FIELD GUIDE Premiere, 'FATHER COMES HOME' and More on Tap for Yale Rep's 2017-18 Season
By: BWW News Desk Apr. 05, 2017
Yale Repertory Theatre, the multiple Tony Award-winning theatre dedicated to the production of new plays and bold interpretations of classic works, has announced its 2017-18 Season.
Artistic Director James Bundy said, "I am delighted that we can look forward to a season of such scope and complexity, bringing internationally acclaimed artists and field leaders to New Haven, and offering Yale Rep audiences opportunities to witness vital perspectives on the world, particularly its literature, history, and politics."
The season opens with An Enemy of the People (October 6-October 28), the political masterpiece by Henrik Ibsen, newly translated from the Norwegian by Paul Walsh, directed by James Bundy.
Nambi E. Kelley will make her Yale Rep debut with her critically-acclaimed play, Native Son (November 24-December 16), adapted from Richard Wright's iconic novel, directed by Seret Scott.
Rude Mechs, the Austin-based theatre collective whose work has been presented previously as part of Yale Rep's annual No Boundaries performance series, will debut Field Guide (January 26-February 17), a subversively funny riff on Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.
Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 (March 16-April 7) reunites Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks and Resident Director Liz Diamond, who collaborated on Yale Rep's world premieres of The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World and The America Play.
Resident Director Evan Yionoulis, who most recently staged Shakespeare's Cymbeline, returns with Kiss (April 27-May 19), a new play by Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón, hailed by The New Yorker as "a true genius of the theatre."
The events for Yale Rep's annual No Boundaries performance series will be announced at a later date.
ABOUT YALE REP'S 2017-18 SEASON:
AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
By Henrik Ibsen
Translated from the Norwegian by Paul Walsh
Directed by James Bundy
October 6-October 28, 2017
University Theatre (222 York Street)
A small Norwegian town is banking on its medicinal baths to bring prosperity. But its economic growth and moral health are threatened when Dr. Thomas Stockmann uncovers a toxic secret that pits him against his brother, Mayor Peter Stockmann. In Ibsen's thrilling political masterpiece, a family in power struggles over its obligations to each other and to society: who is the enemy of the people, and who is their benefactor?
Paul Walsh (Translator) is Professor in the Practice of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama. This is his fifth Ibsen translation to be produced professionally. Other Ibsen translations include A Doll's House (American Conservatory Theater, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Theatre Vertigo, Williamstown Theatre Festival), The Master Builder (Aurora Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, People's Light & Theatre Company), Hedda Gabler (American Conservatory Theater, Penobscot Theatre Company, Actors Collective, Yale School of Drama, Cutting Ball Theater), and John Gabriel Borkman (Stratford Festival). His translations of August Strindberg's five Chamber Plays (2012) and A Dreamplay (2015) were produced by Cutting Ball Theater under the direction of Rob Melrose. Walsh has worked as dramaturg, translator, and co-author with theater companies across the country, including Theatre de la Jeune Lune, where he collaborated on such award-winning productions as Children of Paradise: Shooting a Dream, Don Juan Giovanni, Germinal and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Walsh received a Ph.D. from the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama at the University of Toronto.
James Bundy (Director) is in his 15th year as Dean of Yale School of Drama and Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theatre. In his first 14 seasons, Yale Rep has produced more than 30 world, American, and regional premieres, nine of which have been honored by the Connecticut Critics Circle with the award for Best Production of the year and two of which have been Pulitzer Prize finalists. During this time, Yale Rep also has commissioned more than 50 artists to write new work and provided low-cost theatre tickets to thousands of middle and high school students from Greater New Haven through Will Power!, an educational program initiated in 2004. In addition to his work at Yale Rep, he has directed productions at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Great Lakes Theater Festival, The Acting Company, California Shakespeare Festival, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and The Juilliard School Drama Division. A recipient of the Connecticut Critics Circle's Tom Killen Award for extraordinary contributions to Connecticut professional theatre in 2007, Mr. Bundy served from 2007-13 on the board of directors of Theatre Communications Group, the national service organization for nonprofit theatre. Previously, he worked as Associate Producing Director of The Acting Company, Managing Director of Cornerstone Theater Company, and Artistic Director of Great Lakes Theater Festival. He is a graduate of Harvard College; he trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and Yale School of Drama.
