Revised Emmett Till and U.S. Premiere of Fugard's Train Driver to Play L.A.'s Fountain

By Kenneth Jones
18 Dec 2009

Playwright Ifa Bayeza
Playwright Ifa Bayeza

The Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles will celebrate its 20th season in 2010-11 with the U.S. premiere of Athol Fugard's newest play, The Train Driver, the West Coast premiere of Tennessee Williams' final full-length play, A House Not Meant to Stand, the West Coast premiere of The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza and more.

The season will also include the Los Angeles premiere of Opus by Michael Hollinger; a fresh look at August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; and the world premiere of the Flamenco dance/drama DJ: Don Juan in LA.

The Ballad of Emmett Till (starting the season Feb. 6, 2010) will be a new and "completely reworked version of the script that premiered last year at Chicago's Goodman Theatre." Ben Bradley directs the West Coast premiere.

According to Fountain notes, "Part history, part mystery and part ghost story, Bayeza's jazz/gospel/folk integration of past, present, fact and legend turns the story of the 1955 murder of 14-year old Emmett Till, whose shocking death helped spark the infant civil rights movement, into a soaring work of music, poetic language and riveting theatricality."

Playwright Athol Fugard has called The Train Driver "the most important play I've ever written." Co-artistic director Stephen Sachs (director of Fugard's Road to Mecca, Exits and Entrances, Victory and Coming Home) will stage the American premiere in summer 2010.

Adolphus Ward (LA Weekly, LADCC, NAACP Awards for Gem of the Ocean) will co-star in the story of "a tormented train driver who is compelled to visit a makeshift graveyard in the middle of nowhere, determined to find the unmarked grave of the woman he unintentionally killed. It's a haunting, mesmerizing and deeply personal journey into the human soul."

In fall 2010, A House Not Meant to Stand, a "new" play by Fountain favorite Tennessee Williams. Described by the playwright as a "Southern gothic spook sonata," his final full-length work had received only one production prior to his death in 1983, remaining unpublished until 2008. Simon Levy (Summer and Smoke, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore) "brings the West Coast premiere of Williams' dark, expressionistic comedy about the disintegration of a blazingly dysfunctional family on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to the Fountain stage."

The season will close spring 2011 with the world premiere of DJ: Don Juan in L.A., created and directed by Fountain co-artistic director Deborah Lawlor. "This contemporary version of the Don Juan story is set to the passionate rhythms of Flamenco in a nightclub in Los Angeles, where DJ is the town's hottest dee-jay." Flamenco star Timo Nunez is featured "in this sexy and steamy tale of love, passion and duende. Red-hot dancing and pulsating music burn up a sultry night in L.A."

For complete information about The Fountain Theatre's 2010-11 season, call (323) 663-1525 or visit www.FountainTheatre.com.

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Celebrating its 20th year, The Fountain Theatre is housed in a two-story complex in Hollywood, California. The Fountain "provides a nurturing, creative home for multi-ethnic theater and dance artists." The Fountain serves as an artistic home for such noted playwrights as Athol Fugard, Lee Blessing, Dael Orlandersmith, Israel Horovitz, and enjoys successful relationships with the literary estates of Tennessee Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald and August Wilson.

Fountain projects have been seen in several major theatres around the country, including Victory Gardens (Chicago), the Guthrie (Minneapolis), Off-Broadway at Primary Stages (New York), and internationally at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland (winner of the Fringe First Award).