription shows will be announced shortly. The nationally-acclaimed, Tony Award-winning La Jolla Playhouse is known for its tradition of creating the most exciting and adventurous new work in regional theatre. The Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Mel Ferrer, and is considered one of the most well-respected not-for-profit theatres in the country. Numerous Playhouse productions have moved to Broadway, including the currently running, multiple Tony Award-winning hit Jersey Boys, as well as Big River, The Who’s Tommy, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Walk in the Woods, Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays, the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Farnsworth Invention, 33 Variations, Peter and the Starcatcher, Bonnie & Clyde, Chaplin and Hands on a Hardbody. Located on the UC San Diego campus, La Jolla Playhouse is made up of three primary performance spaces: the Mandell Weiss Theatre, the Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre and the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for La Jolla Playhouse, a state-of-the-art theatre complex which features the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre. La Jolla Playhouse is led by Artistic Director Christopher Ashley and Managing Director Michael S. Rosenberg. Biographies Christopher Ashley (Director, Chasing The Song) has served as Artistic Director at La Jolla Playhouse since October, 2007. During his tenure, he helmed the world premieres of Claudia Shear’s Restoration and Arthur Kopit and Anton Dudley’s A Dram of Drummhicit, as well as His Girl Friday, Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the acclaimed musicals Xanadu and Memphis, which went on to Broadway, winning four 2010 Tony Awards including Best Musical. In addition, he spearheaded the Playhouse’s acclaimed Without Walls site-specific theatre series, the Resident Theatre program and oversaw the world premieres of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Hands on a Hardbody, Milk Like Sugar, Little Miss Sunshine, Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin, Surf Report, Bonnie & Clyde, Doug Wright’s adaptation of Creditors, the Page To Stage workshop of Charlayne Woodard’s The Night Watcher, and the West Coast premiere of 33 Variations. Prior to joining the Playhouse, Mr. Ashley directed the Broadway productions of Xanadu (Drama Desk nomination), All Shook Up and The Rocky Horror Show (Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations), as well as the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration productions of Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along. Other New York credits include: Leap of Faith, Blown Sideways Through Life, Jeffrey (Lucille Lortel and Obie Awards), The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Valhalla, Regrets Only, Wonder of the World, Bunny Bunny, Communicating Doors, The Night Hank Williams Died, Fires in the Mirror (Lucille Lortel Award), among others. He also directed the feature film Jeffrey and the American Playhouse production of Blown Sideways Through Life for PBS. Mr. Ashley is the recipient of the Princess Grace Award, the Drama League Director Fellowship and an NEA/TCG Director Fellowship. David Bryan (Composer/Lyricist, Chasing the Song) is a Tony-Award winning composer and lyricist. He won three 2010 Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Orchestrations and Best Musical for the hit Broadway musical Memphis, as well as the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical. He is a Grammy® Award-winning keyboard player and founding member of Bon Jovi. Over the past 30 years the band has sold more than 150 million records and toured the world, playing to millions of people. Their recent Because We Can tour was the #1 grossing tour in the world. He and Joe DiPietro have also co-written the award-winning musical The Toxic Avenger. Mr. Bryan is also a National Spokesperson for VH1's Save The Music Program. For more information please visit www.davidbryan.com. Joe DiPietro (Book Writer/Lyricist, Chasing the Song) is a Tony-Award winning playwright and lyricist. He won two Tony Awards for co-writing Memphis, which also received the 2010 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical. He was nominated for a Tony Award and won a Drama Desk Award for Nice Work If You Can Get It starring Matthew Broderick. His other plays and musicals include I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (the longest-running musical revue in Off-Broadway history); The Toxic Avenger and The Thing About Men (both winners of the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical); the much-produced comedy Over the River and Through The Woods; The Art of Murder (Edgar Award winner for Best Mystery Play); and the Broadway musical All Shook Up. His latest play, Clever Little Lies, is debuting at George Street Playhouse starring Marlo Thomas. His work has received thousands of productions across the country and around the world. James Fenton (Adapter, The Orphan of Zhao) was educated at the Durham Choristers’ School, Repton and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry. He has worked as a political and literary journalist on The New Statesman, was a freelance reporter in IndoChina, spent a year in Germany working for The Guardian, was theatre critic for The Sunday Times for five years, chief book reviewer for The Times from 1984 to 1986, South East Asian correspondent for The Independent from 1986 to 1988 and a columnist for them until 1995. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. Fenton was Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1994 to 1999. