Peter Meineck (artistic director) and Robert Richmond (associate artistic director) announced this first-ever New York season, which includes a subscription offer — three plays for $90.
The three-production season will launch with the previously-reported new translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon with Dukakis as Clytemnestra and her husband, Louis Zorich, as Agamemnon.
Directed by Robert Richmond and featuring costume design by Theoni V. Aldredge and music by Anthony Cochrane, Agamemnon plays Feb. 3-22, 2004, at the John Jay Theatre.
Meineck also announced that Aquila will stage each work from Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy (Agamemnon being the first) in subsequent New York seasons.
Shakespeare's Othello, directed by Richmond, will be set in a contemporary military world, May 18-June 27, 2004, at Baruch Performing Arts Center. The stage adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, a "retelling of the classic adventure of two British rogues on a quest to conquer the wilds of Afghanistan," plays June 30-Aug. 8, 2004, at Baruch Performing Arts Center.
Also directed by Richmond, Man Who Would Be King played in rep with Othello on tour in 2003 and goes on the road again in early 2004 before playing the New York dates.
Aquila's past routine was to open a show in New York and run it as long as business warrants. The New York productions in 2004 will be using AGMA union contracts.
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Aquila Theatre Company was founded in London in 1991 by Peter Meineck to present innovative productions of classical drama. Since then the company has toured extensively throughout the United States, Canada and Europe with annual productions in New York and London. In 1999, Aquila moved to New York and has since presented eight productions, including Homer's Iliad: Book One; Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Comedy of Errors; and Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
Recently, Aquila was one of six nonprofit U.S. theatre companies to be chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts to bring Shakespeare to communities across the country (2003-04) with a precedent-setting $3 million grant.
For subscription information, call (212) 998-8017 or visit www.aquilatheatre.com.
