The Wallis presents The U.S. Premiere of Kneehigh's THE FLYING LOVERS OF VITEBSK

The magical world of artist Marc Chagall and his wife Bella will be tenderly brought to life onstage at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (The Wallis) next month in director Emma Rice's production of Daniel Jamieson's The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk. Partners in life and on canvas, Marc and Bella are immortalized as the picture of romance. On the painter's canvas they flew, but in real life they walked through some of the most challenging times in 20th Century history-navigating the devastation of war, the Russian Revolution and each other. Following the artistic heights of Brief Encounter and 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, Kneehigh and Rice return to The Wallis with a production that combines the visuals of Chagall's paintings with the music and dance of the Russian-Jewish tradition. Performances begin February 23 and run through Sunday, March 11, 2018 with opening night set for Saturday, February 24 at 7:30pm. The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is made possible in part by the generous support of Camille and Arnon Adar. Theater @ The Wallis Series is sponsored by Montage Beverly Hills and Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills.

The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk makes its U.S. debut after selling out London's Globe Theatre, as well as winning the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Festival Award for 2017. Marc Antolin and Daisy Maywood portray Marc and Bella whose journey is underscored throughout with live klezmer music inspired by Russian folk tradition, composed and performed by Ian Ross and James Gow.

"The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is a beautiful love story," said Paul Crewes, The Wallis' Artistic Director. "Emma brings the production to life in her delightfully unique way. It is joyful, sensual, heartbreaking and funny. It is a great to bring the Company back to L.A. with this award-winning production."

Single tickets are now available for $35 - $125. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit TheWallis.org/Lovers, call 310.746.4000, or stop by in person at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Ticket Services located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Ticket prices subject to change.

The Wallis also offers three different options to subscribe to the 2017/18 season: the Premium Subscription Series; the Design-Your-Own option; and the new 3-show Flex Pass for $99, created for busy young professionals-39 and younger-giving the most flexibility to join The Wallis family of subscribers. Learn more at TheWallis.org/Subscribe.

Audiences are invited to enjoy craft cocktails, a handpicked bottle of wine or draft beer at The Briskin Bar @ The Wallis located in the beautiful Jim and Eleanor Randall Grand Hall before and after each performance. Patrons attending evening performances are encouraged to arrive early for Happy Hour featuring special drink prices from 5:30pm - 6:30pm, and all audience members can now enjoy drinks at their seats during the performance.

About The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk:
No one painted love like Marc Chagall. He once said, "In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love." On Chagall canvases, couples sweep each other off their feet and up into the air. They soar over cities, arm in arm, leaving the rest of the world behind them. They are, one critic reckons, "a banner to collective love."

Marc Chagall was a leading pioneer of modern art whose vibrant, original style evolved against one of the most tumultuous and terrifying periods in history. Chagall and his young wife met and fell in love in Vitebsk, Belarus in 1909. Almost immediately they were swept up in the confusion and brutality of world wars, revolution, ethnic persecution and the murder and exile of millions. He responded with a radical original visual style which was both mythic and dreamlike, fusing everyday settings inspired from Vitebsk in an extraordinary mystical lament, conveying love, loss, exile and the miracle of survival.

The Kneehigh and Old Vic production delicately express the way the world weighs us down. As the young lovers, Bella and Marc's toes hardly touch the ground. They're the color in each other's lives-vivid pink and bright green as, bit by bit, the two become one. His ambition and art, however, pulled them apart. Bella, a writer in her own right, sinks into motherhood at home and the violent upheaval around them turns the world grey.

In telling the story of Chagall's love for Bella Rosenfeld, whom he pictured flying with him above wooden shtetl roofs, the show captures a breathless soaring. It also recovers the almost forgotten voice of Bella, dead from a viral infection in her 50s. Her work as a writer was in her lifetime overshadowed by her husband's. Playwright Jamieson draws on her vivid reimaginings. And focused in this apparently whimsical pair is half the story of the 20th century. World war, the Russian revolution and pogroms.

