American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) and Harvard Art Museums have partnered in conjunction with the A.R.T.'s production of WARHOLCAPOTE to present a series of events highlighting the contemporary legacies of Andy Warhol and Truman Capote, including a unique encounter with Warhol screen-prints and a speaker series featuring journalists, multimedia artists, curators, and collectors.
Visitors to the Museums' Art Study Center (32 Quincy Street, Cambridge) can view selections from Warhol's portfolio Marilyn Monroe, one of the artist's most well-known sets of screen-prints, and discuss them with staff. As one of Warhol's earliest muses, Monroe was a central figure in the artist's ongoing exploration of fame and celebrity-central topics of discussion in adaptor Rob Roth's new play now in performance at the Loeb Drama Center.
The screen-prints are on view during the Art Study Center's open hours: Mondays, September 11, 18, 25, and October 2, 2017, 1PM - 4PM. Admission is free with museum admission; children under 14 and older are welcome but must be accompanied by an adult. Please note a photo ID is required.
Also part of Act II initiatives surrounding the production, a speaker series invites audience members to remain at the theater following select performances for a second act of curated discussions. The following events are free and open to ticket-holders of any WARHOLCAPOTE performance, subject to availability. Recordings of past discussions will be available at americanrepertorytheater.org/page/warholcapote-act-ii. For more information, contact Ticket Services at617.547.8300. Please note: schedule subject to change.
DJ, Artist, and Writer Jace Clayton
Wednesday, September 20, following the 7:30PM performance
A Manhattan-based artist and writer also known for his work as DJ/rupture, Clayton uses an interdisciplinary approach to focus on how sound, memory, and public space interact, with an emphasis on low-income communities and the global South. His book Uproot: Travels in 21st Century Music and Digital Culture was published in 2016 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Recent projects include Sufi Plug Ins, a free suite of music software-as-art, based on non-western conceptions of sound and alternative interfaces; Room 21, an evening-length composition for 20 musicians staged at the Barnes Foundation; and The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner, a touring performance piece for grand pianos, electronics, and voice. As DJ /rupture, he has released several critically acclaimed albums and hosted a weekly radio show on WFMU for five years. Clayton's collaborators include filmmakers Jem Cohen, Joshua Oppenheimer, poet Elizabeth Alexander, singer Norah Jones, and guitarist Andy Moor (The Ex).
Clayton is the UNC-CH/Duke Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor. He is a 2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Nonfiction Literature fellow, a 2013 Creative Capital Performing Arts grantee, and recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Art artists award. He joined the Music/Sound faculty of Bard College's MFA program in 2013. Clayton has been an artist-in-residence with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Eyebeam Art + Technology Atelier, and a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism fellow. He has performed in over three dozen countries and has given artist talks at a number of museums, universities, and other institutions, including The Andy Warhol Museum. Watch a "PBS Newshour" segment on Jace.
WARHOLCAPOTE Adaptor and Theatrical/Rock Tour Director Rob Roth
Wednesday, September 27 & Thursday, September 28, following the 7:30PM performances
Roth received a Tony nomination for his Broadway directing debut, Disney's Beauty and The Beast, which went on to become the eighth-longest-running show in Broadway history. The production has been seen by more than 40 million people all over the world, winning many awards, including the Olivier Award for Best Musical in London. Roth went on to direct the inaugural production of Elton John and Tim Rice's AIDA, and the Broadway musical Lestat, based on the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles, with score by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. In addition to his work in theater, Roth is a frequent director of rock concerts, working with legendary artists KISS, Alice Cooper, Cyndi Lauper, The Dresden Dolls, and guitar great Steve Miller, among others. Roth has developed one of the world's largest collections of rock-and-roll graphics, which are featured in the book The Art of Classic Rock.
