TFANA Presents Peter Brook And Marie-Hélène Estienne's THE PRISONER

Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA; Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director) presents the New York Premiere of C.I.C.T. - Théâtre du Bouffes du Nord's The Prisoner, continuing Peter Brook's 40-year-long collaboration with playwright/director Marie-Hélène Estienne.

Peter Brook traveled to Afghanistan prior to the Soviet Invasion in 1979. There, he saw a man commanded to sit in the open, outside a prison, until his sentence was served. Brook tells The Scotsman, "I never found out what he had done and what his crime was. I didn't know how this story ended. However, the look in this man's eyes, and the questions surrounding his situation, led me to feel that I couldn't leave this story, because it doesn't leave me."

Brook and Estienne's The Prisoner is based on this recollection. The audience is told immediately who the prisoner is and what he is accused of. A Traveler (Hayley Carmichael) learns that Mavuso (Hiran Abeysekera) has murdered his father when he discovered him in bed with Nadia, his sister (Kalieaswari Srinivasan). Mavuso was not simply punishing his father. Mavuso also desires Nadia, and Nadia has incestuous feelings for her brother. Ezekiel, Mavuso's uncle, sentences Mavuso to sit outside a prison saying, "If someone asks you 'Why are you here?' you'll reply: 'I am here to repair.'" Nadia, after the father's death, gives birth to their daughter. As she raises her child, Nadia tries to heal herself. She becomes a doctor. In 70 minutes, The Prisoner explores justice, punishment, family and sexual relationships, redemption, and forgiveness.

Jeffrey Horowitz adds, "The Prisoner is a journey with actors and audience which explores age-old questions of justice, forgiveness, and the purpose of punishment. Patricide and the taboo of incest have roots in the Greeks and Shakespeare. In The Prisoner, there is tenderness, humor, and compassion, but no guides or comfortable certainties of right and wrong or even forgiveness. Only possibilities. We can only repair alone."

TFANA most recently presented Brook and Estienne's The Valley of the Astonishment and previously, The Grand Inquisitor based on Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Samuel Beckett's Fragments. The Prisoner is a production of C.I.C.T. - Théâtre du Bouffes du Nord and co-commissioned and co-produced by Theatre for a New Audience; National Theatre, London; The Grotowski Institute, Wroclaw; Ruhrfestspiele, Recklinghausen; and Yale Repertory Theatre. The Prisoner comes to the Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place) November 24-December 16, after having premiered in Paris and toured to Edinburgh, London, Rome, and Yale Repertory Theatre.

The Prisoner: Text and Direction by Peter Brook and Marie Hélène Estienne. The cast: Hiran Abeysekera (Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamlet and Cymbeline; Film and TV: BBC's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Find Me in Paris), Hayley Carmichael (Bouffes du Nord's Fragments, Young Vic's Sweet Nothings;Film and TV: Kiss Me First, Tale of Tales), Hervé Goffings (Hervé at Edinburgh Fringe, various venues), Omar Silva, and Kalieaswari Srinivasan (Film: Dheepan). The creative team includes Philippe Vialatte (Lighting), David Violi (Set Elements), and Alice François (Costume Assistant), Special thanks: Playwrights Tarell Alvin McCraney and Alexander Zeldin who participated in developmental workshops of The Prisoner.

Performance Schedule, Ticketing, and Other Information

Performances of The Prisoner will take place in the evenings November 24-25, 28-30, December 1-2, 4-8, and 11-15 at 7:30pm; on November 26 at 7pm; and for matinees on December 1-2, 8-9, and 15-16 at 2pm.

Members of the press are welcome December 7th at 7:30pm, December 8th at 2pm or 7:30pm, and December 9th at 2pm.

Free post-performance conversations (TFANA Talks) with Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne will be held after the matinee performances on December 1st, December 9th; and December 15th.

Theatre for a New Audience is committed to economically accessible tickets and offers tickets at a range of prices for The Prisoner.

$20 New Deal: all Performances. Age 30 and under or full-time students of any age. May be purchased online, phone, or at the box office, in advance or day-of, with valid ID(s) proving eligibility required at pickup.

$20 Brooklyn Pass: all Performances. Members of local Brooklyn non-profit organizations through Brooklyn Pass program.

$28 TDF: selected performances.

$60: all performances with a TFANA subscription.

Special Discounts: TFANA offers special discounts available by joining TFANA mailing list at www.tfana.org.

$90-$100: all performances.

$115 Premium Seats: all performances.

Polonsky Shakespeare Center is located at 262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn.

About Peter Brook
Peter Brook was born in London in 1925. Throughout his career, he distinguished himself in various genres: theater, opera, cinema and writing. He directed his first play there in 1943. He then went on to direct over 70 productions in London, Paris and New York. In 1971, he founded with Micheline Rozan the International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris and in 1974, opened its permanent base in the Bouffes du Nord Theatre. Lately, he directed The Suit (2012), The Valley of Astonishment (2014) and Battlefield (2015) - many of these performing both in French and English.