About the Creative Team and Cast:

Daniel Jamieson (Writer) for the last 27 years has worked for Exeter-based Theatre Alibi as an actor, joint artistic director (1995-2000) and writer. In 2015 he won an ACA award for his writing for children with the company. His plays for Alibi include: Falling; Hammer & Tongs; Goucher's War; Cobbo; Caught; One in a Million; The Freeze; Shelf Life; Little White Lies; The Swell; Sea of Faces and Birthday. He has also adapted novels by Charles Dickens, Graham Greene, Michael Morpurgo and Dick King-Smith for the company. Other theatre work includes: A Box of Photographs and We're Going on a Bear Hunt (Polka Theatre); Where's the Bear, Wish Wash, Knitwits and Flathampton (Northampton Theatres). For BBC R4 Daniel has written Lodsell Cod, Grooming, Jim and Tonic, Building Happiness and Charity. In 2013, Daniel was Leverhulme artist-in-residence at the University of Exeter's Mood Disorders Centre. He is currently writing a screenplay of The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, and he is excited to be developing a new show with Kneehigh about Marie Curie for 2019.

Emma Rice (Director & Co-Choreographer) is Artistic Director for Shakespeare's Globe and for them has directed Romantics Anonymous, Twelfth Night, The Little Matchgirl and A Midsummer Night's Dream. For the last 24 years she has worked for Kneehigh as an actor, director and Artistic Director. Her productions for Kneehigh include: 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips; Tristan & Yseult; The Red Shoes; The Wooden Frock; The Bacchae; Cymbeline (in association with RSC); A Matter of Life and Death (in association with National Theatre); Rapunzel (in association with Battersea Arts Centre); Brief Encounter (in association with David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers Production); Don John (in association with the RSC and Bristol Old Vic); The Wild Bride; Wah! Wah! Girls (in association with Sadler's Wells and Theatre Royal Stratford East for World Stages) and Steptoe and Son. Other work includes: the West End production of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Empress (RSC) and An Audience with Meow Meow (Berkeley Repertory Theatre). She was made an Honorary Fellow of Falmouth University last year for her outstanding contribution to the dramatic arts and Brief Encounter is returning to the West End. Her new company, Wise Children, will premiere its first production in Autumn 2018 and is the next big adventure of her career!

Marc Antolin (Marc Chagall) Theatre: Romantics Anonymous (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse); Twelfth Night (Shakespeare's Globe); Peter Pan (National Theatre); The Trial (Young Vic); Taken at Midnight (Theatre Royal Haymarket/Chichester Minerva); Amadeus, Singin' in the Rain, The Music Man (Chichester Festival Theatre); From Here to Eternity (Shaftesbury Theatre); Matilda (RSC Courtyard Theatre/Cambridge Theatre); Into the Woods, Hello, Dolly! (Regents Park Open Air Theatre); Billy Liar (UK Tour) and Imagine This (New London Theatre). Film: London Road, Coconut Shy and Love Actually. Television: "More Than Love."

Daisy Maywood (Bella Chagall) Theatre credits include: Fran Kubelik in Promises, Promises (Southwark Playhouse); Humpty in wonder.land (National Theatre); Medea (National Theatre); Bebe in A Chorus Line (London Palladium); Maria in West Side Story (RSC/Sage Gateshead); Dainty June in Gypsy and Peggy Sawyer in 42nd Street (Leicester Curve); Meg in The Phantom Of The Opera - 25th Anniversary (Royal Albert Hall); Ensemble in Les Miserables - 25th Anniversary (O2/Queens Theatre). V: April Compton in "Doctors", BBC. Film: London Road, CUBA pictures.

Ian Ross (Musician, Composer & Music Director) is a multi-instrumentalist, associate artist of Kneehigh and composer. He leads the band Eleven Magpies. As a performer, Ian has toured extensively with Kneehigh over the last ten years in shows including: The Red Shoes; Don John; The Wild Bride and Tristan & Yseult. As composer: Twelfth Night (Shakespeare's Globe) and The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Kneehigh). Ian is very excited to be joining Emma Rice on her new adventure, Wise Children, in 2018.