NATIVE SON
By Nambi E. Kelley
Adapted from the Novel by Richard Wright
Directed by Seret Scott
November 24-December 16, 2017
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)
Chicago's South Side, the 1930s. Bigger Thomas struggles to find a place for himself in a world whose prejudice has shut him out. After taking a job in a wealthy white man's house, he unwittingly unleashes a series of events that violently and irrevocably seal his fate. Native Son is an unforgettable theatrical experience that captures the power of Richard Wright's iconic novel about oppression, freedom, and justice.
Nambi E. Kelley (Playwright) has penned plays for Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, Court Theatre/American Blues Theater, Lincoln Center Theater, and with LATT Children's Theatre/Unibooks Publishing Company (South Korea), Teatri Sbagliati (Italy), and The Finger Players (Singapore), where she also performed in the co-adapted production of The Book of Living and Dying. The world premiere of Native Son was nominated for five Jeff Awards including best adaptation and production of the year, and was the highest grossing production in Court Theatre's 60-year history. It is included on the Kilroy's List 2015, in the top 7% of new plays by female and trans* authors. Her other works include an adaptation of Toni Morrison's Jazz (Baltimore Center Stage) and Xtigone (Chicago Danz Theatre Ensemble; African American Shakespeare Company, directed by Rhodessa Jones), which is published by YouthPlays Publishing. A recent finalist for the Francesca Primus Award and the Kevin Spacey Foundation Award, Kelley is the Playwright in Residence at National Black Theatre in addition to her affiliations with Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, La Mama E.T.C., Spoleto, Ragdale Foundation, HealthWorks Theatre, Chicago Dramatists, Danny Glover's Robey Theatre Co. Playwriting Lab, and MPAACT. An accomplished actress, Kelley has performed at theatres across the country and internationally and has been seen on several television shows, including Search Party, Person of Interest, Madam Secretary, Elementary, and Chicago Justice. Nambi has a BFA from The Theatre School at DePaul University and an MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College. nambikelley.com
Seret Scott (Director) recently directed the world premiere of Native Son at Chicago's Court Theatre. At Yale Rep she previously directed Crumbs from the Table of Joy by Lynn Nottage. She is as Associate Artist at the Old Globe Theatre. She has directed productions Off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre and New Victory Theatre; and at regional theatres including American Conservatory Theater, South Coast Repertory, Long Wharf Theatre, Hartford Stage, Arena Stage, Woolley Mammoth, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Denver Theatre Center, and Philadelphia Theatre Company, among many others.
Please note: Native Son is the first of Yale Rep's two 2017-18 Will Power! productions. The run includes 10:15AM performances on December 12 and 14, available only to high school groups. For information on Will Power!, please contact Roger-Paul Snell here.
World Premiere
FIELD GUIDE
Created by Rude Mechs
Commissioned by Yale Rep
January 26-February 17, 2018
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)
With breakneck speed and endless invention, Field Guide skates through one of the greatest-and longest!-novels ever written: The Brothers Karamazov. Rude Mechs literally (well, not literally) rips pages out of Dostoevsky's powerful meditation on faith, meaning, and morality and mischievously replaces them with standup comedy, pop music dance numbers, a cardboard bear, and a talking bird.
