CARMEN'S PLACE (A FANTASY) Opens at Castillo Theatre Tonight

What happens when the squares of Seville meet the streets of New York? Find out tonight, April 26 when Carmen's Place (A Fantasy) opens at the Castillo Theatre on 42nd Street, running until June 16. Featuring some of opera's best-loved music as well as six original musical numbers, Carmen's Place (A Fantasy) is helmed by the 2012 AUDELCO Award winner for directing, Gabrielle L. Kurlander, whose production of Sally and Tom (The American Way) was a popular and critical success at Castillo last season.

With a book by FrEd Newman and music by Newman, Annie Roboff and including excerpts of Georges Bizet's Carmen, Carmen's Place (A Fantasy) is a sweet New York tale of high culture and young love. In the play, we are introduced to three novice opera singers in rehearsal for a professional production of Carmen. They meet a local coffee shop waitress whose name (coincidentally) is Carmen. Through the friendships that form, Carmen teaches them how to love in ways that differ dramatically from the possessive, violent, fate-driven love of the opera.

In addition to beloved songs from Bizet's classic opera, Carmen's Place (A Fantasy) features original pop and R&B tunes that give simple expression to the love of people who are learning to grow together.

The Castillo Theatre (Dan Friedman, artistic director; Diane Stiles, Vice President/Theatre) is located at 543 West 42nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Performances are selected Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. today, April 26 through June 16. Tickets are $35 for adults, $10 for students and seniors. Group rates are available. Tickets can be purchased through the Castillo Box Office at 212-941-1234 or at www.castillo.org.

DIRECTOR: Gabrielle L. Kurlander directed last season's Sally and Tom (The American Way) [books and lyrics by FrEd Newman, music by Annie Roboff] at Castillo, which won five 2012 Vivian Robinson AUDELCO Recognition Awards for Excellence in Black Theatre (the "Viv" Award), including Best Director of a Musical Production and Best Musical Production of the Year. Most recently, she directed Dr. Du Bois and Miss Ovington by Clair Coss, starring Kathleen Chalfant and Peter Jay Fernandez. In 2011 Castillo won the "Viv" Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance for her production of Playing With Heiner Müller.

Kurlander began her professional career as an actress in the national touring company of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues. She joined the Castillo Theatre company in 1987, and performed in over 35 Castillo productions including: Safe At Third (or Josh Gibson Don't Bunt) [Amelia Earhart], Backstage (A Love-Hate Story of the Women's Movement) [Susan B. Anthony], Marat/Sade [Charlotte Corday], and Othello (Act V, scene ii) [Desdemona] with Charles Dutton. Other directing credits include Coming of Age in Korea (co-director with Desmond Richardson), Still on the Corner, Billie and Malcolm: A Demonstration, Lenin's Breakdown and Revising Germany, all by FrEd Newman; Hot Snow by Laurence Holder; Heiner Müller's The Task, and the compilation Heiner Müller: A Man Without a Behind. She served as executive producer of FrEd Newman's award-winning independent film, Nothing Really Happens (Memories of Aging Strippers). Gabrielle is the president and CEO of the All Stars Project, Inc., a national nonprofit organization that uses performance to help young people in poor communities to develop. The innovative ASP is 100% privately funded with a $7.5 million budget.

PLAYWRIGHT, LYRICIST, COMPOSER: FrEd Newman (1935-2011) was the resident playwright of the Castillo Theatre and served as the artistic director from 1989 until his retirement in 2005. He wrote 44 plays and musicals between 1986 and 2009, including: Sally and Tom (The American Way), Stealin' Home, Billie & Malcolm: A Demonstration, Lenin's Breakdown, and Outing Wittgenstein. His play Satchel: A Requiem for Racism was co-produced by Castillo and the New Federal Theatre in 2008. In addition, Newman was America's leading director of the work of the German post-dramatic playwright Heiner Müller and also directed plays by Bertolt Brecht, Aimé Césaire, Yosef Mundy and Peter Weiss. In 2002, he wrote and directed the award-winning independent film Nothing Really Happens (Memories of Aging Strippers). In addition to his theatrical work, Newman was an independent political pioneer, a social therapist and a Stanford University-trained philosopher and teacher. He co-founded the All Stars Project, Inc. with Dr. Lenora Fulani. Carmen's Place (A Fantasy) appears in the anthology Still on the Corner and Other Postmodern Political Plays by FrEd Newman (1998).

COMPOSER: Annie Roboff's songs have sold over 60 million copies, and have been recorded by such diverse artists as Faith Hill, Whitney Houston, Bonnie Raitt, the Indigo Girls, Tim McGRaw, The Dixie Chicks, INXS, Kenny Loggins, and a duet featuring legends Don Henley and Kenny Rogers. Her song "This Kiss," a number one single for Faith Hill, was nominated for a Grammy as Country Song of the Year and was honored as the 1999 CMA Song of the Year and the ASCP Country Song of the year. Hill's Grammy-winning Breathe album features three of Roboff's songs. "Deeper Still," which she co-wrote with Ashley Cleveland, appears on Cleveland's Grammy-winning album Before the Daylight's Shot.

Roboff's collaboration with FrEd Newman produced eight musicals for the Castillo Theatre, including Sally and Tom (The American Way), which was awarded Musical Production of the Year at the 2012 AUDELCO Awards; Coming of Age in Korea; and Mantle, Maris and Mom (the Goys of Summer). She started her music career in a popular New York City a cappella group, the Bondinis, and appeared in both the movie and television show Fame. After the Bondinis, Roboff began a career writing/arranging television themes for sports, news, TV movies and special events, including the original theme to ESPN's Sports Center. Her songs can be heard in such movies as Message in a Bottle, Practical Magic, Where the Heart Is, America's Sweethearts and The Prince of Egypt. In the late 1980s, she had the privilege of working with Laura Nyro in New York City, before returning to the world of pop music in Los Angeles. There she had songs recorded by R&B and pop acts such as Olivia Newton John, 4 Real, and Phil Perry, among others. In addition to her musical talents, Ms. Roboff played a key role at the PR firm Vision Communications in the 1980's, where she worked for political concerns including the Zaire pro-democracy movement and the campaign of Lenora Fulani, the first woman and African American to be on the presidential ballot in all fifty states.

COMPOSER: George Bizet (1838-1875) was a French composer and pianist of the romantic era. He is best known for his opera Carmen. He entered the Paris Conservatory of Music a fortnight before his tenth birthday. Georges Bizet's first symphony, the Symphony in C Major, was written there when he was seventeen, evidently as a student assignment. The popular L'arlésienne were originally produced as incidental music for a play by Alphonse Daudet, first performed in 1872. Georges Bizet also composed a romantic opera, Djamileh, which is often seen as a precursor to Carmen, 1875. This latter opera is Bizet's best-known work and is based on a novella of the same title written in 1846 by Prosper Mérimée. Bizet composed the title role for a mezzo-soprano. Carmen was not initially well-received but praise for it eventually came from well-known contemporaries including Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Their views proved to be prophetic, as Carmen has since become one of the most popular works in the entire operatic repertoire. However Bizet did not live to see its success, as he died from angina at the age of 36 a few months after its first few performances, on his third wedding anniversary. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

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