James Gow (Musician) is a multi-instrumentalist and composer with a BA in Music from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Outside of the theatre, he plays with or alongside several bands including: Still Blue Life; Cocos Lovers; Molly's Lips; Eleven Magpies and Three Cane Whale. James has also appeared in Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs), Tristan &Yseult and Brief Encounter for Kneehigh.

Running time is 2 hours and 15 minutes including a 15-minute intermission.

For the complete listing of all Theater @ The Wallis programs visit TheWallis.org/Theater.

About Kneehigh:
For 37 years, Kneehigh have created vigorous, popular and challenging theatre, with joyful anarchy. We have performed everywhere from village halls to castles, disused quarries to conventional stages all over the world. From our breath-taking barns in Cornwall, we create theatre of humanity on an epic and tiny scale. Led by Mike Shepherd, we work with an ever-changing bunch of talented and likeminded performers, artists, makers and musicians and are passionate about the creative process. The Asylum, our beautiful, nomadic structure is back for 2018! The annual knees up will take place at a new site within the Lost Gardens of Heligan this summer. Kneehigh Rambles aims to engage creatively with communities, in Cornwall and beyond, with events and adventures all year round. We're often asked how we make our shows and we've created an exclusive website to give you a glimpse behind the scenes. The Cookbook is crammed full of videos, documents, pictures and plans, providing you with some of the magic ingredients that go into our shows. Sign up for free today at kneehighcookbook.co.uk.

About Bristol Old Vic:
The oldest continuously-Working Theatre in the United Kingdom, Bristol Old Vic's mission is to create pioneering twenty-first Century Theatre in partnership with the people of Bristol; inspired by the history and magical design of the most beautiful playhouse in the country. We are led by artists who see the world with distinctive clarity and whose ability to articulate what they see allows us to understand and engage with our world afresh. The company's program includes original production, artist development and outreach; its work connecting on a local, national and international level. In 2016, Bristol Old Vic marked its 250th birthday, celebrating with a season of work from the theatre's history as well as its future. Work also began on the final phase of the building's capital development, which will deliver a new foyer and Studio Theatre in 2018 designed by Stirling Prize winning architects Haworth Tompkins.

About the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts:
Since opening its doors in October 2013, The Wallis has produced or presented more than 150 dance, theatre, opera, classical music and family programs to an ever-expanding audience. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Paul Crewes and Managing Director Rachel Fine, The Wallis brings audiences world-class theater, dance and music, performed by many of the world's most talented and sought-after artists. Featuring eclectic programming that mirrors the diverse landscape of Los Angeles and its notability as the entertainment capital of the world, The Wallis offers original and revered works from across the U.S. and around the globe.

The mission of The Wallis is to create, present and celebrate unique performing arts events and educational programs that reflect the rich cultural diversity of our community. Nominated for 47 Ovation Awards, four L.A. Drama Critic's Circle Awards and the recipient of six architectural awards, The Wallis is a breathtaking 70,000-square-foot venue that celebrates the classic and the modern and was designed by Zoltan E. Pali, FAIA of Studio Pali Fekete architects. The building features the restored, original 1933 Beverly Hills Post Office (on the National Register of Historic Places) that serves as the theater's dramatic yet welcoming lobby, and houses the 150-seat Lovelace Studio Theater, GRoW at The Wallis: A Space for Arts Education (a gift of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten and Family and the Annenberg Foundation) and the contemporary 500-seat, state-of-the-art Bram Goldsmith Theater. Together, these structures embrace the city's history and its future, creating a performing arts destination for L.A.-area visitors and residents alike.

The Official Sponsors of The Wallis' 2017/18 Season include: Delta Air Lines (Official Airline Sponsor), Montage Beverly Hills (Preferred Hotel) and Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills (Official Automotive Sponsor).

For more information about The Wallis, please visit: TheWallis.org.

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