Junction Theatre to Present West Coast Premiere of RED VELVET

The Junction Theatre will present the West Coast Premiere of RED VELVET, a critically acclaimed play written by Lolita Chakrabarti, directed by Benjamin Pohlmeier, to be presented at Atwater Playhouse, 3191 Castitas Avenue, #100, Los Angeles, CA 90039, on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 5:00 p.m., March 26 - April 30, 2016. Tickets can be purchased by calling Brown Paper Tickets 24/7 at 1-800-838-3006, or online at http://redvelvet.brownpapertickets.com. General Admission is $25 per person; Students, Seniors and Veterans are $20 per person; and Groups of 10 or more $15 per person. To learn more, please visit www.thejunctiontheatre.org and http://atwaterplayhouse.com/

In the play RED VELVET, pandemonium erupts when American actor, Ira Aldridge, arrives at a prestigious English theatre to play the title role in Shakespeare's play, Othello. For the eloquent and passionate Aldridge is a black man, something unheard of on London stages in 1833, even in the role of Shakespeare's doomed Moor. RED VELVET examines what happens when a courageous few dare to challenge the status quo, how intractable opinions and feelings can be, and how hard it is to bring about change.

Director Benjamin Pohlmeier says, "Resistance to diversity is rooted in the fear of change; a fear of accepting a constantly evolving world, because it will mean the loss of privilege. Privilege, conversely, translates into influence, and, if ruthlessly executed, it will slow the match of progress to a desperate crawl. A play not only about race, RED VELVET shows how in the face of adversity, passion and persistence inevitably build the kind of pressure necessary to bring about change, but it also tallies-up the costs of losing battles we dare to fight."

Playwright Lolita Chakrabarti's play, RED VELVET has been critically acclaimed in numerous productions in London, as well as in New York. Lolita Chakrabarti said, "The acknowledgement of Ira Aldridge and his extraordinary achievements has been so gratifying. Now I feel he stands with Kean, Tree, Garrick, Kemble and Macready to name just a few. For me, that changes everything."

The cast of 10 of this West Coast Premiere of the play is led by actor Paul Outlaw (of Silver Lake) as Ira Aldridge/Othello, and includes: Nicola Bertram (Silver Lake) as Ellen Tree/Desdemona; Colin Campbell (of Los Feliz) as Pierre Laporte; Adam Chacon (of Monterey Park) as Terence/Bernard Warde; Amanda Charney (of Hancock Park) as Betty Lovell; Sean C Dwyer (of Hollywood) as Casimir/Henry Forrester/Cassio; Kailena Mai (of Silver Lake) as Halina Wozniak; Erin Elizabeth Reed (of Silver Lake) as Margaret Aldridge; Dee Dee Stephens (of Los Angeles) as Connie and Ben Warner (North Hollywood) as Charles Kean/Iago.

The play's production team includes: Benjamin Pohlmeier (of Echo Park) Director/Producer, Artistic Director, The Junction Theatre; Dee Dee Stephens (of Los Angeles) Associate Producer/Community Outreach; Jerry Blackburn (of Porter Ranch) Stage Manager; Kiley Hanon (of Silver Lake) Scenic Artist; Douglas Gabrielle (of Silver Lake) Lighting Designer/Technical Director; James Ferrero (of North Hollywood) Sound Designer; Kristina Moore (of Monterey Park) Costume Designer; Rameel Raymundo (of Los Feliz) Postcard Design; Ed Krieger (of La Crescenta) Production Photographer and Steve Moyer Public Relations (of Los Angeles) Press Representative.

The Junction Theatre was established at the Sunset Junction in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, and embraces the rich cultural diversity of their community to create invigorating, innovative, and inclusive theatre. The Junction Theatre is incorporated as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. To learn more, please visit www.thejunctiontheatre.org. The theatre's motto is: Where thought, theatre and community intersect.

