CSC Presents HAROLD BLOOM: ON SHAKESPEARE’S LATE & LOST WORK Benefit 2/7

Harold Bloom, America's leading literary critic and author of the best-seller "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human," will join Classic Stage Company Artistic Director Brian Kulick in a rare public appearance on Monday evening, February 7 at 7 pm at CSC (136 East 13th Street) as a special one-night-only event to benefit CSC's ongoing Shakespeare programming. The NY Times Book Review described Bloom as "arguably the most influential critic of the last quarter century. He elevates critical writing to the level of literature itself." He and Kulick will discuss Shakespeare's late collaborations with John Fletcher on The Two Noble Kinsmen and the lost play, Cardenio, which the play Double Falsehood is believed to be based upon. In March, CSC will present Double Falsehood, in a minimalist staging, directed by Kulick, which will be augmented with a special expansion of CSC's popular Open Rehearsal Series as well as a series of panel discussions with noted Shakespeare scholars.

Bloom believes that with the advent of The Two Noble Kinsmen "a new Shakespeare emerges...moving beyond romance or tragicomedy and into a strange, new mode" which he describes as "subtler and defter than ever ...and perhaps gives us a better entrance into Shakespeare's life, than is provided by The Winter's Tale or The Tempest."

Benefit tickets are available to the general public for this special event for $150 per person. Sponsorships are available at $500 per person, which include a private post-event champagne reception and book signing with Bloom as well as two premium tickets to a performance of Double Falsehood. For tickets and information, visit www.classicstage.org or call (866) 811-4111, or (212) 352-3101, or visit the CSC box office at 136 East 13th Street, Monday through Friday 12 pm to 6 pm. CSC's new production of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Josh Hamilton, Jessica Hecht, Marin Ireland, Juliet Rylance and Peter Sarsgaard begins previews Wednesday, January 12.

Now in its 44th year as one of New York's most exciting theatres, Classic Stage Company is the award-winning Off-Broadway theatre committed to re-imagining the classical repertory for a contemporary American audience. Led by Artistic Director Brian Kulick and Executive Director Jessica R. Jenen, they recently presented David Ives' highly acclaimed Venus In Fur, directed by Walter Bobbie as well as Ostrovsky's The Forest, adapted by Kathleen Tolan, starring Dianne Wiest and John Douglas Thompson, and directed by Brian Kulick. In the previous season the company presented three sold-out acclaimed productions: Shakespeare's The Tempest, starring Mandy Patinkin; Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, starring Denis O'Hare, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard; and Anne Carson's An Oresteia. Recent productions: critically acclaimed sold-out runs of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, starring Dianne Wiest and Alan Cumming; the world premiere of David Ives' New Jerusalem, directed by Walter Bobbie; Hamlet, Richard II, and Richard III starring Michael Cumpsty and directed by Brian Kulick; and Zoe Caldwell in Yasmina Reza's A Spanish Play, directed by John Turturro.

CSC presents plays from the past that speak directly to the issues of today. As CSC returns to works of the past, it endeavors to keep a clear eye on the future, particularly in terms of the next generation of artists and audiences. Founded in 1967, CSC has received wide recognition for its significant contributions to theatre as an art form through productions of classic plays, translations and adaptations and a long-standing commitment to the identification and nurturing of leading and emerging artists. Classic Stage's artists are the finest established and emerging theater practitioners working in this country. Highly respected and widely regarded as a major force in New York and American theatre, Classic Stage has been cited repeatedly by all the major Off-Broadway theater awards: Obies, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League and the 1999 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work. Memberships to Classic Stage Company productions are available at various price levels, including the flexible MasterPass membership, which in addition to prime seats entitles members to participate in CSC special series, including their sold-out Open Rehearsal events. For more information on Classic Stage Company visit the theatre's website at www.classicstage.org.

For further information on Classic Stage Company, call (212) 352-3101, visit the theatre in person at 136 East 13th Street, or go to www.classicstage.org.

