According to a TFANA spokesperson, the Off-Broadway troupe had planned a summer run for both plays, but the artists were not available. The organization is "in discussions with commercial producers" in the hope to remount Othello and Hamlet "with the original companies." (TFANA's Othello will play at Seattle's Intiman Theatre July 2-Aug. 2.)
The 2009-10 season, to again be in residence at The Duke on 42nd Street, will mark the company's 30th anniversary and feature directors Robert Woodruff, Arin Arbus and Peter Brook.
The lineup (subject to change) is as follows:
The New York premiere of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist, a music-theatre piece with original music and text from Eckert (And God Created Whales). Drawing from such sources as Sixth Century Greek poet Ibyous and the Roman poets Virgil and Ovid, Eckert and Woodruff (Edward Bond's Chair) reinvent this ancient myth for our time. "Orpheus is a rock star who plays electric guitar, not the lyre," reads show notes. Eckert will appear in the work with Suzan Hanson and John Kelly along with a live band of piano, guitar, viola, percussion and bass.
Arbus (Othello) will stage another Shakespeare classic for TFANA. The dark comedy which centers on an unbalanced society where "Government leaders are helpless or hypocritical, and passions are relegated to the whorehouses and the prisons."
The New York premiere of C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord production featuring 29 sonnets of Shakespeare adapted for the theatre. The work will star Natasha Parry (Brook's wife) and Bruce Myers. TFANA — which presented Brook's production of The Grand Inquisitor — will complete a trilogy of collaborations with the director on his staging of Samuel Beckett's Fragments in the 2010-11 season. About Love Is My Sin, Brook said in a statement: "Apart from his masterpieces, Shakespeare also wrote uncommonly beautiful. 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. 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 or by a woman, even by the act of writing itself. This is neither a play nor a poetry recital. It catches the actors into true 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."
TFANA shows will play at The Duke, 229 West 42nd Street. For subscription information, call (212) 229-2819, ext. 10. For more on TFANA, visit tfana.org.
