REG E. CATHEY (House of Cards, The Wire) joins the cast of EXODUS: DREAMS OF THE PROMISED LAND IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA, playing multiple roles including Solomon Northrup (Twelve Years a Slave) and the Abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The cast also includes ROSALYN COLEMAN WILLIAMS (The Mountaintop, Seven Guitars, The Piano Lesson) in multiple roles including Elizabeth Keckley (familiar to audiences from the movie Lincoln), JENNIFER RAU as Abolitionist Angelina Grimké, and the noted vocal ensemble THE WESTERN WIND. Conceived by Salon/Sanctuary's Founding Artistic Director Jessica Gould to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, EXODUS was originally presented last year in a sold-out performance staged at the historic Fraunces Tavern, the oldest structure in Manhattan.
EXODUS is a moving and joyous celebration, through theatre and music, of the struggle for freedom and the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity. The script, created by director Erica Gould, interweaves Abolitionist and Suffragette texts and Slave Narratives (by figures such as Solomon Northrup, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Keckley, Sarah Mapps Douglas, and Angelina Grimké) with excerpts from the Hagaddah and African-American spirituals, Shaker hymns, and music by American composers including M. Durham, the first known American female composer, all sung by the acclaimed vocal ensemble The Western Wind.
There will be two performances on Saturday, April 5th, 2014 at 3:00PM and 6:00PM at The Fraunces Tavern Museum Flag Gallery in New York City.
Praised for "highly original" and "imaginitive" programming and noted for "impeccably curated early-music performances in intimate historical venues," the ever-inventive Salon/Sanctuary Concerts offers Exodus as a special interdisciplinary project for the Passover and Easter season, featuring early American music in one of America's most historically significant structures. Built in 1719, Fraunces Tavern is the oldest structure in Manhattan. The original site of the departments of War, Treasury, and State where George Washington bid farewell to his troops in 1783 sets the stage for this starkly beautiful American repertoire.REG E. CATHEY'S film and television appearances include House Of Cards, Arbitrage, Law & Order: SVU, Lights Out, 30 Rock, The Wire, Oz, Everyday People, The Corner, Boycott (HBO), S.W.A. T., The Machinist, American Psycho, Se7en, Tank Girl, and Star Trek-The Next Generation. He recently completed filming Hands of Stone, Nasty Baby and the Untitled Chris Messina film.
His numerous stage appearances include The 8th (Manchester International Festival, Original Cast Album), The Shawshank Redemption (London's West End, Dublin), The Green Bird (Broadway), Blue Door (Playwrights Horizon), White Chocolate (Culture Project), Talk (Obie Award, Foundry Theatre), American Buffalo (W.H.A.T. Theatre), Love's Labor's Lost, Timon Of Athens, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Macbeth, (NYSF.- Public Theatre), The Winter's Tale (Williamstown Theatre Festival), The Cure At Troy (Yale Rep), Dante's Inferno (Huntington Theatre), Henry IV Part 1 and 2 (California Shakespeare Festival) and Cato (Flea Theatre).
Broadway: The Mountaintop, Radio Golf, Seven Guitars, The Piano Lesson, Mule Bone, and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. Off-Broadway: world premieres of Whose Family Values and Carson McCullers (Historically Inaccurate) by Sarah Schulman (Playwright's Horizons/The Women's Project). Other notable New York stage credits include the critically acclaimed, Breath Boom directed by Marion McClinton at Playwright's Horizons, The Old Settler at Primary Stages, and most recently Zooman and the Sign at the Signature Theater. Fox Fellow, Outer Critics Circle, Owen Dodson, and Drama League Award winner, Barrymore Award nomination.