Directions to that Atwater Playhouse are as follows:
From the south take Route 5 (Golden State Freeway) to Glendale Boulevard East, turn right onto Largo, turn left onto Tyburn, turn right onto Casitas Avenue, and go two blocks to 3191 Casitas Avenue.

>From the north, take the Glendale Boulevard exit, which takes you to Riverside Drive, where you turn left. At the first stoplight, Glendale Boulevard, turn left to enter Atwater Village.

Atwater Playhouse is located in a warehouse located at 3191 Casitas Avenue. There is a large gated FREE parking lot directly in front of the theatre. The entrance to the Atwater Playhouse is under a covered patio area.

"I began researching Ira Aldridge in 1998. I felt that his life story would make a great film but I was having trouble narrowing his extraordinary life into a single, engaging, dramatic tale. Actor Adrian Lester had recently worked with director Kenneth Branagh on his musical film version of Love's Labour's Lost so I asked Ken if he would read a synopsis of the film and tell me what he thought. He did and gave me some very detailed, positive notes and great encouragement. I soon realized that I was not ready to write a film quite yet and decided to put my research away in order to move on to other things. Intermittently Aldridge would knock on the box I had put him in and occasionally I would tell friends about him.

I continued working as an actress and by 2005 I had worked with Indhu Rubasingham several times and we became good friends. I told Indhu about Ira Aldridge and she persuaded me to open the box and turn my thoughts into a play. Indhu and I were both freelancers. She was carving out her career as a director in theatres up and down the country while I was doing the same as an actress. Over the next seven years, Indhu and I would meet between jobs to discuss each draft of the play, which was then called An Unreasonable Man. The other cog in this wheel was Adrian. Over the next few years Adrian and Indhu read every one of the many drafts I wrote. I got a lot of notes - seven years gives room for a lot of notes!"

As the play began to take shape we approached many London theatres to see if they would help us to get the play on. All of them were fascinated by Aldridge's story, all of them said no. It was very frustrating. Finally one London theatre actually said yes. We started to talk about programming it only to find, a few weeks later, that the theatre changed its mind. It has been a long, arduous, often demoralizing road but Aldridge is an extraordinary figure and he drew us on.

After seven years, countless drafts, several readings and two workshops, I finally decided it was time to let go of RED VELVET (the play's new name). It was time to put it in my drawer of unrealized scripts. If after all that work, no theatre in London was prepared to invest in the play, there was nothing more I could do.

Then in 2012 Indhu Rubasingham became Artistic Director of the Tricycle Theatre and made RED VELVET her opening show. We opened in October of that year and sold out within a few days. We returned there in 2014 and sold out a week before we opened, then we transferred to St. Anne's Warehouse in New York and opened to excellent reviews. We have had nine major theatre award nominations and were presented with four of them. And now here we are in London's West End as part of the Kenneth Branagh season. It's been quite a ride!

We have traveled a long way - Indhu, Adrian, Ira and I. Many scenes, characters and episodes of Ira's life have come and gone but in essence this project has always been extraordinary. It has told our story as well as Ira's. In retrospect (how I love retrospect!) we have been constantly learning to keep our faith in the project and in our own abilities to do it justice. Though we never said it, I think we collectively believed that Aldridge was worth the journey.

I think Ira was an extremely brave, tenacious, uncompromising talent and I think he would've been elated to be back in London's West End after an absence of 183 years."

Lolita Chakrabarti is an award winning playwright and actress. RED VELVET is her first play. It premiered at the Tricycle Theatre in 2012, returned in 2014 to a sold-out run, before transferring to New York. RED VELVET was nominated for nine major theatre awards. Lolita Chakrabarti received a 2012 Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, the 2012 Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award and a 2013 AWA Award for Arts and Culture. RED VELVET just finished a successful run as part of Kenneth Branagh's season at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End and
Adrian Lester has been nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in RED VELVET.

