Mary Testa and More to Lead Bard SummerScape's Intimate OKLAHOMA! This Summer

The Bard SummerScape festival presents an entirely new way to experience Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein's quintessential celebration of the American frontier. Starring Damon Daunno, Amber Gray, and two-time Tony nominee Mary Testa, Bard's production is directed by Daniel Fish - "a magical manipulator" (New York Times) - with new musical arrangements for a six-piece Americana band by Henry Hewes Award-winner Daniel Kluger, and new choreography by Jacob's Pillow Dance Award-winner John Heginbotham. This intimate, revelatory production brings audience and artists together in the round, sharing food and telling the story of a young nation forming its identity. Oklahoma! will be mounted in 25 performances between June 25 and July 19 in the LUMA Theater of the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center. SummerScape also presents Fernando Rubio's Everything by my side, an alfresco performance-installation that takes place outdoors under the trees in Bard's glorious Hudson Valley landscape (July 9-12).

Oklahoma!, directed by Daniel Fish

As in previous seasons, SummerScape follows the theme of the Bard Music Festival, which this year explores "Chávez and His World," celebrating the life and works of Carlos Chávez. Close contemporaries of the Mexican composer, Richard Rodgers (1902-79) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) shared his concern with the forging of a new relationship between popular music and national identity. Revolutionizing the authentically homegrown art form of musical theater, their first collaboration, Oklahoma! (1943), is set in the Territory of Oklahoma during the years before statehood, and investigates America's cultural identity through her frontier roots. Like Lynn Riggs's Green Grow the Lilacs, the play on which it was based, Oklahoma! combines the sunny romance of farm girl Laurey Williams and cowboy Curly McClain with the darker story of a community rising up against a reviled outsider, Jud Fry. These strands are bound together by Rodgers's exuberant and complex score, which, besides the title song, includes such favorite numbers as "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," "Many a New Day," and "I Cain't Say No." Introducing an unprecedented depth of psychological realism to a form better known for light comic entertainment, when it premiered in 1943 Oklahoma! overturned the conventions of musical theater and went on to win Rodgers and Hammerstein the 1944 Pulitzer Prize.

About SummerScape's original treatment of Oklahoma!, director Daniel Fish explains:

"For me, Oklahoma! is about the relationship between the individual and the community: what people gain and what they sacrifice when they decide to form a community, whether the union of a married couple, a state, or a nation. It explores the need for that community to create an outsider and the cost of doing so."

Fish is exploring the timeless qualities of Rodgers and Hammerstein's first collaboration by re-setting it in a community hall that could well be from our own era. Rodgers's gorgeous tunes are performed in new arrangements for a six-piece Americana band, featuring pedal steel, mandolin, and banjo. The experience is true to the spirit of Rodgers and Hammerstein, but theatrically entirely new.

Fish's work has been seen at theaters and festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe, including BAM Next Wave Festival, Opera Philadelphia, American Repertory Theater, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The New York Times named his True Love treatment the "most inventive directorial effort of the year," in 2002 and, as Culturebot put it, "He is one of our great auteur-directors; each work bears his signature, his unmistakable trace." It was at SummerScape 2005 that Fish premiered his staging of Clifford Odets's Rocket to the Moon, which subsequently impressed the New York Times as "heartfelt, freshly conceived, and rich in moments that illuminate the tenderness of Odets's vision."

For his upcoming production, Fish has assembled a stellar creative team. The original musical arrangements for the six-piece band are by Lucille Lortel and Barrymore Award-nominee Daniel Kluger, who will be joined by music director Nathan Koci (War Horse) and Drama Desk Award-winning sound designer Drew Levy. New choreography by John Heginbotham, founder of Dance Heginbotham, will complement Agnes de Mille's original dances. Based on an original concept by John Conklin, scenic design is by Laura Jellinek, whose work on SummerScape's hit production of The Imaginary Invalid prompted the Financial Times to state: "I have never seen a designer ... use the Frank Gehry space more imaginatively." Bard's costumes are by Terese Wadden, whose credits include Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Philadelphia, and BAM, with video projections by Bard College alum Joshua Thorson, and lighting by Scott Zielinski, winner of the 2013 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lighting Design.

Anchoring Bard's first-rate cast is Mary Testa, as Laurey's indomitable Aunt Eller. A Broadway regular also seen in TV shows like Nurse Jackie, Whoopi, and Sex and the City, Testa has been recognized with a Drama Desk Award, two Obies, and two Tony nominations. Damon Daunno, familiar from Fox TV's The Following and Broadway's Brief Encounter, stars as cowhand Curly, opposite the Laurey of Amber Gray, who impressed the New York Times with her "startling emotional veracity" in the title role of last year's Obie Award-winning production of An Octoroon. Also vying for Laurey's hand is hired hand loner Jud Fry, played by Patrick Vaill, whose New York credits include Broadway and Lincoln Center. Allison Strong, known for roles on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and at the Metropolitan Opera, portrays the irrepressible Ado Annie, with James Patrick Davis, who "delivers the kind of organic performance that leaves acting behind and is a metamorphosis" (Stage magazine), as her cowboy suitor Will. Benj Mirman, whose past credits include Mara Wilson's Sheeple and Eric Schaeffer's award-winning film Boy Meets Girl, completes their love triangle as Persian peddler Ali Hakim, with Mitch Tebo as Annie's farmer father Andrew Carnes, and John Carlin - hailed as "one of NYC's better-kept secrets" (Time Out New York) - as cowboy Cord Elam.

Oklahoma! is presented through special arrangement with R & H Theatricals: www.rnh.com.

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