Film roles include: Frankie and Alice starring Halle Berry, It's Kind of a Funny Story, the lead in the independent film Indelible, Brooklyn's Finest, Twelve, Vanilla Sky, Our Song, Brown Sugar, Hook'd Up, and Music of the Heart. TV Movies: The Piano Lesson and Ditch Diggers Daughter. Other television appearances include: recurring roles on NBC's "Kidnapped, DC" on the WB and "OZ" on HBO; guest starring roles on "White Collar", "Mercy", "Nurse Jackie", "New Amsterdam", "NYPD Blue", "NY Undercover"; and several appearances on "Law & Order: SVU & Criminal Intent". As a film director, Rosalyn has won the Best Director Motor City International Film Festival and Best Shorts DC Shorts, for her film, Allergic to Nuts. Cine Noir in Wilmington, NC named her 2008 Emerging Filmmaker honoree. Graduate, Howard University and Yale School of Drama.
Off-Broadway and Regional Theater credits include: Once In A Lifetime (Atlantic Theater Company), The Hologram Theory (Blue Light), Sex Parasite (Center Theatre Group), M Butterfly (East West Players), Miracles and The Baby Dance (Barter Theatre). Film and Television credits: Finding Amanda, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Without A Trace, yes,dear, Inconceivable, the award-winning short film Some Boys Don't Leave, and the upcoming feature Light Years.
ERICA GOULD's directing credits include the world premieres of Neil LaBute's plays autobahn and Stand Up (with Mos Def), SpeakEasy by writers including Theresa Rebeck and Rajiv Joseph (Joe's Pub/Public Theater), Troilus and Cressida (NY Stage & Film), and Dirty Paki Lingerie, which she developed with writer/solo performer Aizzah Fatima (Cherry Lane, 59E59, The Flea, Toronto, Edinburgh, Pakistan through the US State Dept, upcoming at John Jay) and which has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, CBC, BBC). Other projects include the US premiere of Me Cago en Dios by Inigo Ramirez de Haro (La MaMa), Max and the Truffle Pig (NYMF), What Light From Darkness Grows w/ Phylicia Rashad and Harry Lennix, At War: American Playwrights Respond to Iraq with David Strathairn, Bebe Neuwirth, Daniel Sunjata, Gloria Reuben, and Bobby Cannavale (Bleecker Street Theater/The Fire Dept). Also for Salon/Sanctuary, she has directed Campbell Scott and Melissa Errico in More Between Heaven and Earth, Battalia in collaboration with dancers from the NYC Ballet, and the site-specific opera-theatre piece The Heirs of Tantalus. She is also a fight director and has taught at Yale, NYU, Fordham, Pace, Bard, NY Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, O'Neill National Theatre Institute.
Since 1969, the internationally acclaimed vocal sextet The Western Wind has devoted itself to the special beauty and variety of a cappella music. The Ensemble's repertoire reveals its diverse background - from Renaissance motets to Fifties rock 'n'roll, from medieval carols to Duke Ellington, from complex works by avant-garde composers to the simplest folk melodies. The ensemble's demanding performance schedule has included such venues as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, ArtPark, The Ordway Theater, The Metropolitan Museum, The Frick Museum, The Jewish Museum, Folger Shakespeare Library, Library of Congress, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Founded by Artistic Director Jessica Gould in 2009, SALON/SANCTUARY CONCERTS offers the special chance to hear pre-Romantic music in intimate venues that complement the historical context of the repertoire. Pleased to present special projects that cast a light on historical issues through the prism of music, Salon/Sanctuary takes pride in many special interdisciplinary performances featuring luminaries from the worlds of opera, theater, film, and dance. The series has garnered critical praise for its innovative programming, and continues to attract a diverse audience for its path breaking offerings. Soloists on Salon /Sanctuary include countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, lutenist Hopkinson Smith, soprano Julianne Baird, violinists Monica Huggett, Robert Mealy, and Cynthia Roberts, oboist Gonzalo Ruiz, Harpsichordists Bradley Brookshire, Jory Vinikour, and Kenneth Weiss, NYCB principal dancers Jared Angel and Megan LeCrone, and actors Kathleen Chalfant, Melissa Errico, Ethan Peck, Campbell Scott, and Matthew Modine.
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