True Crime Journalist and Professor Dick Lehr
Tuesday, October 3, following the 7:30PM performance
On the faculty at Boston University, Lehr is co-author of the Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestseller Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI and a Devil's Deal. The Warner Bros. film adaptation, starring Johnny Depp, premiered worldwide in September 2015. Lehr is the author of six other books. His most recent is Trell, a novel for young adults. His other nonfiction books include The Birth of a Movement: How Birth of a Nation Ignited the Battle for Civil Rights, which was the basis for a PBS documentary film of the same name that aired on the network's show, "Independent Lens," in February 2017. Two other books were finalists for a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award, The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston's Racial Divide, and Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders, coauthored with Mitchell Zuckoff.
Lehr previously wrote for The Boston Globe, where he was a special projects reporter, a magazine writer and a longtime member of the newspaper's Spotlight Team. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in investigative reporting and has won numerous journalism awards. Lehr has been a Visiting Journalist at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University and a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. His website is dicklehr.com.
Visual Artist Jesse Aron Green and Harvard Art Museums Curator Mary Schneider Enriquez
Wednesday, October 4, following the 7:30PM performance
Jesse Aron Green is a visual artist and writer based in Boston. His work often attempts to reconcile historical forces with the affective conditions of contemporary life, and takes the form of many types of images, objects, and events. His work has been celebrated with exhibitions at Tate Modern, the Whitney Museum of American Art, ICA Boston, the Museum of Modern Art Bologna, CCA Ujazdowski Warsaw, Halle 14 Leipzig, and many other museums and galleries around the world. His most recent exhibition in the Boston area was a comprehensive presentation of his project Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik at the Harvard Art Museums, which now holds the work in its Permanent Collection. His next work - which includes painting, sculpture, an album of music, and a novel-is titled Shake or Pop. His website is jessearongreen.com.
Schneider Enriquez is the Houghton Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museums. She recently curated the exhibitions Doris Salcedo: The Materiality of Mourning, (2016-2017) and Mark Rothko's Harvard Murals (2014-2015), as well as the modern and contemporary collections galleries in the Renzo Piano Workshop-renovated Harvard Art Museums, which reopened in November 2014. She also directed the commission and installation of a public sculpture, Triangle Constellation, by artist Carlos Amorales, currently on display in the museums' Calderwood Courtyard. Among other exhibitions at Harvard, Schneider Enriquez co-curated Geometric Abstraction: Latin American Artfrom the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection in 2001, and in 2004 she co-curated an exhibition of Chilean artist Roberto Matta's work at the McMullen Museum at Boston College. Schneider Enriquez is currently curating two exhibitions set to open at the Harvard Art Museums in 2018, one on Peruvian artist Fernando Bryce (to open in late January) and another focusing on a selection of Nam June Paik's work (to open in late June). Over the last two decades she has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogues, and written extensively on contemporary art forARTnews and ArtNexus magazines. She received her PhD in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard writing her dissertation on the work of Colombian artist Doris Salcedo.
Art Collector and Warhol Superstar "Baby Jane Holzer"
Wednesday, October 11, following the 7:30pm performance
Jane B. Holzer is in the real estate business in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida, and is an avid art collector. In the early '60s she started modeling and was catapulted to fame when David Bailey took her photographs for English Vogue in the summer of 1964. Nicky Haslam, the editor of Show magazine at the time, introduced Holzer to Andy Warhol on 59th Street in front of Bloomingdales. Warhol told her he was doing a film called Soap Opera and asked if she would like to be in it. Warhol told her to visit "The Factory" (located on 47th Street at the time) where he was painting flowers on the floor. Holzer asked Warhol where she could buy the beautiful flowers, and he sent her to Leo Castelli's gallery, where she met Castelli and Ivan Karp. It was around Warhol and Castelli's gallery that Holzer became aware of the paintings of Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein and fell in love with Franz Kline, Willem De Kooning, and Jackson Pollock.