BIOGRAPHIES

HAROLD BLOOM. Hailed by many as "the finest contemporary American critic," Harold Bloom is a specialist in English and American poetry and in the theory of criticism. He is most associated with Romanticism in poetry and the works of Shakespeare, but he has explored such topics as the Kabbalah, children's literature, Mormonism and the anxiety of literary influence in his extensive bibliography.

An outspoken figure, Bloom often has been quoted in the popular press about controversial issues in literature and academia. One Boston Globe critic stated: "Bloom without the urge to shock would no longer be Bloom."

He is the author of more than two dozen books, including the 1970 work "Yeats," which was one of the nominees in the Arts and Letters category of the National Book Awards. Bloom's 1973 work, "The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry," was praised by a New York Times reviewer who wrote, "Bloom has helped to make the study of Romantic poetry as intellectually and spiritually challenging a branch of literary studies as one may find."

His work "Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present" won Phi Beta Kappa's 1989 Christian Gauss Award for an outstanding work of literary scholarship or criticism. Among Bloom's other critically acclaimed books are "The Visionary Company," "Kabbalah and Criticism," "Poetry and Repression," "A Map of Misreading," "Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism," "Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate," "The Book of J," "The Western Canon," "Omens of Millnnuium," "The American Religion" and "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human." More recent efforts include "How to Read and Why," "Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds," "Hamlet: Poem Unlimited" and "Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?"

Bloom joined the Yale faculty as an instructor in 1955, the year he received a Ph.D. from the University. (He earned his bachelor's degree from Cornell University.) He became assistant professor in 1960. In 1963, Bloom was promoted to associate professor, and two years later, at age 35, he was appointed professor of English -- making him one of the youngest scholars in Yale history to become a full professor in the department of English. He was the William Clyde DeVane Professor of Humanities, 1974-77, and became professor of humanities in 1977 and Sterling Professor of Humanities in 1983. In 1988 he was named the Berg Visiting Professor of English at New York University, holding that post simultaneously with his Yale appointment. He has held numerous other visiting professorships, and he continues to teach undergraduate classes at Yale on poetry and Shakespeare.

Bloom has been editor and introducer of Chelsea House Modern Critical Views and Interpretations since 1984. He was awarded the John Addison Porter Prize for his doctoral dissertation in 1955, and since then has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors. They include the Melville Cane Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Zabel Prize of the American Institute of Arts and Letters. He received Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, and in 1985 was awarded a MacArthur Prize "genius grant."

He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and the recipient of many awards, including the Academy's Gold Medal for Criticism. Among his other honorary degrees, he holds one from the University of Bologna. He received the Catalonia International Prize in 2002 and the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2005.

Brian Kulick is in his 8th season as Artistic Director of CSC, where he has directed The Age of Iron, The Tempest, Richard III, Richard II, Hamlet, The False Servant, The Mysteries and the world premiere of poet Anne Carson's adaptation of An Oresteia. From 1996-2001 he was an Artistic Associate at The Public Theatre, where he directed Twelfth Night, Kit Marlowe, The Winter's Tale, Pericles, A Dybbuk and Timon of Athens. Prior to this, he was the Associate Artistic Director of Trinity Repertory Company, where he directed Romeo and Juliet, Don Quixote and The Illusion. He has directed the premieres of works by Tony Kushner, Charles L. Mee, Nilo Cruz, Han Ong and David Grimm. His work in opera and music theatre includes Carmen, Pelleas and Melisande, A Soldier's Tale, The Guilty Mother and The Anatole Cycle (all for Long Beach Opera). His work has also been seen at Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, the Mark Taper Forum, ACT (Seattle), the McCarter Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Magic Theatre, among others. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Mark Taper Forum and the Creative Director for The Shakespeare Society of New York. Currently he is on the faculty of Columbia University's School of the Arts Theatre Program, where he teaches directing with Anne Bogart.

 

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