About Marie-Hélène Estienne
Marie-Hélène Estienne joined the CICT in 1976 - and since then has never left - from press secretary to Peter Brook's assistant, she has worked on many shows including casting the pieces. In time, she became Peter Brook's collaborator, adapting texts, writing alone or with him and finally participating in the staging of the shows. Their recent work includes The Suit, The Valley of Astonishment and The Prisoner.

About the Cast

Hiran Abeysekera
Born in Sri Lanka in 1986, he studied at school of Nalanda Vidyalaya where he was taught drama for the first time. In 2007, he met Willi Richards, former artistic director, who led several theater venues in England and programs for the BBC. They first collaborated on a trilingual version of Romeo and Juliette, in Sri Lanka. Richards gave Abeysekera the opportunity to join a drama school in England. He graduated RADA in 2011.

Hayley Carmichael
Hayley Carmichael is co-founder of Told By An Idiot and has both devised and performed in many of their productions. Other theatre includes: Crave (Barbican), Cymbeline (Kneehigh), The Dispute (RSC), Bliss (Royal Court), Zumanity (Cirque de Soleil), Street of Crocodiles (Complicite), Theatre of Blood (RNT/Improbable). In 2009, she first collaborated with Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne in Fragments by Samuel Beckett. Film/television includes: Tale of Tales Dir: Matteo Garrone (2015), Kiss me First (C4), Chewing Gum (C4), The Witness for the Prosecution (BBC, 2016).

Hervé Goffings
Hervé Goffings is a French actor, singer and dancer. Born in Mali, he grew up in a white family living in Africa and then moved with them to France; he went on to graduate with an MA in Musical Theatre at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The extraordinary tale of his adoption was made into Hervé, a one-man show. Highlights of his theatre roles include Caliban in Shakespeare's La Tempête, Horse in The Full Monty, Poncho in Oscar Hammerstein's musical Carmen Jones.

Omar Silva

Omar Enrique Silva Martínez studied Theater and Acting at Centro Universitario de Teatro (CUT) in UNAM and is a member Tribu Teatro. His work in theatre includes El Coro (winner of the 24th International Festival of University Theater) at the Theater Show of Mexico City, International Theater Day, Mexico and the International Festival of Dramatic Art Colleges in Rabat, Morocco. Omar Silva is a guitarist and composer for acoustic ensemble R.I.P. Rapunzel.

Kalieaswari Srinivasan
Kalieaswari Srinivasan has worked with different theatre groups in southern India and France. Her work in theatre includes performances for Indianostrum Theatre at Theatre du Soleil, Paris; and Biryani as part of the Perth Winter Arts Festival. Film includes Dheepan (Palme d'Or winner) at Cannes. She has also directed street plays in public spaces. She has been a regular performer at Short and Sweet theatre festival in Chennai, where her work has included Statue, Never Give Up.

About the Creative Team

Philippe Vialatte
Philippe Vialatte started at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in 1985 as a light operator on Le Mahabharata and assisted on the light design for Woza Albert and La Tempête, all directed by Peter Brook. Since 1993, he has designed the lights for Peter Brook's plays in the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord.

About Theatre for a New Audience

Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) is a modern classic theatre. It produces Shakespeare alongside other authors such as Harley Granville Barker, Samuel Beckett, Edward Bond, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins., Adrienne Kennedy, Richard Maxwell, Richard Nelson, Wallace Shawn and TFANA has played Off- and on Broadway and toured nationally and internationally.

In 2001, Theatre for a New Audience became the first American theatre invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Stratford-upon-Avon. Cymbeline, directed by Bartlett Sher, premiered at the RSC; in 2007, TFANA was invited to return to the RSC with The Merchant of Venice, directed by Darko Tresnjak and featuring F. Murray Abraham. In 2011, Mr. Abraham reprised his role as Shylock for a national tour.

After 34 years of being itinerant and playing mostly in Manhattan, Theatre for a New Audience moved to Brooklyn and opened its first permanent home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, in October 2013. Built by The City of New York in partnership with Theatre for a New Audience, and located in the Brooklyn Cultural District, Polonsky Shakespeare Center was designed by Hugh Hardy and H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture with theatre consultants Akustiks, Milton Glaser, Jean-Guy Lecat, and Theatre Projects. Housed inside the building are the Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage (299 seats)-the first stage built for Shakespeare and classical drama in New York City since Lincoln Center's 1965 Vivian Beaumont-and the Theodore C. Rogers Studio (50 seats).

TFANA's productions have been honored with Tony, Obie, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Lortel and Audelco awards and nominations and reach an audience diverse in age, economics and cultural background.

Theatre for a New Audience created and runs the largest in-depth program in the New York City Public Schools to introduce students to Shakespeare and has served over 130,000 students since the program began in 1984. TFANA's New Deal ticket program is one of the lowest reserved ticket prices for youth in the city: $20 for any show, any time for those 30 years old and under or for full-time students of any age.

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