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983. He won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry and was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 2007. Recent work includes a new selection of poems, Yellow Tulips. It contains some of the most memorable lyric verse of the past decades, from the formal skill that marked his debut, Terminal Moraine, to the dramatic and political monologues of The Memory of War and Children in Exile, through to the unforgettable love poems of Out of Danger. He edited the New Faber Book of Love Poems in 2006. Further publications include School of Genius: A History of the Royal Academy of Arts, A Garden of a Hundred Packets of Seeds, Samuel T Coleridge Selected Poems, William Blake Selected Poems, his reportage as a war correspondent All the Wrong Places: Adrift in the Politics of South-East Asia, and the collection of essays The Strength of Poetry. Plays and libretti include: The Orphan of Zhao and Tamar’s Revenge (RSC), Pictures from an Exhibition (Young Vic), The Tsunami Song Cycle (BBC), Rigoletto (ENO) and Haroun and the Sea of Stories (New York City Opera). Eugène Ionesco (Playwright, The Bald Soprano) (1909 – 1994) was born in Slatina, Romania to a Romanian father and French mother and spent most of his childhood in France. He started his career as a noted essayist and critic, only beginning writing plays in 1948 with The Bald Soprano, after trying to learn English using the Assimil method and realizing how banal, uncommunicative and absurd the phrases he was learning were. The play was first performed in 1950 and heralded a new direction in theatre. Other plays followed, most notably, by The Lesson in 1951, Rhinoceros in 1959, and Exit the King in 1962. Pam MacKinnon (Director, Kingdom City) is the 2013 Tony Award-winning director of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Broadway, Arena Stage, Steppenwolf; Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Best Direction of a Play, Outer Critics Circle nomination); Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park (Broadway, Mark Taper Forum, Playwrights Horizons; Tony and Lortel Award nominations and Obie Award for Direction); Horton Foote’s Harrison, TX (Primary Stages); Beau Willimon’s The Parisian Woman (SCR); Craig Lucas’ The Lying Lesson (Atlantic); Itamar Moses’ Completeness (Playwrights Horizons, SCR), Bach at Leipzig (NYTW), The Four of Us (MTC, Old Globe); David Bar Katz’s Atmosphere of Memory (Labyrinth); Rachel Axler’s Smudge (WPP). She is a frequent interpreter of the plays of Edward Albee, having directed world premieres of Occupant (Signature) and Peter and Jerry (Second Stage, Hartford) and regional premieres of The Play About the Baby (PTC, Goodman) and The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (Alley, Vienna) as well as A Delicate Balance (Arena). She is an alumna of the Drama League and Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, an Associate Artist of the Roundabout Theater and chairman of the board of the downtown theater CLUBBED THUMB, dedicated to new American plays. Carey Perloff (Director, The Orphan of Zhao) recently celebrated her 20th year as Artistic Director of A.C.T., where she most recently directed Underneath the Lintel (with Academy Award nominee David Strathairn), Arcadia (with Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis), Elektra, Endgame, Scorched, The Homecoming, Tosca Cafe and Racine's Phèdre in a co-production with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Known for directing innovative productions of classics and championing new writing for the theater, Perloff has also directed for A.C.T. José Rivera's Boleros for the Disenchanted; the American premieres of Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love and Indian Ink and Harold Pinter's Celebration, the A.C.T.–commissioned translations/adaptations of Hecuba, The Misanthrope, Enrico IV, Mary Stuart, Uncle Vanya, A Mother and The Voysey Inheritance (adapted by David Mamet); the world premiere of Leslie Ayvazian's Singer's Boy; and major revivals of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Government Inspector, Happy End, A Doll's House, Waiting for Godot, The Three Sisters, The Threepenny Opera, Old Times, The Rose Tattoo, Antigone, Creditors, Home, The Tempest and Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, Travesties, The Real Thing, Night and Day and Arcadia. Her plays include Luminescence Dating, Kinship, Waiting for the Flood and Higher, which won the 2011 Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theatre Visions Fund Award. Before joining A.C.T., Perloff was artistic director of Classic Stage Company in New York, where she directed the world premiere of Ezra Pound's Elektra, the American premiere of Pinter's Mountain Language, and many classic works. A recipient of France's Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the National Corporate Theatre Fund's 2007 Artistic Achievement Award, Perloff received a B.A. Phi Beta Kappa in classics and comparative literature from Stanford University and was a Fulbright Fellow at Oxford. She was on the faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for seven years and currently teaches and directs in the A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program. Gabor Tompa (Director, The Bald Soprano) graduated in stage and film directing at the I.L. Caragiale Theatre and Film Academy in Bucharest in 1981 as a student of Liviu Ciulei, Mihai Dimiu, Cătălina Buzoianu, founders of the world-famous Romanian school of stage directing. Since 1981, Tompa has directed plays at the Hungarian Theatre in Cluj. In 1987 he became its artistic director and after the Romanian Revolution of 1989, the managing director as well. He has staged more the 80 plays in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Canada, South Korea and the U.S. in English, French, German, Romanian, Hungarian, Catalan and other languages. His feature film, Chinese Defense (1999), a