Lolita Chakrabarti trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and her work as an actress on stage and screen spans 25 years. Film and Television roles include: Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (ITV/ Esquire Network), J K Rowling's A Casual Vacancy (BBC), My Mad Fat Diary 3 (E4), Jekyll and Hyde (ITV), One Night, When Romeo Met Juliet, Outnumbered, Hustle, Extras Christmas Special, Silent Witness, Bodies - The Finale (BBC) Forgiven (CH4) The Smoke (Sky), Vera, Fortysomething and WPC Blake in The Bill (ITV), The Other Child (Teamworx) and Intruders (UPI).

Chakrabarti's theatre roles include: Last Seen - Joy, written by Lolita Chakrabarti, (Almeida Theatre); The Great Game, Afghanistan (Tricycle Theatre); Free Outgoing (Royal Court/Traverse Theatre); John Gabriel Borkman (Donmar Warehouse); The School of Night (Chichester); and The Waiting Room (Royal National Theatre). Lolita Chakrabarti formed independent film company Lesata Productions with Rosa Maggiora in 2010, (www.lesataproductions.co.uk ). They produced Of Mary, a 20-minute short film, directed by Adrian Lester. It was selected for numerous international short film festivals and awarded Best Short Film at Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles. Lolita Chakrabarti and Rosa Maggiora were nominated for Best Producers at Underwire, a London short film festival promoting the work of women.

Lolita Chakrabarti is developing several projects but is currently writing her first feature film for Lesata Productions and a new play for The Tricycle Theatre.

With his performances as Othello at Covent Garden's Theatre Royal in 1833, Ira Aldridge (July 24, 1807 - August 7, 1867) became the first black actor to perform the principal role in a Shakespearean tragedy on the legitimate stage in London. Born to a free African-American couple in Lower Manhattan and educated at the African Free School, at the age of 14 Aldridge worked as a dresser to the actor Henry Wallack at the Park Theatre. He was introduced to the stage at MR. Brown's African Grove Theatre in New York, one of the first black theatre companies in America. MR. Brown was an ex ships-steward who wanted a theatre for a black American audience and bought a house precisely for this purpose. A young, talented black actor named James Hewlett led the company and Ira Adridge worked within the company. The theatre experienced many challenges from white society. MR. Brown's theatre was forced to move premises several times, the company was threatened, assaulted and the theatre burned down.

Confronted by this discrimination, Ira Aldridge emigrated to Liverpool, England in 1824. Slavery was not abolished in the United States until 1865. Aldridge made his European debut at London's Royal Coburg Theatre (now the Old Vic) on October 10, 1825, establishing himself as the first African-American actor to perform professionally in a foreign country.

In 1824 Ira Aldridge married an English woman, Margaret Gill, who he was married to for 40 years until her death in 1864. Aldridge's first son, Ira Daniel, was born in May 1847. A year after his wife Margaret's death, Aldridge married his mistress, the Swedish countess Amanda von Brandt (1834-1915). They had four children: Irene Luranah Pauline, Ira Frederick Olaff, Amanda Christina Elizabeth and Rachael Margaret Frederika, who was born after Adridge's death and died in infancy.

When Edmund Kean, arguably the greatest actor of his generation, collapsed on stage in April 1833, Pierre Laporte, the manager of the Theatre Royal Covent Garden, asked Ira Aldridge to step in as Othello. At the same time Parliament was about to vote on whether to abolish slavery in all British colonies. Feelings in London were running very high; there was a lot of money at stake. Pro slavery lobbyists wrote long tracts about the positive effects of slavery on the idle Negro. The newspapers were owned by the wealthy, the wealthy invested in slavery. When Ira Aldridge played the role of Othello at Covent Garden, the audiences were appreciative, and the press were not.

In the United Kingdom, Aldridge toured and played to great acclaim across the provinces including Dublin, Belfast and Edinburgh. Aldridge launched the first of a total of nine tours in continental Europe in 1852, with successes in France, Hungary, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland and Germany. In 1858, he traveled to Serbia and, for the first time, to Imperial Russia, where he became the highest-paid actor in the world, reportedly earning the equivalent in today's currency of $2.5 million for 22 performances.

