Bond and Woodruff Team Up for CHAIR, Opening 12/11 at The Duke

Acclaimed British playwright Edward Bond, will reunite with acclaimed American director RoBert Woodruff for Theatre for a New Audience's New York premiere production of Mr. Bond's Chair featuring Stephanie Roth Haberle beginning previews Friday, December 5, at 8:00pm for an opening Wednesday, December 11, at 8:00pm for a run through December 28 at The Duke on 42nd Street , a New 42nd Street® project, 229 West 42nd Street.

This is the third pairing of playwright and director who also worked together on Mr. Bond's Olly's Prison at American Repertory Theater in 2005.

In Chair, Mr. Bond explores theatricality in an austere and concentrated way without embellishment or decoration.  Mr. Bond envisions a haunting Orwellian world in which security is more important than freedom.  Ms. Haberle plays Alice whose single kindly gesture of bringing a chair to a soldier waiting for a bus leads to the unimaginable.

Edward Bond, now 74, is considered one of Britain's most important, innovative and controversial playwrights:  "I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners," he once said.  He had virtually no formal education and left school at 15.

Mr. Bond's influence on young writers is prodigious.  The Abbey Theatre (Dublin) described him as the most influential English dramatist of all times.

Mr. Bond was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK when his 1965 play Saved was banned by Lord Chamberlain.  Early Morning in 1967 was equally controversial.  In the 1980’s, out of frustration with the British theatre, he formed a relationship with French theatre.  There he wrote, among other things, The Colline Pentad -- a massive exploration of the relationship between people and society in the modem world.

His other works include Narrow Road to the Deep North (1968); Lear (1972), a reworking of Shakespeare's play; Bingo (1973), an account of Shakespeare's last days; The War Plays (1985); and Jackets 2/Sugawara and In the Company of Men (both 1990).  His screenplays include Blow-Up for director Michelangelo Antonioni in 1966 and Nicholas and Alexandra in 1971 for director Franklin J. Schaffner.

RoBert Woodruff is the former artistic director of the American Repertory Theater.   In the 1970s, Mr. Woodruff was virtually the sole director of Sam Shepard's work, starting with The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife in 1976 which was followed by the American premiere of Curse of the Starving Class at the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1978, the world premieres of Buried Child (1978) and True West (1980) at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco and then in New York, and the touring productions of Tongues and Savage/Love, which Shepard co-authored with the performer Joseph Chaikin.  In the last three decades, he has directed plays at Lincoln Center Theatre, the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.  In 1997, he directed The Changling for Theatre for a New Audience.  In 2002, Mr. Woodruff succeeded Robert Brustein as the second Artistic Director in the history of The American Repertory Theatre, a post he held until 2007.  He serves on the faculty of Yale University.

Stephanie Roth Haberle, who has often collaborated with RoBert Woodruff at the A.R.T., has also appeared on Broadway, at BAM, the Delacorte and Theatre for a New Audience where she played opposite Mark Rylance in The Two Gentleman of Verona.  Some of her other memorable New York appearances include Imogen in Shakespeare's Cymbeline directed by Andre Serban and Varya in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard directed by Peter Brook.

Rounding out the cast are Will Rogers, Alfredo Narciso, Annika Boras and Joan MacIntosh.

David Zinn is designing sets and costumes; Mark Barton, lighting; and Michael Attias, sound and composition.

Box Office Info:
Single tickets are $75.00 are may be purchased via phone at 646-223-3010 or via web at www.dukeon42.org.

For ages 25 and under, $10.00 tickets are available through the Theatre's New Deal ticket program.  New Deal tickets may be purchased for all performances, including day-of or future performances, one ticket per valid I.D., anytime during box office hours or at The Duke on 42nd StreetSM, 229 West 42nd Street.

Photo of Will Rogers by Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.

To post a comment, you must register and login.