A.R.T. Presents CABARET Starring Amanda Palmer 8/31-10/29

American Repertory Theater announces the cast and creative team for CABARET by Kander and Ebb, directed by Steven Bogart and starring Amanda Palmer as the Emcee

"There was a cabaret, and there was a Master-of-Ceremonies and there was a city called Berlin in a country called Germany. It was the end of the world . . . and I was dancing with Sally Bowles and we were both asleep. . . . "- Cliff in CABARET

WHAT: The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) opens its 2010/11 Season with Kander and Ebb's CABARET, directed by Steven Bogart, with musical direction by Lance Horne and movement by Steven Mitchell Wright, starring Amanda Palmer as the Emcee. Set and costume design is by David Israel Reynoso,lighting design by Nick Vargelis, and sound design by Clive Goodwin.

WHEN: August 31 - October 29, 2010

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays at 7:30pm

Fridays at 7:30pm and 10:30pm

Performances will begin promptly at the times listed above;
Klub doors open half hour before showtime.
No performances Saturday through Monday.

WHERE: OBERON, 2 Arrow Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge

TICKETS: Begin at $25. Student rush $15. Seniors $10 off regular ticket price.

Group Rates available.

Single tickets are currently on sale to A.R.T. Members only, will be available to the general public on August 3rd. Tickets can be purchased on line at www.AmericanRepertoryTheater.org, by phone at 617-547-8300, or in person at the A.R.T. Box Office, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

For more information on Memberships go to http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/membership

RATING: The production contains nudity, simulated sex, and drug use. Recommended for 16 and older, unless accompanied by an adult.

DETAILS:

Take your seat at the Kit Kat Klub, the perfectly marvelous cabaret where singer Sally Bowles meets writer Cliff Bradshaw. As the two pursue a life of pleasure in Weimar Berlin, the world outside the Klub begins to splinter. Presiding over it all is singer, songwriter, and former Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer as the Kit Kat Klub's magnetic Emcee, with Aly Trasher as Sally Bowles and Matt Wood as Cliff Bradshaw. The cast also includes Remo Airaldi as Herr Schultz, David Costa as Ernst Ludwig, Claire Davies as Fraulein Kost, Thomas Derrah as Fraulein Schmidt, and Jeremy Geidt as Max, the Klub Owner; as well as Renee-Marie Brewster, Lucille Duncan, Tamara Hickey, Eric Johnson, Jordy Lievers, and Gaetano Pugliese as the Kit Kat Dancers, and Annika Franklin, Chris Thomas, and Edward Walsh as the Ensemble.

ABOUT THE PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS:

Amanda Palmer is a performer, director, and composer who is best known for her role as front woman and pianist for the internationally acclaimed punk cabaret band The Dresden Dolls. She grew up writing and directing her own original plays and has always kept one foot in the theater world, making her living between the years of 1997-2003 as a living statue street performer in Harvard Square, known as the "Eight Foot Bride." After signing with a major label and releasing three albums with The Dresden Dolls, Palmer went solo. In 2008, with the help of fellow pianist and producer Ben Folds, Amanda released her critically hailed solo effort "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" along with an accompanying art book of the same name with short stories by writer (and husband-to-be) Neil Galman. She recently returned from a two-year-long touring cycle that took her (and a troupe of Butoh-based Australian performance artists known as The Danger Ensemble) through Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. She wrapped up her year at Symphony Hall for a historic New Year's celebration in which Palmer was possibly the first pianist to put Tchaikovsky, Nine Inch Nails, and Lady Gaga in the same program. She has won numerous Boston Music Awards (including Best Female Vocalist), has been included on the AfterEllen.com's list of "hot 100" celebrities, and has been named "The Most Stylish Woman in Boston" by the Boston Globe. Palmer also tends a widely read blog and Twitter feed and has been dubbed "The Social Media Queen of Rock N Roll" by The Huffington Post.