Among the honors bestowed on Ira Aldridge during his lifetime were an honorary commission as Captain in the Republican Army of Haiti (17th Regiment of Grenadiers) and as Aide-de-Camp to the President of Haiti; membership in the Prussian Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society's First Class Gold Medal presented by His Majesty Frederick William IV; the Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold the Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria; the Imperial Jubilee de Tolstoy Medal from St. Petersberg; the White Cross of Switzerland ("Pour la Merite?"); the Golden Cross of Leopold from the Czar of Russia; membership in the Hungarian Imperial and Archducal Institution of "Our Lady of the Manger;" knighthood in the Royal Saxon Ernestinischen House Order and the Verdienst Medal of the Order (in Gold) presented by Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen; membership in the National Dramatic Conservatoire of Hungary; membership in the Royal Bohemian Conservatory of Prague; and honorary membership in St. Petersburg's Imperial Academy of Beaux Arts. Ira Aldridge was grantEd English citizenship in 1863.

Ira Aldridge died, possibly of pneumonia, while on tour in ?ód?, Poland, several weeks after his 60th birthday in 1867, where he was given a state funeral. At the time of his death, he was in negotiations to return to United States for the first time since his emigration, for a series of performances at the Academy of Music in Manhattan. He was buried in ?ód?, Poland where a commemorative plaque, dedicated in 2014, marks the location of his death. In the nearly 150 years since then, Ira Aldridge has been the subject of numerous novels, plays, musicals, poems, radio broadcasts, teleVision Productions and theatrical films. He is the only actor of African-American descent among the 33 actors of the English stage honored with a dedicated chair and bronze plaque at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1961, Howard University in Washington, D.C., opened its Ira Aldridge Theater, which is still in operation today.

Benjamin Pohlmeier holds an MFA in directing from the University of California, Irvine and has directed over 30 productions. His thesis production was A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he set in India during the British Occupation. Other productions have included David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, Athol Fugard's Master Harold...And The Boys, and Tom Cole's Medal of Honor Rag, which performed to benefit The Vietnam Veterans Association.

Believing that theatre can make a valuable contribution to the discussions about issues facing the community, Benjamin Pohlmeier founded The Junction Theatre at the Sunset Junction in Silver Lake. Incorporated as a non-profit organization since 2009, The Junction Theatre has produced such plays as The Einstein Project by Paul D'Andrea and Jon Klein in rep with The Face of Jizo by Hisashi Inoue to commemorate the 65 anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. In 2013 The Junction Theatre collaborated with CASA 0101 Theater to produce Nilo Cruz's Hortensia And The Museum of Dreams, a play about Cuba's mystic traditions and its divisive past. With RED VELVET, The Junction Theatre aims to contribute to the topical discussion of race and diversity.

Drawn to actor-driven plays, Benjamin Pohlmeier embraces the actor's impulses to create dynamic blocking and honest experiences. Design elements are employed to engage the audiences imagination and to invite them on a journey of discovery and introspection.

More About Actor Paul Outlaw, Who Will Play the Roles of Ira Aldridge/Othello in the West Coast Premiere of RED VELVET:
Paul Outlaw starred as The Black Man in Germany's film, Schwarzfahrer, which won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 1994. He is a Los Angeles-based experimental theater artist whose internationally acclaimed solo and group works, in a diverse range of locations and contexts, are not limited by the boundaries of a single art form. Past and current collaborators he has worked with include: theater/visual artist Asher Hartman, media artist Carole Kim, electronic music composer Carl Stone and choreographer Rosanna Gamson. His work has been presented in Los Angeles at/by LACMA (May 2016), REDCAT, Bootleg Theater, Machine Project, LACE, the Hammer Museum and The Getty Museum. Outlaw was the recipient of a 2012 COLA (City of Los Angeles) Individual Artist Fellowship, awarded to ten mid-career artists "who dedicate themselves to an ongoing body of excellent work, exemplify a generation of core ideas in their field, garner respect from their peers, and serve as role models for other artists." To learn more, please visit www.outlawplay.com.

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