The Friendly Fire production begins previews at the downtown Manhattan venue Oct. 7 and opens Oct. 10. Alex Lippard (Moonchild) directs the work set to run through Oct. 30.
Linklater will star in the title role for the tragedy set during the Trojan wars. The titular Queen of Troy seeks out vengeance for the murder of her daughter in this translation by William Arrowsmith.
Two-time Emmy Award winner Heather Tom (Prymate) costars as Polyxena with a cast also includes Starla Benford, Lucas Blondheim, Scott Casper, Helmar Augustus Cooper, Curzon Dobell, Mike Genovese, Gabriel Gilbert, Janna Gjesdal, Phyllis Johnson, Christopher McCann, Craig Myers, Matthew Reid Seife, Dale Soules, Kathleen Turco-Lyon and Matthew R. Wilson.
The design team for Hecuba features Erik Flatmo (set), Rebecca Dowd (costumes), Aaron Black (lighting) and Allison Leyton-Brown (sound). Leyton-Brown also provides musical direction and with Kaveh Nabatian performs their original musical score. Lillian K. Minnich serves as the production stage manager and Ben Nadler is the dramaturg.
Linklater is well known as a theater voice and speech trainer. She has worked as a coach or consultant on the Broadway productions of Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, The Real Thing, Slab Boys and The Corn Is Green — performing herself in the latter. A founder of Shakespeare and Company as well as the Head of Acting at Columbia University, she has portrayed many of Shakespeare's women including Lady Macbeth, Queen Margaret and Juliet's Nurse, and a few of his men, including King Lear. Tom made her Broadway debut in the short-lived Prymate. She also performed in the Los Angeles production of Biloxi Blues, the FringeNYC staging of Moonchild and the lead in a recent New Jersey staging of David Auburn's Proof. She won her Emmys for her turn on "The Young and the Restless," and now stars on "One Life to Live."
Director Lippard earned a 2004 Overall Excellence in Directing Award for his staging of Moonchild at the New York International Fringe Festival. Other credits include All We Can Handle with Raul Esparza, Machinal (Shakespeare NJ) and Hedda Gabler (Century Center Ibsen Series).
The Euripides work has been popular of late in London: Clare Higgins stars in the current Donmar Warehouse staging while Vanessa Redgrave is slated to headline the Royal Shakespeare Company mounting. The latter work will reportedly head to New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music after playing Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center in 2005.
This staging if presented as part of The New York Public Library's Hellenic Festival, Oct. 2004-April 2005. For information on festival, visit www.nypl.org/hellenic.
Tickets to Hecuba, at 45 Bleecker Theatre, 45 Bleecker Street (between Lafayette and Bowery), are available by calling (212) 352-3101. For more information, visit www.hecuba.info.
