FringeArts to Stage U.S Premiere of AFTER THE REHEARSAL/PERSONA

FringeArts presents the U.S. premiere of Toneelgroep Amsterdam's After the Rehearsal/Persona, a centerpiece of the 2015 Fringe Festival and the only U.S. engagement of this stunning work. Two Ingmar Bergman screenplays, After the Rehearsal and Persona, are reimagined for the stage by celebrated Dutch director Ivo van Hove and set designer Jan Versweyveld. This theatrical diptych, with each play delving into the messy lives of theater artists, features deeply emotional and physical performances to match the layered psychological drama of Bergman's texts.

In After the Rehearsal director Hendrik Vogler organizes his life within the confines of the theater. His life is his work: rehearsals like notes in his diary, performances his autobiography. All emotions are submitted to his control. Yet life and reality cannot be kept at bay: love, birth, decay, and death seep into his sanctum in the persons of Anna, his former lover and star actress, and Rachel, her daughter and his current star.

In Persona an actress falls mute during a performance of Electra and has not spoken since. As if a short circuit has gone off in her brain, she cannot distinguish between the roles she plays in real life and the ones she plays on stage. But does she have a condition or is she merely assuming another role? The star-struck nurse who cares for her idolizes the actress at first, only to develop a deep resentment towards a woman for whom real emotions and experience serve only as research. Persona is played out in hospital and beside a lake, represented by a 10,000 gallon, full-stage pool of water.

FringeArts' presentation of After the Rehearsal/Persona has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Performances of After the Rehearsal/Persona will take place on September 3-5 at 8pm at the 23rd Street Armory (22 South 23rd Street, Philadelphia, PA). Tickets are $35 and can be purchased at fringearts.com or by phone at 215-413-1318. On September 3, critic and scholar Tom Sellar will moderate a post-show talk back with dramaturg Peter van Kraaij.

About the artists

Ivo van Hove is the artistic director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the largest theater company in the Netherlands. Van Hove is known for his bold, actor-centered stagings of classic dramas. In collaboration with scene designer Jan Versweyveld, van Hove uses sophisticated media to heighten theatricality and redefine the relationship between reality and fiction. Versweyveld and van Hove continually break through the restrictions of the large theater, eliminating the natural distance between actor and audience, sometimes physically, always psychologically.

Van Hove has built a long and intense relationship with Bergman's oeuvre as a director. Past productions include: Scenes from a Marriage and Cries and Whispers. The Fringe Festival will mark the first time Toneelgroep Amsterdam has performed in Philadelphia.

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) is considered one of the greatest film and theater directors of all time. His voluminous oeuvre is a constant search for the boundaries of the human psyche. His scenarios, films, and plays show man's search of love, beauty, and the meaning of life-falling, tripping and fumbling. At his death in 2007, Ingmar Bergman left an inimitable and influential body of work which challenges and delays moral judgment, and above all celebrates life.

On Persona, his masterpiece from 1966, Bergman had the following to say: "At some time or other, I said that Persona saved my life - that is no exaggeration. If I had not found the strength to make that film, I would probably have been all washed up. . . . Today I feel that in Persona-and later in Cries and Whispers-I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances, when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover."