August Strindberg Repertory Theatre and Negro Ensemble Company to Present PLAYING WITH FIRE, 5/18-6/10

By: Kelsey Denette Apr. 27, 2012

August Strindberg's Chekhovian comedy, "Playing With Fire" (Leka med elden, 1893), in a translation by Ulrika Brand that has been newly adapted by Obie-winner Leslie Lee, Executive Director of Negro Ensemble Company, will be presenTed May 18 to June 10 with an all-black cast as the inaugural production of August Strindberg Repertory Theatre, directed by Robert Greer. The play, to be staged at New School for Drama, 151 Bank Street (West Village), will be a co-production of August Strindberg Repertory Theatre and Negro Ensemble Company in association with Theater Resources Unlimited.

The play, one of Strindberg's rare comedies, was written in 1893 after the playwright found himself involved in a love triangle within a love triangle within a love triangle. Leslie Lee has transformed its setting from a Swedish summer house in 1893 to a summer cottage of the black social elite in Oak Ridge, a neighborhood of Martha's Vineyard, in 1926. That is is around the time Oak Bluffs beach first became a mecca for the black upper crust from around the country.

The polite society that flocked there has been chronicled in "Our Kind of People" (1999) by Lawrence Otis Graham. In the 1920s "The Ink Well," a section of the Oak Bluffs beach, first became a home for several generations of wealthy blacks who lived (and still live) in a sort of separate world, not unlike their counterparts in other ethnicities. Many people with ties to these families--through their shared schools, sleepaway camps, fraternities and cotillions--seldom admit their status to non-elite blacks. Leslie Lee mixed with this set as a young man; he was "socially acceptable" as a student of an Ivy League college.

"Playing With Fire" is a character-based comedy, populated with the Swedish version of Chekhovian characters. It seemed opportune to transport the play to another community, whose characters were fully-flavored and would support the comedy. Leslie Lee says, "The people who moved to Martha's Vineyard were creating a black upper crust: a hierarchy that reflects our own black intelligentsia, which was alienated from the rest of society and contemptuous of it. They were playing with fire." He had, in the past, written a soap opera pilot about that period. For this adaptation, he sees his job as making the play as comical as possible in moments when it can be done. He doesn't resist the temptation to take a jab at black elitists here and there.

In the play, a writer named Axel (modeled on Strindberg himself) visits his best friends, Kerstin and Knut, at their summer house. Knut is a painter who doesn't paint and Kerstin is a writer who doesn't write. They live with and live off his parents. His father is a wealthy retired businessman with a checkered past. Also present is their younger cousin, Adele, a poor relation treated more like a servant than a family member. Knut is having an affair with Adele but his father has his own plans for her. Both she and Kerstin have their sights set on Axel, who makes his getaway in the nick of time. Says Leslie Lee, "Each of them reacts according to their own quirky personalities. They are all playing with fire. They endanger their personal relationships and the integrity of their community."

The 1893 original is set on the front porch of a summer house in the Stockholm archipelago. This adaptation places the play in a 1920's beach house, Cape Cod-style, utilizing a two-story drop painted by set designer Angelina Margolis. Background music will be jazz of the period.

The August Strindberg Repertory Theatre was founded in honor of Sweden's great playwright and is committed to production of his plays in new translations and interpretations that illuminate the plays for today's American audience. The company is particularly committed to new productions of Strindberg's best and least-performed plays in fresh translations by leading translators.

Robert Greer (director) is founder and Artistic Director of August Strindberg Repertory Theatre and has directed numerous contemporary Swedish playwrights in their English-language premières. These include MariAnne Goldman, Helena Sigander, Cecilia Sidenbladh, Oravsky and Larsen, Hans Hederberg, Margareta Garpe and Kristina Lugn, Denmark's Stig Dalager, Norway's Edvard Rønning, and classics by Victoria Benedictsson, Laura Kieler, Anne Charlotte Leffler, Amalie Skram and August Strindberg. His productions have been presented at the Strindberg Museum and Strindberg Festival, Stockholm; Edinburgh and NY Fringe Festivals, Barnard College, Columbia University, Rutgers, UCLA; Miranda, Pulse and Theater Row Theaters, La Mama E.T.C., Manhattan Theatre Source, Tribeca Lab, Synchronicity, TSI , BargeMusic; and The Duplex in LA. He has also directed plays by Mario Fratti, Sartre and Corneille here in New York. He is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the Broadway League, Actors' Equity; the Strindberg Society, the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study and Swedish Translators in North America.

