O'Hare, Brecht, Pendleton, Othello, Proust Will Punctuate CSC Season
By Kenneth Jones
19 Jun 2008
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Denis O'Hare
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Classic Stage Company has revealed additional information about its 2008-09 Off-Broadway season, including the casting of Tony Award winner Denis O'Hare as Uncle Vanya, directed by Austin Pendleton.
Russian master Anton Chekhov's tragicomic masterpiece "of dashed dreams, thwarted love and eternal longing" will play in January 2009, continuing CSC's commitment to the exploration of his works. Pendleton directed a landmark production of the play in Williamstown, MA, in 1972.
Uncle Vanya begins Jan. 14, 2009, for a limited engagement through Feb. 22. O'Hare (Take Me Out, Sweet Charity) last appeared at CSC in Yasmina Reza's A Spanish Play in 2007.
As previously announced, the new season begin Sept. 3 with Tony Award-winning actor Mandy Patinkin starring in Shakespeare's The Tempest, directed by CSC artistic director Brian Kulick.
In March CSC will present the world premiere of An Oresteia from the pen of acclaimed poet Anne Carson whose work Susan Sontag hailed as "a spellbinding achievement." This "ambitious two-part theatrical event gathers together the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to tell the epic story of the fall of the House of Atreus."
Part One will be directed by Kulick with Gisela Cardinas, who received a Drama Desk nomination for her direction of Agamemnon in 2006. Part Two will be directed by Paul Lazar, whose recent production of Major Bang was a Critic's Choice for both The New York Times and Village Voice. (CSC explored this Oresteia in a March 2008 workshop.)
The 2008-09 season will also include the company's popular First Look Festival. This year First Look examines the work of Bertolt Brecht, with one-night-only staged readings of four of Brecht's plays: The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Good Person of Szechuan, In the Jungle of Cities and Life of Galileo, presented on September 15, 22, 29 and Oct. 6.
The new season will also mark the return of CSC's popular Open Rehearsal Series, at which audiences can experience different acting approaches and directorial interpretations of a classic work. This season CSC will feature Shakespeare's Othello on Jan. 16, 26 and Feb. 2 and 9, 2009. Monday Night Othello is presented in association with the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation and The Shakespeare Society.
CSC will also reunite with the Graduate Acting Program of the Columbia University School of the Arts for the fourth year of The Young Company, CSC's unique Education and Outreach initiative "that has greatly impacted the lives of young audiences throughout the five boroughs." This season The Young Company will present Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, directed by Tony Speciale, Feb. 23-March 8, 2009.
The new season will also feature the inauguration of CSC's new Adaptation Series, The Proust Project, with a set of staged readings based on Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past." According to CSC, "Each of these adaptations can stand on its own as an independent evening or be experienced together as a cycle, giving audiences a unique guided tour through one of the 20th century's greatest novels. Each evening will include a live string quartet, a post-performance symposium with Proust scholars and a free madeleine cookie to inspire your memory."
The Proust Project will be performed March 23 and 30 and April 6, 2009.
Entering its 41st season, Classic Stage Company "is the award-winning Off-Broadway theatre committed to re-imagining the classical repertory for a contemporary American audience."
For further information on Classic Stage Company, call (212) 352-3101, visit the theatre in person at 136 East 13th Street, or go to www.classicstage.org.
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