Rude Mechs (Creators) Since 1995, Rude Mechs has created 21 original works and produced another handful of plays by other people. They tour their original work nationally and abroad whenever they can; maintain The Off Center, a performance venue in Austin for arts groups of every discipline; and run a year-round arts mentoring program for teenage girls. They're an ensemble-based theatre company with 6 Co-Producing Artistic Directors and a full company of 29 members. Touring productions include The Method Gun; I've Never Been So Happy; Get Your War On; How Late It Was, How Late; Cherrywood; Lipstick Traces; Now Now Oh Now; and Stop Hitting Yourself. Rude Mechs has received over 200 local and national awards for their work. They've also toured around the States to venues like The Walker Arts Center, The Wexner Center, Center Theatre Group, and Woolly Mammoth in Washington, D.C.; and then out of the country to places like Austria's SommerSzene, the Galway Arts Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Total Theatre Award for Best New Play by an Ensemble), the Kiasma Festival (Helsinki), and the Brisbane Powerhouse Festival.
FATHER COMES HOME FROM THE WARS, PARTS 1, 2 & 3
By Suzan-Lori Parks
Directed by Liz Diamond
A Co-Production with American Conservatory Theater
March 16-April 7, 2018
University Theatre (222 York Street)
In the astonishing first installment of Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks's new American Odyssey, set over the course of the Civil War, Hero is offered his freedom from slavery in exchange for joining his master in the ranks of the Confederacy. Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 is a devastatingly beautiful epic new work filled with music, wit, and exquisite lyricism.
Suzan-Lori Parks (Playwright) Named one of Time Magazine's "100 Innovators for the Next New Wave" in 2002, Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her Broadway hit Topdog/Underdog. A MacArthur "Genius" Award and Gish Prize recipient, she has also been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 had its world premiere at The Public Theater and has also been staged at American Repertory Theater and Center Theatre Group. The play was named a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was awarded the 2015 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History as well as the 2014 Horton Foote Prize. Parks's work on The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess was honored with the 2012 Tony Award. Her numerous plays include The Book of Grace, In the Blood (2000 Pulitzer Prize finalist), Venus (1996 OBIE Award), 365 Days/365 Plays, and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, among others. Parks's novel Getting Mother's Body was published by Random House. Her screenplays include Girl 6 written for Spike Lee, as well as works for Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, and Jodie Foster. Her adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God premiered on ABC's "Oprah Winfrey Presents." Parks is currently writing an adaptation of the film The Harder They Come for a live stage musical. Parks is the Master Writer Chair at The Public Theater, and she serves as a professor in dramatic writing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
Liz Diamond (Director) celebrates her 25th year as a Resident Director at Yale Repertory Theatre next season and serves as Chair of the Directing Department at Yale School of Drama. Productions at Yale Rep include The Winter's Tale, Lucinda Coxon's Happy Now? (also at Primary Stages in New York), Marcus Gardley's dance of the holy ghosts, Strindberg's Miss Julie, Sunil Kuruvilla's Fighting Words and Rice Boy, Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy, Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle and St. Joan of the Stockyards, and the premieres of The America Play and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World by Suzan-Lori Parks. She has directed new plays and classical works at theatres including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, American Repertory Theatre, The Public Theater, Vineyard Theatre, and Theatre for a New Audience, and has won the OBIE and the Connecticut Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Direction. Additional Yale credits include Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, in a joint Yale School of Drama/Yale School of Music production at Carnegie Hall, as well as Matthew Suttor's and Timothy Young's musical adaptation of Blaise Cendrar's Prose du Transsiberien for the Beinecke Library's 50th anniversary celebration.
Please note: Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 is the second of Yale Rep's two 2017-18 Will Power! productions. The run includes 10:15AM performances on April 3 and 5, available only to high school groups. For information on Will Power!, please contact Roger-Paul Snell here.
KISS
By Guillermo Calderón
Directed by Evan Yionoulis
April 27-May 19, 2018
Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street)
A standing double date in Damascus quickly escalates into farce as four friends unburden their hearts and reveal their secret passions. But as civil war wages outside, nothing is really what it seems to be. Kiss is a politically charged and emotionally resonant exploration of what gets lost in translation: the unfathomable human toll of a nation in chaos.