Aly Trasher appears as Tytania in the A.R.T. production of The Donkey Show at OBERON. Regional Credits include The Little Shop of Horrors (Audrey), Crimes of the Heart (Babe), Peter Pan (Peter), Oliver (Nancy), and The Mikado (Pitti-Sing). She is a recent graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York.

Matt Wood plays Dr. Wheelgood in The Donkey Show at the A.R.T. He was directed by Amanda Palmer in Hotel Blanc for the Shadowbox Collective, which performed in numerous venues around Boston including Mobius artist space in Fort Point. He has a B.A. in theater from Bard College where he played a number of roles.

Thomas Derrah has one hundred and seventeen productions at the A.R.T. to his credit, including Romance, Endgame, The Seagull, The Communist Dracula Pageant (Nicolae Ceausescu), Julius Caesar (title role), The Onion Cellar, and The Birthday Party most recently. He appeared on Broadway, off-Broadway, toured with the A.R.T. Company across North America, throughout Europe, Israel, Taiwan, Japan, and Moscow. He also appeared with several local companies and many theaters throughout the U.S.

Remo Airaldi has appeared in over sixty productions at the A.R.T. including Paradise Lost, Endgame, The Seagull, Julius Caesar, No Exit, The Miser, La Dispute, and Marat/Sade. He has also performed at Hartford Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, Geffen Playhouse, American Conservatory Theater, Walnut Street Theatre, Prince Music Theater, Actors' Theatre of Louisville, Serious Fun Festival, Moscow Art Theatre, Taipei International Arts Festival, and Commonwealth Shakespeare Company.

Jeremy Geidt is a founding member of the A.R.T. and has been seen in close to two hundred productions, including Three Sisters, The Onion Cellar, Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, Man and Superman, Waiting for Godot, Buried Child, The King Stag, and The Seagull. He teaches at Harvard College, its Summer and Extension Schools, and at the A.R.T/MXAT Institute.

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM:

Director Steven Bogart is a director, playwright, drama teacher, designer, and visual artist. He has directed over one hundred plays and musicals while also specializing in directing ensemble-generated original plays. Several of his own plays have been performed in Boston (Boston Theater Marathon and BTW), New York (Summer Play Festival NYC), and Chicago (Stage Left Theatre). He is a 2009 Massachusetts Cultural Council grant recipient in playwriting. His newest play, Pigcat, recently won the The Holland New Voices Award at the Great Plains Theater Conference. He is cofounder of Rouged Ape, a paratheatrical theater company working around the Boston area. He teaches drama and directs at Lexington High School, and also teaches playwriting for the University of New Orleans Low Residency Creative Writing Program. Last year, he collaborated with Amanda Palmer and the Lexington High School Drama students on a new play, With the Needle That Sings in Her Heart. The production received an overwhelming positive response from audiences, and was featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Bogart's visual art has been exhibited internationally, and most recently was part of the Decordova Museum's exhibition Big Bang! Abstract Painting for the 21st Century.

Movement Director Steven Mitchell Wright specializes in the expressionistic physical theater style of Butoh. He was the Associate Director and Senior Teacher of the Brisbane-based theater company Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre for a number of years, and his director/designer credits include The Lost Lords, Dracula, An End to Dreaming, and Persia (Australian Business Arts Foundation Annual Awards Ceremony 06). He directed and performed in Slide, Macbeth (World Shakespeare Congress Opening Ceremony 06), and The Odyssey, and directed, designed, and performed in Romeo and Juliet, which toured Australia and Hong Kong for several years.

Music Director Lance Horne is a Composer and Lyricist for musicals, films, and classical works seen at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, the Studio at Sydney Opera House, Pina Bausch's Tanzfestival, American Opera Projects, and Toronto's Luminato Festival. He holds both a Bachelor's and Master's in Music Composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Milton Babbitt and Robert Beaser; he continued his studies at CUNY Graduate Center with David Del Tredici, and received the 2008 Emmy for Best Original Song, Daytime. Currently on faculty at the Juilliard School Precollege, EAMA Paris, and a visiting professor at HyperIsland, Stockholm, and the Interlochen Arts Academy, Mr. Horne also performs with notable artists as varied as Meow Meow, Dwight Yoakam, the Dresden Dolls, Death Cab for Cutie, the Seoul Philharmonic, the Atlanta Symphony, Justin Bond, and Alan Cumming. Mr. Horne's most recent work, Amandine, played at Joe's Pub in New York this summer. Other recent credits include Vegas! The Show at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas and appearances with Meow Meow at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He is recording an album of his songs in the fall, featuring Alan Cumming, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Ricky Lake among others.