Otherwise known as "Baby Jane Holzer," she would be the first of Andy Warhol "superstars." Holzer appeared in Warhol's Screen Tests, as well as his films Camp and Couch. She also appeared in Jack Smith's Dracula. In 1979, Holzer transitioned from the screen to the stage, appearing in the Broadway musical Gotta Go Disco by Jerry Brandt, Joe Eula, and Alan Finkelstein, based on the story of Cinderella and starring Irene Cara. Holzer remains involved in the film industry. She co-produced the award-winning film Kiss of the Spider Woman, for which William Hurt won the Academy Award for Best Actor, as well as Gimme Shelter, Growing Pains, Spike of Bensonhurst, Naked Tango, and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.
WARHOLCAPOTE Adaptor Rob Roth
Thursday, October 12, following the 7:30PM performance
(See previous description)
WARHOLCAPOTE plays now through Friday October 13 at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge. Performance dates and times: September 12, 14 - 18, 20 - 23, 26 - 30; October 3 - 7, 10 - 13 at 7:30PM; September 13 at 8PM; and September 16, 17, 20, 23, 24, 27, 30; October 1, 7, 8, 11 at 2PM. Ticket prices from $25. On sale by phone at 617.547.8300, in person at the Loeb Drama Center Ticket Services (64 Brattle Street) or online at americanrepertorytheater.org.
In the late 1970s, Truman Capote and Andy Warhol decided that they were destined to create a Broadway play together. Over the course of the next several months, they would sit down to record a series of intimate, wide-ranging conversations. The play never came to be, and the hours and hours of tape were lost to the ages. Until now. With the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Truman Capote Literary Trust, Award-winning director Rob Roth-who discovered the recordings in the late 2000's-will unveil the content of the tapes in the world premiere of WARHOLCAPOTE, a new play directed by Tony Award-winner Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening).
The cast includes Stephen Spinella (Angels in America) as Andy Warhol and Dan Butler (All the Way) as Truman Capote. Scenic design is by Stanley A. Meyer, costume design by Clint Ramos, lighting design by Kevin Adams, sound design by John Gromada, and projection design by Darrel Maloney.
The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University is a leading force in the American theater, producing groundbreaking work in Cambridge and beyond. The A.R.T. was founded in 1980 by Robert Brustein, who served as Artistic Director until 2002, when he was succeeded by RoBert Woodruff. Diane Paulus began her tenure as Artistic Director in 2008. Under the leadership of Paulus and Executive Producer Diane Borger, the A.R.T. seeks to expand the boundaries of theater by programming events that immerse audiences in transformative theatrical experiences.
Throughout its history, the A.R.T. has been honored with many distinguished awards, including the Tony Award for Best New Play for All the Way (2014); consecutive Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical for Pippin (2013) and The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (2012), both of which Paulus directed; a Pulitzer Prize; a Jujamcyn Prize for outstanding contribution to the development of creative talent; the Tony Award for Best Regional Theater; and numerous Elliot Norton and IRNE Awards.
The A.R.T. collaborates with artists around the world to develop and create work in new ways. It is currently engaged in a number of multi-year projects, including a new collaboration with Harvard's Center for the Environment that will result in the development of new work over several years. Under Paulus's leadership, the A.R.T.'s club theater, OBERON, has been an incubator for local and emerging artists and has attracted national attention for its innovative programming and business models.
As the professional theater on the campus of Harvard University, the A.R.T. catalyzes discourse, interdisciplinary collaboration, and creative exchange among a wide range of academic departments, institutions, students, and faculty members, acting as a conduit between its community of artists and the university. A.R.T. plays a central role in Harvard's newly launched undergraduate Theater, Dance, and Media concentration, teaching courses in directing, dramatic literature, acting, voice, design, and dramaturgy. The A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training, run in partnership with the Moscow Art Theatre School and the Harvard Extension School, offers graduate training in acting, dramaturgy, and voice.
Dedicated to making great theater accessible, the A.R.T. actively engages more than 5,000 community members and local students annually in project-based partnerships, workshops, conversations with artists, and other enrichment activities both at the theater and across the Greater Boston area.
Through all of these initiatives, the A.R.T. is dedicated to producing world-class performances in which the audience is central to the theatrical experience.
For further information visit americanrepertorytheater.org/WARHOLCAPOTE.
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