Bogart's SITI Kicks Off Season with RADIO MACBETH & WAR OF THE WORLDS Double Bill in Oct.

Acclaimed director Anne Bogart and her seven-time Obie winning Siti Company are pleased to present Radio Macbeth to be performed October 5-16 for a two-week run after only three performances at the Miller Theater in July 2009. The weekend performances (October 8, 9, 15 and 16) feature a special double bill which includes SITI's first radio play, War of the Worlds, followed by Radio Macbeth allowing New York audiences the opportunity to see both shows performed back to back for the first time ever. Siti Company's season will take place at Dance Theater Workshop.

Co-directed by artistic director Anne Bogart and sound designer Darron L West, Radio Macbeth brings a fresh take to Shakespeare's briefest and most magnetic tragedy. Conceived as a play-within-a-radio-play-within-a-play, Radio Macbeth takes places late at night in the guts of an abandoned theater, where actors gather to rehearse. Darkness plays tricks on their minds making the imagination churn, and the ghosts that have haunted the story since the play's inception flicker and glow. The actors cling to the sanity of the words as the chaos of history becomes undeniably present in the room. Radio Macbethis SITI's second adventure with Shakespeare (following the 2004 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream). It received work-in-progress performances at Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theater and premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2007.

Offered as part of a special double bill on October 8, 9, 15 and 16, War of the Worlds (which inspired Radio Macbeth) is SITI's restaging of Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater's legendary broadcast. On October 30, 1938, mass hysteria seized thousands of people as Welles and "The Mercury Theater On the Air" airEd Howard Koch's adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel, The War of the Worlds (Invasion from Mars). Even with several station and program identification breaks, this hour-long radio program convinced anxious listeners that the Earth was the target of a full -scale invasion by aliens. Also co-directed by Bogart and West, War of the Worlds premiered in New York City's West Bank Café in 1999. It was also seen in the city at The Public Theater's Joe's Pub in January 2000.

Radio Macbeth features set and costume design by James Schuette, Light design by Brian H Scott
and Soundscape by Darron L West.

The cast includes Akiko Aizawa (Angus, Fleance, Lennox, Seyton, Son, Young Siward); Will Bond (Duncan, Macduff, Murderer, Doctor); Gian Murray Gianino (Ross, Messenger, Donnalbain, Murderer, Siward); Ellen Lauren (Lady Macbeth); Kelly Maurer (Witch, Porter, Lady Macduff, Gentlewoman); Barney O'Hanlon (Banquo, Malcolm, Murderer, Servant); and Stephen Webber (Macbeth).

For tickets and more information, visit www.siti.org.

 

 

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