Loquasto, Bauer & Posner Lead Design Team for Mamet's A LIFE IN THE THEATRE Broadway Premiere this Fall

As BroadwayWorld announced yesterday, the upcoming Broadway premiere of David Mamet's A LIFE IN THE THEATRE, which will star award winning actor Patrick Stewart, will play the Gerald Shoenfeld Theatre (236 West 45th Street). Rehearsals start on August 23rd, 2010, with performances beginning on September 17th, 2010.

A LIFE IN THE THEATRE will reunite Mamet with Tony Award winning scenic designer Santo Loquasto who designed the set for Race, Glengarry Glen Ross and the original American Buffalo. The show also reunites Mamet with both Laura Bauer, who designed costumes for Speed-The-Plow and November, and with Tony Award winning lighting designer Kenneth Posner who designed the lights for Glengarry Glen Ross. Neil Pepe (Speed-The-Plow) directs.

A LIFE IN THE THEATRE made its world premiere at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago in February of 1977 with Mike Nussbaum and Joe Mantegna and was directed by Gregory Mosher. The play first opened off-Broadway on October 20, 1977 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and ran for 288 performances. That production was directed by Gerald Gutierrez and starred Peter Evans and Ellis Rabb.

Mel Gussow of The New York Times said: "Though the work has serious undertones, it is first of all a comedy - and Mr. Mamet's language glistens. His writing is a cross between the elegant and the vernacular, an ironic combination that is uniquely his own...He is an eloquent master of two-part harmony. An abundantly gifted playwright, he brings new life to the theater."

Describing life in the footlights from an actor's point of view, A LIFE IN THE THEATRE focuses on the relationship between two thespians: Robert, an older, experienced performer; and John, a relative newcomer. Though Robert's guidance is welcomed by John at first, as the play progresses Robert falters as an actor and mentor, and John emerges as a mature actor. Mamet was inspired to write A LIFE IN THE THEATRE by what he had observed backstage as well as by his own experiences in his early career as an actor.

A LIFE IN THE THEATRE will be produced by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel and JAM Theatricals, the lead producers of the current Race and recent production of Speed-The-Plow.

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BIOS

Santo Loquasto is a designer for theatre, film, dance and opera, has won 3 Tony Awards and has been nominated 14 times. He has collaborated with Woody Allen on 24 films, including costume design for Zelig, and production design for Radio Days and Bullets Over Broadway, for which he received Academy Award nominations. Recent designs include Race, Waiting for Godot, Inherit the Wind, 110 in the Shade, Uncle Vanya, A Man For All Seasons, and American Buffalo. He received the Merritt Award for Excellence in Design and Collaboration in 2002, was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2004, received the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for the Arts in 2006 and the Robert L.B. Tobin Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2007.

Laura Bauer has worked on Broadway on: Speed-the-Plow, November, Top Girls, Talk Radio, Glengarry Glen Ross, Frankie and Johnny..., One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Off-Broadway: plays at MTC, the Vineyard, Playwrights Horizons, the Public, Lincoln Center, Naked Angels, Circle Rep, and the Atlantic Theater (company member). Years of work with Steppenwolf, Remains, and the Goodman in Chicago. Selected films: High Fidelity, Sweet and Lowdown, Telling Lies in America, and Pieces of April. TV: "Insatiable' for Showtime.

Kenneth Posner has had more than 30 Broadway plays and musicals including The Coast of Utopia- Shipwreck (Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards); Wicked, Hairspray, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Tony nominations); The Royal Family; Legally Blonde; 9 to 5; Grease (2008); The Homecoming; The Pirate Queen; The Odd Couple; Glengarry Glen Ross; Little Women; The Frogs; Swing!; Charlie Brown; The Goat; Side Man; The Little Foxes; and The Rose Tattoo. 2003 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Lighting Design.

Patrick Stewart last appeared on Broadway in the title role of Rupert Goold's 2008 modern retelling of Macbeth, for which he earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play. Since leaving Broadway in May 2008, Stewart starred in a dual role as "Claudius" and "The Ghost" in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Hamlet, winning an Olivier Award for his performance; as well as opposite Sir Ian McKellen in a sold-out 2009 West End production of Samuel Beckett's tragicomedy Waiting for Godot. The pairing of the two actors won the award for Theatre Event of the Year at the 2010 What's On Stage Awards.