Set and Costume Designer David Israel Reynoso previously created sets and costumes for Trojan Barbie and Copenhagen, and costumes for No Man's Land and The Keening. He was also Costumer for Sleep No More. His most recent local costume designs are seen in The Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's production of Othello on the Boston Common this summer; he has collaborated on close to one hundred Theater Productions in the Boston area as well as nationwide. He is Resident Costume Artisan at the A.R.T. and the recipient of numerous awards.

Lighting Designer Nicholas D. Vargelis designed The Idiot, Mud, The Memory of Water, and The Trojan Women at the A.R.T. Institute. His artistic work spans from lighting design to performance to sculpture; recent projects in France include Le paradoxe de l'action furtive featured in the festival "Imaginez Maintenant" (Centre Pompidou Metz, Metz), This is the Time and This is the Record of the Time part of "Repetition Island" (Centre Pompidou, Paris), l'Archive de la Zone Utopie Temporaire (L'abbaye de Maubuisson, Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône); and Post Factum, Zum Licht, and Zimmer ohne spiegel in Berlin, Germany. He designed Hotel Blanc by the Shadowbox Collective (directed by Amanda Palmer) at the Kresge Theater, Cambridge, among other venues.

Clive Goodwin designed Paradise Lost last season. He worked for numerous years in London, where he designed sound for Dancing With The Stars, The Sound of Musicals, and Friday Night with Jonathan Ross at the BBC; worked with the Glastonbury Festival, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal College of Music, Royal FestivAl Hall, and the Avignon Festival; and in the U.S. at Brooklyn Academy Of Music, Hollywood Bowl, and Madison Square Garden. Mr. Goodwin is A.R.T.'s Resident Sound Designer.

The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) is one of the country's most celebrated resident theaters and the winner of numerous awards - including the Tony Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and numerous local Elliot Norton and I.R.N.E. Awards. It was recently named one of the top three theaters in the country by Time magazine. Founded by Robert Brustein in 1980, the A.R.T. has welcomed major American and international theater artists whose singular visions generate and define the theater's work, presenting a varied repertoire that includes new plays, progressive productions of classical texts, and collaborations among artists from many disciplines. The A.R.T. has performed throughout the US, and worldwide in twenty-one cities in sixteen countries on four continents. In 2008 the organization welcomed its new Artistic Director, Diane Paulus, under whose helm the theater began its 30th Season. Under the leadership of Diane Paulus, A.R.T. developed a new initiative, EXPERIENCE THE A.R.T., which seeks to revolutionize the theater experience through a sustained commitment to empowering the audience. This audience-driven vision has transformed the way the company develops, programs, produces, and contextualizes its work. This speaks directly to the A.R.T.'s core mission - "to expand the boundaries of theater." A.R.T. resources give equal importance to the social aspects of theater and the potential for a full theater experience, including interaction and engagement with its audience before, during, and after the production. The initiative involves producing theater cycles that create a festival atmosphere and allow audiences to experience productions in ]the context of a larger event. By producing and promoting these cycles as citywide events, A.R.T. seeks to attract larger audiences from the greater Boston area and from the rest of the country and world. OBERON, located at 2 Arrow Street, (corner of Arrow Street and Massachusetts Avenue), Harvard Square, Cambridge, is accessible to persons with special needs and to those requiring wheelchair seating or first-floor restrooms. Deaf and hard-of-hearing patrons can also reach the theater by calling the toll-free N.E. Telephone Relay Center at 1-800-439-2370.

Public transportation and discount parking are available nearby.

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