Guillermo Calderón (Playwright), born in Santiago, Chile, is a screenwriter, playwright, and theatre director based in the U.S. His plays include Neva, Diciembre, Clase, Villa, Speech, Quake, Escuela, Kiss, Mateluna, and Goldrausch. Calderón's productions have toured extensively through South America, North America, and Europe. He has been commissioned to write and direct by the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Theater Basel, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, The Royal Court Theatre, Center Theatre Group, and The Public Theater, where he also directed Neva. His co-written screenplay Violeta Went to Heaven won the World Cinema Jury Prize for Drama at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He co-wrote The Club, directed by Pablo Larrain, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival 2015 and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. The script won the silver plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival. He wrote the script for Neruda, directed by Pablo Larraín, presented at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (The Director's Fortnight) during the Cannes Film Festival 2016. His recently directed his play Villa in New York City at The Play Company. His new play B will be produced at The Royal Court Theatre in September 2017.
Evan Yionoulis (Director) is a Resident Director at Yale Rep where her productions include The Master Builder, Richard II, The King Stag, Galileo, Heaven, Black Snow, The People Next Door, Stones in His Pockets, Bossa Nova, Owners, and Cymbeline. New York credits include Richard Greenberg's The Violet Hour (Broadway), Everett Beekin (Lincoln Center Theater), and Three Days of Rain (Manhattan Theatre Club, OBIE Award for Direction); and Adrienne Kennedy's Ohio State Murders (Lucille Lortel Award, Best Revival) and Howard Brenton's Sore Throats at Theatre for a New Audience. She directed Tom Stoppard's Hapgood starring Kate Burton at Williamstown Theatre Festival. With frequent collaborator, composer/lyricist Mike Yionoulis, she is developing the multi-platform project, Redhand Guitar, about five generations of musicians across an American century, and The Dread Pirate Project, about the malleability of identity between the digital and natural worlds. Other credits include productions at theatres such as the Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Rep, Huntington Theatre Company, New York Shakespeare Festival, Vineyard Theatre, Second Stage, Dallas Theater Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Denver Center. She is a Princess Grace Foundation Awards recipient, and a Professor in the Practice of Acting and Directing at Yale School of Drama.
Yale Repertory Theatre, the internationally celebrated professional theatre in residence at Yale School of Drama, has championed new work since 1966, producing well over 100 premieres-including two Pulitzer Prize winners and four other nominated finalists-by emerging and established playwrights. Thirteen Yale Rep productions have advanced to Broadway, garnering more than 40 Tony Award nominations and eight Tony Awards. Yale Rep is also the recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre.
Established in 2008, Yale's Binger Center for New Theatre has distinguished itself as one of the nation's most robust and innovative new play programs. To date, the Binger Center has supported the work of more than 50 commissioned artists and underwritten the world premieres and subsequent productions of 25 new American plays and musicals at Yale Rep and theatres across the country-including next season's Field Guide created by Rude Mechs.
Indecent, the critically acclaimed new play created by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel and director Rebecca Taichman, which was commissioned by and premiered at Yale Rep in 2015, opens on Broadway this spring. Theatre for a New Audience in New York recently presented Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters, directed by Christopher Bayes, which has been seen at theatres across the country since the production debuted at Yale Rep in 2010, and will present Yale Rep's production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, featuring two-time Oscar winner Dianne Wiest and Jarlath Conroy, directed by James Bundy, April 23-May 28.
Yale Repertory Theatre offers a variety of subscription packages, starting at less than $35 per ticket for the general public and $10 for students. Subscriptions are available online at yalerep.org, by phone at (203) 432-1234, and in person at the Yale Rep Box Office (1120 Chapel Street). Individual and group tickets for the entire season will go on sale on August 28.
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