"The tools of the theatre are ancient and basic — a group of humans in a room, communicating with words, breath, sweat, glances, laughter, tears, and sighs. Night after night we perform live, and we try to explore what it means to be human," said A.R.T. artistic director Robert Woodruff in a release. "The eight productions of our 2006-2007 season will take our audience on a journey through many flavors of live theatre."
The new 2006-2007 lineup (subjet to change) will be as follows:
Directed by Anne Bogart and performed by the SITI Company, the work is "a fantastical road trip through the American landscape, written as Robert Rauschenberg, one of America's greatest living artists, might conceive it."
Ola Mafaalani directs Gideon Lester and Ko van den Bosch's adaptation of Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger's screenplay about "a guardian angel, weary of his eternal existence observing and cataloging the ways of mankind, [who] falls in love with a lonely trapeze artist [and] resolves to sacrifice his wings and his immortality to join her on earth – and to taste human life." A.R.T. partners with the Netherlands’ Toneelgroep Amsterdam for a staging with a half-Dutch, half-American cast.
Composed by Amanda Palmer, conceived by Palmer and director Marcus Stern with a text by Jonathan Marc Sherman, the new work features Boston punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls.
Jude Kelly directs the comedy duo Ridiculusmus as they perform their new take on the classic comedy of mistaken identity.
Woodruff directs the story of the "Emperor Nero [who] is running wild, leaving a mass of political and personal scandals in his wake. When he attempts to seduce the girlfriend of his half-brother Britannicus, Nero's mother, the mighty Agrippina, steps in to prevent him, and chaos ensues."
Neil Bartlett directs his adaptation presented in association with New York's Theatre for a New Audience. "Inspired by the vivid world of Victorian music-hall," the new work "uses the original language of Dickens' novel to dramatize...the underworld of nineteenth century London – all seen through the eyes of an astonished child."
Uys performs takes on "Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Mrs. Evita Bezuidenhout ('most famous white woman in South Africa')" among others in his his satire which "underlines the 'mock' in democracy and exposes the 'con' in reconciliation."
David Wheeler directs the Nobel Prize-winning playwright's tale of "two aging writers, locked in the no man's land of late middle age [who] meet on Hampstead Heath and [engage in] a late-night session of witty banter, sinister power games, and the worship of alcohol." For subscriptions to the new season at American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University's Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street in Cambridge, MA (and second stage at Zero Arrow Theatre in Harvard Square) call (617) 547 8300. For more information, visit the A.R.T. Website at www.amrep.org.
