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June 17th, 2010
30th Anniversary Gala: Most Successful Ever!
June 7th, 2010Congratulations to all who attended and contributed to Theatre for a New Audience’s 30th Anniversary Gala! The event was the best-attended and highest-grossing in the Theatre’s history—more than $600,000 was raised to benefit artistic and educational programs.
The festivities took place at The Powerhouse at The American Museum of Natural History, under the leadership of Gala Chair Monica G-S. Wambold. Master of Ceremonies was actor Alfred Molina, a 2010 Tony Award nominee for Best Actor in the thrilling Broadway production Red—his third nomination. The Theatre presented the sixth annual Samuel H. Scripps Award to a pair of artists: Tony Award-winning director/designer Julie Taymor and Academy Award-winning composer Elliot Goldenthal.
Of the honorees, Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz said, “Theatre for a New Audience is a home for Shakespeare and plays of classic stature. Our productions are seen by a diverse audience. We offer education programs, accessibly priced tickets and workshops for artists. But, at the bottom, this Theatre’s core belief is to defend and support the preciousness of the creativity of contemporary artists interpreting the language and ideas of authors. Working with Julie and Elliot taught me this; they put Theatre for a New Audience on the map. They set the bar. And for this, I’m eternally grateful.”
Presenting the award to Mr. Goldenthal was his former teacher, legendary composer John Corigliano. “I never had a student quite like Elliot,” he said. “His music is so full of drama—of the greatness and grandness of theatre, film and opera.”
Scholar Jonathan Bate presented the award to Ms. Taymor, and spoke of her great successes working with classical text. “Julie has brought Shakespeare back to life in the most magical ways,” he said of her work on theatre and film works such as Titus and the upcoming feature, The Tempest, based on her production of the play at TFANA in 1986. “She has shown extraordinary achievement in her creative reanimation of his extraordinary language.”
Entertainment included an aria by singer Eric Owens from Goldenthal’s opera Grendel, a 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Auctions raised record funds for the Theatre’s operating budget as well as our education residency, the largest program in the NYC Public Schools to introduce Shakespeare and classic drama to students grades 5 to 12.
Please click here for more photos from this fabulous evening!
Jefferson Mays: At School
June 7th, 2010I look forward to a student audience more than any other. They never cease to surprise and challenge me—and they will always let me know, in no uncertain terms, whether they like what I’m doing. Sometimes brutally, always honestly! There is something thrillingly combative about a student matinee; they make you know they are there, they argue with you and you find yourself wrestling for their attention; the stakes are higher and the words, the ideas, acquire greater import and urgency. It is always “an event” and is probably the closest I’ve ever come to an “Elizabethan” theatrical experience.
Recently, I leapt at the chance to visit students rehearsing and performing scenes from Measure for Measure, a play I thought I knew. It was a revelation. I was asked to act with a whole string of 12-year-old “Isabellas” and “Lucios” half my height. Each one of them astonished me in different ways: Asil who tied into the irresponsibly absent Duke with vitriol and justified resentment; Lilly, who impulsively edged away from the Duke onto a thin ledge in front of the proscenium arch, in one movement transforming the scene into one of danger and stunningly expressive theatricality; Jasper’s relish in maligning an adult to his face. Acting opposite children young enough to be my own, I realized that the citizens of Duke Vincenzio’s Vienna were all, figuratively, his children and I became aware of the weight of his responsibility to them.
Performing for each other, I watched them claim as their own, some of the most challenging language and ideas in Shakespeare, and making the story new, embracing everything from Law and Order to American Idol.
I wanted to go back into rehearsal immediately.
Jefferson Mays is a Tony Award-winning actor.
Peter Brook Leads Workshop with Young Directors
May 28th, 2010
Photo by Henry Grossman
While in town for the recent production of Love Is My Sin, director Peter Brook and long-time collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne led a three-day workshop with an invited group of some of the most promising young directors working today. This workshop was a rare opportunity for the 16 participants to engage in constructive discussion with the legendary director, and to gain perspective on their own work by discussing their ideas, and the challenges they face, with the group.
Participating directors included:
Tea Alagic
Arin Arbus
Jesse Berger
Noah Brody
Selina Cartmell
Anders Cato
Jack Cummings III
Gia Forakis
Carl Forsman
Lydia Fort
Jesse Jou
Erica Schmidt
Ken Rus Schmoll
Adriano Shaplic
Ben Steinfeld
Danya Taymor
American Directors Project
April 19th, 2010
The American Directors Project (ADP) was established in 1997 to promote the development of American directors of Shakespeare. ADP seeks to give the directors a chance to explore the imaginative world of Shakespeare through Cicely’s unique approach to text and language and attempts to enhance their understanding of how actors can bring Shakespeare’s text to life.
This season, the Theatre will invite six to eight young to mid-career directors to work with Cicely Berry (Director of Voice, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1960-present), Andrew Wade (Head of Voice, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1990-2003) and a company of actors.
ADP participants are among the most promising artists working today. Kate Whoriskey, David Esbjornson, Karin Coonrod, Scott Ellis, and Bartlett Sher are among the directors who have participated to date, and Blair Brown, Victor Garber, John Douglas Thompson, Juliet Rylance, Christian Camargo, Kate Forbes, Norbert Leo Butz, and Sigourney Weaver are among the actors who have participated.
2010 Scripps Award Honorees Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal
April 4th, 2010
A director of theatre, opera and film, Julie Taymor is the first woman to win the TONY Award for directing a musical (The Lion King), for which she also won Best Costume Design.
Elliot Goldenthal is a renowned composer who creates works for the concert stage, theatre, opera and film, including several Oscar-nominated films and the Oscar-winning score for Frida (which also received a best song Oscar nomination).
Each in their own sphere has produced works of lasting achievement, garnering critical notice and numerous awards. However, from their earliest successes to their most recent work, the projects that they created together have also been celebrated.
In 1986, Theatre for a New Audience’s Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz invited Ms. Taymor to direct her first Shakespeare play. That production, The Tempest, would later inform her film adaptation of the play, which stars Helen Mirren and will be released in 2010 with a score by Mr. Goldenthal. Their other stage work for Theatre for a New Audience includes Titus Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Home Street Home and The Green Bird. In 1988, Mr. Goldenthal composed the music and with Ms. Taymor co-authored the libretto for Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, which received five Tony nominations when it was restaged at Lincoln Center in 1996. Together, she has also directed and he has scored the films Titus, Across the Universe and Frida, as well as Goldenthal’s original two act opera, Grendel, which premiered at the Los Angeles Opera and was named one of the two finalists for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in music.
Ms. Taymor has also directed opera productions of The Magic Flute (now in repertory at the Met) and Oedipus Rex, Salomé and The Flying Dutchman. She is currently preparing for a Broadway production of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Mr. Goldenthal’s concert work includes Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio, which debuted at the Pacific Symphony with Seiji Ozawa conducting. In 1997, he composed Othello, for the American Ballet Theatre. Ms. Taymor and Mr. Goldenthal have been deeply connected to Theatre for a New Audience for many years, and together currently serve as Honorary Co-Chairs of the Theatre’s Capital Campaign.
New Home Design in Final Stages
March 15th, 2010
We are thrilled to report that Theatre for a New Audience’s new home in the BAM Cultural District is officially in its final design phase!
Hugh Hardy and his team at H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture will set our beautiful 27,500-square-foot building on its final site on Ashland Place, where it will face an Arts Plaza designed by landscape architect Ken Smith.
The interior of the 299-seat Main Stage, inspired by the Cottesloe Theatre of London’s Royal National Theatre, will remain unchanged from the original design. As initially planned, the complex will also include a 50-seat Studio for performance, rehearsal and events; book and refreshment kiosks; theatrical support spaces; and a welcoming transparent façade.
We have raised $46.6M of a total Campaign goal of $56.5M – nearly 83%! We anticipate announcing the new design in late spring or early summer, breaking ground in December, and celebrating completion in fall, 2012.
The theatre will be the first new arts construction in the District and one of only a handful of green theatre complexes in the country, with a target of at least LEED Silver Certification.
For more information on our new home, including a map of the BAM Cultural District, please click here.
Presenting Love Is My Sin
March 15th, 2010
Michael Pennington and Natasha Parry
Theatre for a New Audience’s 30th Anniversary Season will culminate with the New York premiere of the C.I.C.T./Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord production of Love Is My Sin, the sonnets of William Shakespeare adapted by Peter Brook and performed by Natasha Parry and Michael Pennington.
Love Is My Sin, which premiered in Paris at Bouffes du Nord in April 2009, features thirty-one sonnets chosen by Mr. Brook. “To choose between 154 sonnets, I needed to find a dramatic continuity and was guided by the hidden tensions that arise in a relationship between two people,” writes Mr. Brook. “Love Is My Sin allows us to penetrate into Shakespeare’s own, most secret life. It is his private diary, in which we find his intimate questions, his jealousy, his passions, his guilt, his despair. Above all, he searches to discover for himself the deep meaning of being attracted by a man, by a woman or even by the act of writing itself. This is neither a play nor a poetry recital. It catches the actors in human relationships. Then, at the very end, they become speakers for Shakespeare himself who wrote prophetically that his verse is stronger than time and will last forever.”
Love Is My Sin begins previews on March 25 and runs through April 17 at The Duke on 42nd Street, a New 42nd Street® project, 229 West 42nd Street. For tickets and more information, please visit http://www.tfana.org/.
30th Anniversary Gala to Honor Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal
March 15th, 2010Join us for Theatre for a New Audience’s 30th Anniversary Gala Celebrating Shakespeare’s Birthday
Monica G.-S. Wambold, Gala Chair
Including the presentation of the Sixth Annual Samuel H. Scripps Award for Extraordinary Commitment to the Power of Language in Classical and Contemporary Theatre to
Julie Taymor & Elliot Goldenthal
Reception, auction and seated dinner at The Powerhouse, American Museum of Natural History
For Gala ticket information:
Karen Hershey
212-343-1920
khevents@aol.com
30th Anniversary Gala Lead Sponsor
The Critic Goes Backstage
March 15th, 2010Journalist Alisa Solomon brought her Columbia University graduate students to observe a rehearsal of the Theatre’s recent production of Measure for Measure. Student Katherine Clarke shared her impressions.
It is unusual for an arts journalist to be permitted entry to the sacred space of the rehearsal room. Traditionally, this space has been off limits to the critic who sees a production only in performance, once it has been perfected and groomed. The arts journalism students at Columbia University, however, were invited to observe the rehearsal process of Measure for Measure and found that there was a great deal to be learned.
Director Arin Arbus conducted her players with a sense of purpose and in a language that defied words. The cast played with alternative phrasing and intonation and explored new configurations in the space. Actors’ ideas mingled with and bounced off the vision of the director. Moments were re-imagined and characters redefined. Choices were made, questioned and reinforced. The identity of the production was molded in time and space.
We, as journalists, gained a huge insight into the mechanics of performance and how the perspective of an individual production is shaped by decisions made in the rehearsal room. The class left feeling energized by the work and more informed of the nuances of the text, looking forward to learning how the choices made before our eyes determine the impact of the overall show in performance.
Reviews are in for Measure for Measure
February 18th, 2010
Above: Jefferson Mays as Duke Vincentio