Austin Pendleton Directs Mississippi Mud's SEAGULL69, Now thru 2/17

Tony-nominated and Obie-winning Chekhov director Austin Pendleton helms and appears in Mississippi Mud Productions' SeaGull69, a new version of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece, The SeaGull. This is a world premiere of an adaptation by Austin Pendleton and The Acting Company drawing on Marian Fell's translation. Set in Los Angeles in the summer of 1969, the play looks at family and friends pursuing the American dream of fame, love, and fortune in Hollywood, the land of dreams. Chekhov's sense of humor along with his tender and honest look at life is explored through the terrain of this family and their circle's life in Hollywood from 1969-1971. Tickets on sale online @ http://seagull69.brownpapertickets.com - $17 general admission, $14 student/senior.

The cast includes Broadway and Indie artists Michael Arena, Charles Black*, Jen Danby*, Annette Hunt*, Albert Insinnia*, Andy McCutcheon*, Maureen Mooney*, Patricia Perales, Austin Pendleton*, R. David Robinson*, Lei Zhou, and Dana Zurkowski. Costume design/Looks are by David B. Thompson, currently working on PIPPIN on Broadway.

Performance Venue
Alexander Technique Center for Performance and Development
330 West 38th St. Suite 805
Between 8th and 9th Ave.
New York, NY

Show Dates and Times
Friday & Saturday Shows @8pm
Sunday & Monday Shows @7:30
January 24-27
January 31-February 2*
February 8-10*
February 14-17

*Please note 2 special shows - Sunday February 2 there is a 3:00pm & 7:30pm show. Saturday February 8th there is a 7:00pm and a 10:30pm show.

Famous actress Arkadina visits the family home that her brother cares for in Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles in the summer of 1969. She comes with her lover Trigorin, a Hollywood writer. Her son, Konstantine, puts on a new play he's written starring his girlfriend, Nina. When his mother doesn't like it, he stops it, leading to a spinning tale of events around dreams, love, attractions and burning ambitions and longings.

Austin Pendleton has just directed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (AEA Showcase), and Vieux Carre and A Streetcar Named Desire for the Mud Actors Lab. This past June he directed The Blonde Bombshell Project: Marilyn Monroe, a solo project with actress Jen Danby, with Mississippi Mud Productions. He recently directed Tribes at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, where he has acted and directed, as a member of the Ensemble, for many years. In New York, he has directed several Mississippi Mud productions, including Suddenly Last Summer (in which he also appeared). He was most recently seen as Nightingale in Vieux Carre Mud Lab and Choir Boy at the Manhattan Theatre Company. He has directed three Chekhov productions at Classic Stage Company: Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters (for which he won an Obie), and Ivanov, featuring, between them, such actors as Maggie Gylenhall, Peter Sarsgaard, and Ethan Hawke. He has acted in many movies and in recurring roles on such TV series as Homocide and Oz, as well as on Broadway in, most recently, The Diary of Anne Frank, with Natalie Portman and Linda Lavin, in a script revised by Wendy Kesselman, in whose musical, The Black Monk, he played the title role. He has written three plays: Orson's Shadow, produced at Mud after its off-Broadway run which lasted the year of 2005, at the Barrow St. Theatre, directed by David Cromer; Uncle Bob, which has been produced in NY, around the country and internationally; and BOOTH, which starred Frank Langella in its productions in New York, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven; as well as the libretto for A Minister's Wife, music by Josh Schmidt and lyrics by Jan Tranen, commissioned and produced by Chicago's Writers' Theatre in 2009, and at Lincoln Center in 2011. All these works have been published. He directed Elizabeth Taylor on Broadway in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. He recently directed The Last Will in New York (in which he also appeared), by Robert Brustein, at the Abingdon Theatre. He teaches acting at HB Studio, in New York.

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), the grandson of a former serf in Czarist Russia, was born in the port of Taganrog on the Sea of Azov in Southern Russian. A country doctor, Chekhov always had a burning love for writing. His love for it was inspired first by his boyhood days helping in his father's grocery store, where he would listen with an avid ear to all of the people coming in and out. As a playwright, he took chances in his work, breaking away from conventional forms or at least using forms in new ways. However, when The SeaGull was first performed in 1896, it was a failure. Legend has it that Chekhov walked around all night in the cold, distraught from this event. This worsened a developing tuberculosis that would later take his life at age 44. The SeaGull was then revived in 1898 by Konstantine Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre to great success. The MAT also produced Chekhov's and Cherry Orchard. Chekhov's plays continue to be produced around the world.

Marian Fell (Translator) was born in 1886 at Cornwall-On-Hudson, New York, the first of three children. Her father, Edward Nelson Fell, born in New Zealand, was one of a number of English settlers persuaded to come to Florida by newspaper ads placed in England and other parts of the United States. These ads promised a fortune in citrus groves. At the age of 16, her family moved to Kirghiz Steppes, which is present day Kazakhstan. For the next seven years of her impressionable life, she learned about the Russian customs and the language. She returned to Florida in 1908. At the age of 26, in 1912, she published her first translation of Anton Chekhov. Ms. Fell's translation is the first publishEd English language translation of The SeaGull in the United States. It was first performed at the Bandbox Theatre on Broadway by the Washington Square Players in 1916.