Ulrika Brand (translator) is a director and translator of Strindberg plays ("Crimes and Crimes" and "Playing With Fire"), a member of the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab, and former member of Pacific Resident Theatre Co-op (Venice, California). She has also worked in the motion picture industry and handled public relations for cultural and educational institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, and Columbia University.

Leslie Lee (adaptor) is a playwright and executive director of the Negro Ensemble Company. He was a founding artist of La Mama E.T.C. His plays have been produced both on and off Broadway and he has also written for film and television. His acclaimed play, "The First Breeze of Summer," starring Leslie Uggams, enjoyed a successful revival in 2008 with the Signature Theatre Company. It was originally produced by the Negro Ensemble Company and went on to win an Obie Award for Best New American Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award. Subsequently, the play moved to the Palace Theatre on Broadway, where it received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. Lee is a 2008 Audelco Playwright Award Winner and has been nominated for a total of eleven Audelco Awards. His plays have been produced by the Negro Ensemble Company, the Black Rep in St. Louis and Crossroads Theatre Company in New Jersey. His other plays include "The War Party," "Colored People's Time," "Blues in a Broken Tongue," "The Rabbit's Foot," "Black Eagles," "Elegy to a Down Queen," "Cops and Robbers," "Hannah Davis" and several musicals, "Golden Boy" with Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, "Martin" with Charles Strouse and "Phillis" with Micki Grant. His awards include an Obie, the Outer Circle Critics Award, the Arthur Miller Playwriting Award, the Audelco Best Play Award, the Isabelle Strickland Award for Excellence in the Field of the Arts, the Joe A Callahan Award and a Tony Nomination.

For film and TV, Mr. Lee has written or adapted "The Killing Floor" (American Playhouse, Honorable Mention at Cannes Film Festival), "Almos’ A Man" (based on the story by Richard Wright), "Go Tell It on the Mountain" (based on the novel by James Baldwin) and "The First Breeze of Summer" (PBS Great Performances). Mr. Lee received an Emmy nomination for his documentary, "Culture Shock: Mark Twain." He has taught playwriting and screenwriting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and at Rutgers University.

Eszter Szalczer (Dramaturg) is an associate professor of theater at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She is the author of "Writing Daughters: August Strindberg’s Other Voices" and "August Strindberg" (Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists) as well as numerous articles and book chapters on Strindberg, both in English and Swedish.

The actors are James Edward Becton, Jaleesa Capri, Toccarra Cash, Elizabeth Flax, Jolie Garrett and Nathan James.

Set design is by Angelina Margolis. Lighting design is by Miriam Crowe. Costume design is by Lora Jackson. Casting director is Lawrence Evans.

New School for Drama, 151 Bank Street (West Village)
Presented by August Strindberg Repertory Theatre and Negro Ensemble Company in association with Theater Resources Unlimited
Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 PM, Matinees Saturdays at 2pm and Sundays at 3pm, no shows May 26 and 27 (Memorial Day Weekend)
Tickets $18; groups of 20 and more $13.50; students $9. TDF accepted. Box office SMARTTIX (212) 868-4444, www.smarttix.com
Production's website: http://www.strindberg.org/
TRANSIT DIRECTIONS: 1-2-3 to 14th Street and A-C-E to 14th Street. M20 bus stops at Abingdon Square and M11 and M14A terminate there.
Running time: 90 minutes. CRITICS ARE INVITED on or after MAY 20.

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August Strindberg Repertory Theatre and Negro Ensemble Company to Present PLAYING WITH FIRE, 5/18-6/10

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