Stewart will next be seen on stage at The Chichester Festival Theatre in Edward Bond's Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death, the fictional tale of William Shakespeare's last days as he finds himself faced with the prospect of losing the land he bought with the money made from his plays. The show is currently in rehearsals and will run from April 15 thru May 22.

In addition, Stewart's award-winning roles in both Hamlet and Macbeth will air as part of PBS' "Great Performances" television series on April 28 and a to-be-determined fall date, respectively. Both adaptations recreate the tone and atmosphere of the original stage productions in a film-style interpretation shot in HD and on location.

In 2010, Sir Patrick received a knighthood for services to drama in the New Year Honour's list.

David Mamet, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Glengarry Glen Ross, has also written Race, November, Speed-The-Plow, American Buffalo, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Lakeboat, The Water Engine, The Duck Variations, Reunion, The Blue Hour, The Shawl, Bobby Gould in Hell, Edmond, Romance, The Old Neighborhood and the recent adaptation of The Voysey Inheritance. A two-time Academy Award nominee for The Verdict and Wag the Dog, Mamet's additional film credits include The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Untouchables, Hoffa, Ronin, The Edge, and We're No Angels. His nonfiction work includes The Wicked Son, True and False, and Bambi vs. Godzilla. Mamet's staging credits include the world premieres of his plays Race, Oleanna, The Cryptogram, Boston Marriage, and Faustus, as well as Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants and Ricky Jay: On the Stem, and various productions for the Atlantic Theater Company and Circle Rep. For motion pictures, he has previously written and directed Redbelt, Spartan, Heist, State and Main, Catastrophe, The Winslow Boy, The Spanish Prisoner, Oleanna, Homicide, Things Change, and House of Games.

For motion pictures, he has previously written and directed Redbelt, Spartan, Heist, State and Main, Catastrophe, The Winslow Boy, The Spanish Prisoner, Oleanna, Homicide, Things Change, and House of Games. For television, he has directed numerous episodes of his CBS hit series "The Unit," for which he also was creator and executive producer. He is a member of New York's Atlantic Theater Company, which he founded in 1985 with William H. Macy.

Neil Pepe has been the Artistic Director of the award-winning Atlantic Theater Company since 1992. Under Mr. Pepe's direction the Atlantic has garnered four Tony awards, six Obie awards and numerous others. He simultaneously directed both the acclaimed, sold-out world premiere of Academy Award® winning filmmaker Ethan Coen's Almost an Evening at Atlantic Stage 2 (and the subsequent commercial transfer to The Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street), and the world premiere of Jez Butterworth's Parlour Song at Atlantic's main stage Linda Gross Theatre. Pepe staged a double-bill of Atlantic co-founder David Mamet's plays - The Duck Variations and the world-premiere of Keep Your Pantheon at the Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles. He directed Harold Pinter's first and most recent plays, The Room and Celebration at Atlantic and staged the world premiere of David Mamet's new play Romance in 2005, also at the Atlantic. He directed the world premiere of Howard Korder's Sea Of Tranquility in Spring of 2004 as well as the American premiere of Jez Butterworth's The Night Heron in the Fall of 2003 at the Atlantic. Mr. Butterworth and Mr. Pepe also collaborated on the critically acclaimed New York premiere of Butterworth's play Mojo (Drama League Award nomination). Mr. Pepe directed the last major revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo, starring William H. Macy, Phillip Baker Hall and Mark Webber, which had its initial run at the Donmar Warehouse in London before moving to a sold-out run in New York. In the Fall of 2002, he directed the American premiere of the award-winning Joe Penhall play Blue/Orange starring Harold Perrineau, Glenn Fitzgerald and Zjelko Ivanek. Other notable productions include The Beginning Of August by Tom Donaghy starring Mary Steenburgen (South Coast Repertory and Atlantic), the World Premiere of Eric Bogosian's Red Angel starring Mr. Bogosian at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Refuge by Jessica Goldberg at Playwrights' Horizons, Zinnie Harris' Further Than The Furthest Thing at Manhattan Theatre Club, Wolf Lullaby by Hilary Bell, Clean by Edwin Sanchez, and Shaker Heights by Quincy Long (Outer Critic' Circle Award nomination), all at the Atlantic. Pepe most recently directed on Broadway, David Mamet's acclaimed revival of Speed-The-Plow at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.