Hungarian-Romanian-French co-production has been presented at the Festivals of Berlin, Karlovy Vary, São Paulo, Trieste, Istanbul, Budapest, Soci and has been awarded the Best First Feature in Salerno, Italy. Four-time recipient of the Best Director Award in Romania, he has been awarded the Best Foreign Director in England and in Serbia as well. His productions are frequently presented in the theatre festivals of Avignon, Edinburgh, Bogota, Torun, Gdansk, Seoul and are being toured worldwide. In 2007 he founded the biannual Interferences International Theatre Festival in Cluj. Since 1989 he has been Professor at the Theatre Academy in Târgu Mureş. He founded the Faculty of Dramatic Art in Cluj and has run its directing program since 1991. From 1990 to 1995 he was head of directing at the Theatre Academy in Târgu Mureş;, one of the oldest theatre programs in Romania. In 2005 he directed the M.A. program at Brunel University, London. He has taught classes and workshops for actors and directors in Spain, the UK, Germany and France. He is member of the Union des Theatres de lEurope, founded by theatre legend Giorgio Strehler. Since 2007 he has served as Head of Directing at the Theatre and Dance Department of the University of California, San Diego. Sheri Wilner’s (Playwright, Kingdom City) plays include Father Joy, Hunger, Bake Off, Labor Day, Relative Strangers, Little Death of a Salesman and Joan of Arkansas, and have been performed at major regional theatres, including the Guthrie Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Summer Play Festival, Naked Angels, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Contemporary American Theater Festival, New Georges and the O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, as well as by the Old Vic/New Voices program in London. Playwriting awards include a Howard Foundation Fellowship, Bush Artist Fellowship and two Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellowships. In addition, she is a two-time winner of the Heideman Award/National Ten-Minute Play Contest, granted by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Her work has been published in over a dozen anthologies, and Playscripts.com has published twelve of her one-acts, which have received over two hundred productions all over the United States, as well as in Australia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Japan, United Kingdom and India. Also an established playwriting teacher, Ms. Wilner was recently named the Fred Coe Visiting Playwright in Residence at Vanderbilt University, as well as the Master Playwright for the Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs’ Playwrights’ Development Program. She was head of the playwriting program at Florida State University in 2011-12 and has conducted playwriting classes and workshops at Fordham University, UC Santa Barbara, Cornell University, University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater B.F.A. Actor Training Program and Whitman College. She attended Cornell University and received her M.F.A. in Playwriting from Columbia University. She currently lives in New York City. BD Wong (Actor, The Orphan of Zhao) was born and raised in San Francisco, California and is the only actor ever to have received all five major New York Theater awards for a single role. For his performance in M. Butterfly, his Broadway debut, he received the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Theater World Award, the Clarence Derwent Award, and the Tony Award. BD appeared in the NBC series Awake, where he played Dr. Lee, Det. Britten’s psychiatrist in the ‘red’ reality. For eleven seasons audiences watched him on the top-rated series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Dr. George Huang, a forensic psychiatrist and expert on the criminal mind. Wong gained notice as a cast regular on HBO’s critically acclaimed series Oz, playing the resilient prison priest, Father Ray for the show’s five-season run. His other television credits include a starring role in ABC’s All-American Girl and HBO’s telefilm And the Band Played On, as well as guest-starring roles on Welcome to New York, Chicago Hope, The X-Files, Bless This House and Shannon’s Deal and the Hallmark Mini Series, Marco Polo. Wong has also appeared in more than 20 feature films, including The Normal Heart, Jurassic Park, The Freshman, Father of the Bride (1 & 2), Seven Years in Tibet, Executive Decision, The Salton Sea and Stay. Wong can also be heard as the voice of Shang in the Disney animated films Mulan and Mulan II. He recently completed filming the new Will Smith film, Focus. Wong’s additional New York theater credits include The Tempest, A Language of Their Own, As Thousands Cheer, the Broadway musical revival of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures, for which he received a Drama League nomination for distinguished performance. He produced and directed The Yellow Wood for NYMF and Cindy Cheung’s Speak Up Connie for the All For One festival. He recently appeared in Herringbone at The McCarter Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, and the Williamstown Theater Festival. He is currently developing the new musical, Heading East, by Leon Ko and Robert Lee. Wong published his first book, Following Foo: the electronic adventures of the Chestnut Man (Harper Entertainment), which chronicles his son Jackson’s struggle for life after he was born 11 weeks premature. He has received community service recognitions from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Asian AIDS Project, GLAAD, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Association of Asian-Pacific American Artists, East/West Players, Second Generation, Organization of Chinese Americans and APICHA. Board member: Actors’ Fund of America, Symphony Space and Rosie’s Kids. Wong currently resides in New York City