Brad Oscar, Alexandra Silber & More to Star in ANIMAL MAGNETISM Reading at Red Bull Theater

RED BULL THEATER has announced the complete cast for the next offering of a new season of OBIE Award-winning Revelation Readings: the FREE streaming presentation of Elizabeth Inchbald's 18th-century farce Animal Magnetism, directed by José Zayas. This event will be recorded live at the Library of The Players in Manhattan. This reading is sponsored, in part, by R/18 Collective. This online-only event will premiere at 7:30 PM ET on Monday January 23rd. The subsequent recording will be available until Sunday January 29th at 11:59 PM ET.

Elizabeth Inchbald's Animal Magnetism is a brilliant riff on the art of performance and a hilarious and all too relevant takedown of some men's insistence that they own and control women's bodies. It's an hour-long diversion about a Doctor - a quack - who keeps his beautiful young ward, Constance, under lock and key, and is determined to force her into marrying him. But Constance is determined to get free and the Marquis, who loves her, offers an escape route. When Le Fleur, the Marquis's servant, arrives at the house under the guise of an expert in mesmerism, the scene is set for the Doctor to get his comeuppance.

Online access is FREE, but registration is required. Donations are accepted and all proceeds will benefit Red Bull Theater's ongoing Programming. To reserve FREE tickets for the online broadcast click here.

The cast will feature Amir Arison (Broadway: The Kite Runner; Off-Broadway: Hamlet, Why Torture Is Wrong and the People Who Love Them, Candy & Dorothy, Omnium Gatherum); Carson Elrod (Red Bull: The Alchemist; B'way: Peter and the Starcatcher, Reckless, Noises Off; Off-Bway: The Tempest, Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well - NYSF; The Liar, The Heir Apparent - CSC); Yonatan Gebeyehu (The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens- TFANA; Persuasion - BEDLAM); Brad Oscar (Bway: Mrs. Doubtfire, Something Rotten! - Tony & Drama Desk nominations, Monty Python's Spamalot, The Producers - Tony nomination; Off-Bway: Call Me Madam, Annie Get Your Gun, Bells Are Ringing, Do Re Mi - Encores!, Broadway Bounty Hunter, Nassim, Sweeney Todd); Cara Ricketts (Bway: Time and the Conways - Roundabout; Off-Bway: Measure for Measure - TFANA); and Alexandra Silber (Bway: Fiddler on the Roof, Master Class; Off-Bway: Arlington - Outer Critics Circle nomination, Love Loss and What I Wore, Einstein's Dreams, Hello Again).

Scholar David Taylor, of the R/18 Collective explains, "Animal Magnetism is Inchbald's seventh play. Written to be performed as an afterpiece - a shorter play (usually a farce) that would follow longer comedies and tragedies during a night at the theater - it was adapted from Le Médecin Malgré tout le monde by Antoine-Jean-Bourlin Dumaniant. Inchbald's play remained popular well into the nineteenth century. Indeed, Charles Dickens directed and acted in it with his amateur company many times between 1848 and 1857. He wrote that all could 'be made so delightfully rapid, and the situations are wonderfully good' and that he had 'seen people laugh at the piece until they have hung over the front of the boxes like ripe fruit.'" Taylor's complete program note is available here.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821) was born Elizabeth Simpson in Standingfield, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, to a Roman Catholic family. In April 1772 she left for London (without permission), set on becoming an actress. Two months later, she married actor Joseph Inchbald. So began several years in which she traveled Britain performing with touring troupes. Her husband died in 1779 but she continued to act, in London and Dublin, through to 1789. Her career as a performer saw her work to overcome a stammer. Inchbald's first play, a farce called The Mogul Tale, was staged in 1784; she acted in it herself. Thus began a remarkable career as a playwright - she was the most prolific and popular dramatist of the final 15 years of the century. Her plays include Such Things Are (1787), Everyone has His Fault (1793), Wives as They Were and Maids as They Are (1797), Lovers' Vows - which famously appears in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park - and an unperformed tragedy, The Massacre (1792), a commentary on the violence of the French Revolution. Inchbald also wrote two novels - A Simple Story (1791) and Nature and Art (1796), and produced The British Theatre (1806-9), a 25-volume collection of plays, each with a critical introduction.

ABOUT THE R/18 COLLECTIVE

The R/18 Collective was formed in 2019 to promote professional productions of plays drawn from the Restoration and eighteenth-century repertoire and to support performance research related to those productions. Composed of scholars from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, the Collective seeks both to cultivate strong, reciprocal relationships between scholars and theater artists and to increase awareness among theater audiences of the great riches embedded in dramatic works from this era. The R/18 Collective believe these plays provide urgently-needed insights into the formation of the modern world, including the historical development of our current ideas about race, gender, sexuality, nation, and capital. The R/18 Collective is committed to providing the dramaturgical knowledge and services of some of the world's top scholars in the field to theater companies interested in producing these works as well as to securing collaborative, international grants to support those productions and the related performance research.

ABOUT RED BULL THEATER

Red Bull Theater brings rarely seen classic plays to dynamic new life for contemporary audiences, uniting a respect for tradition with a modern sensibility. Named for the rowdy Jacobean playhouse that illegally performed plays in England during the years of Puritan rule, Red Bull Theater is New York City's home for dynamic performances of great plays that stand the test of time. With the Jacobean plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as its cornerstone, the company also produces new works that are in conversation with the classics. A home for artists, scholars, and students, Red Bull Theater delights and engages the intellect and imagination of audiences, and strives to make its work accessible, diverse, and welcoming to all. We value and practice inclusiveness, equity, and diversity in all of our activities, and are committed to antiracist action. Red Bull Theater believes in the power of great classic stories and plays of heightened language to deepen our understanding of the human condition, in the special ability of live theater to create unique, collective experiences, and in the timeless capacity of classical theater to illuminate the events of our times. Variety agreed, hailing Red Bull's work as: "Proof that classical theater can still be surprising after hundreds of years."

Since its debut in 2003 with a production of Shakespeare's Pericles starring Daniel Breaker, Red Bull Theater has served adventurous theatergoers with Off-Broadway productions, Revelation Readings, and the annual Short New Play Festival. The company also offers outreach programs including Shakespeare in Schools bringing professional actors and teaching artists into public school classrooms; Bull Sessions, free post-play discussions with top scholars; and Classical Acting Intensives led by veteran theater professionals. During the pandemic, Red Bull created several new and ongoing programs to serve audiences and artists with our mission: RemarkaBULL Podversations, Online Readings, Seminars, and more.

Red Bull Theater has presented over 20 Off-Broadway productions and more than 200 Revelation Readings of rarely seen classics, serving a community of more than 5,000 artists and providing quality artistic programming to an audience of over 65,000. The company's unique programming has received ongoing critical acclaim and has been recognized with Lortel, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Off-Broadway Alliance, and OBIE nominations and Awards.

For more information about any of Red Bull Theater's programs, visit www.redbulltheater.com.

To post a comment, you must register and login.