Irina Brook's Adaptation of MIDSUMMER Heads To La MaMa ETC 11/3-7

WAITING FOR THE DREAM ("En Attendant le Songe") -- an adaptation of William Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - will be performed by La Compagnie Irina Brook for a limited engagement November 3 to 7 at La MaMa ETC (74A E. 4 St.) in Manhattan. WAITING FOR THE DREAM is performed in French and English with subtitles.

Directed by Irina Brook - daughter of the renowned director Peter Brook - WAITING FOR THE DREAM will be given its U.S. premiere at La MaMa, having debuted in 2005 at the outdoors Festival Dedans-Dehors (The Outside-In Festival) in Bretigny-Sur-Orge near Paris, France. WAITING FOR THE DREAM became a runaway hit and subsequently played over 300 performances during sold-out engagements across Europe, including at Avignon's off festival Villeneuve-en-Scene, the Bouffes du Nord in Paris and throughout France, as well as in Athens, Yerevan, Italy, Germany, Morocco , Madrid and Poland.

Performed in the original Shakespearean manner - with an all-male cast, numbering six in this adaptation - WAITING FOR THE DREAM was created with the goal of bringing theater to venues off the beaten track and to communities that normally have little contact with cultural activity.

Ms. Brook wanted to work from the classical text of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM but with a free and playful approach and with all the creativity and invention necessary to make one believe that 6 men, with very few props or costumes, can become believable as pretty women, fairies and performing house builders . Hence WAITING FOR THE DREAM is born largely from improvisation in a bare village hall, with minimal scenic elements, costumes and props -mainly begged and borrowed: an old pink nightgown a flowery parasol, costumes made from elements from a hardware store: plumbers equipment, plastic bags ,Saran Wrap, a couple of poles, a ball of string, some gathered leaves .

What results is a joyful, playful, appealing DREAM that abounds with poetry as well as slapstick, offering audiences both young and old a fresh, new way to enjoy Shakespeare's classic tale.

Six actors interpret all the roles: the young lovers in Theseus' court trying their best to overcome the many obstacles to their love; the fairies (e.g. Fairy Naff!) and their Queen Titania in conflict with Oberon, King of the Elves; Puck, a funky, disjointed rapper and the motley band of mechanicals/house-builders, sub-amateur thespians cobbling together "The Most Lamentable Comedy, and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe."

Featured in the cast of DREAM at La MaMa will be Jerry Di Giacomo, Hovnatan Avedikian, Gerald Papasian, Christian Pellisier, Augustin Ruhabura and Emmanuel Guillaume.

WAITING FOR THE DREAM has been translated by Marie-Paule Ramo; sound and lights are by Thibault Ducros.

Ms. Brook says, "I had a dream! I dreamt that with six actors (all men like in Shakespeare's day) it was possible to do a joyful, pared down 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' which could be accessible to everyone. We created this 'Dream' to be performed for only half a dozen special one-off performances in the roughest suburbs of Paris, in the cobbled courtyard of a medieval farm in the deepest countryside, on the grounds of a town hall, in an abandoned campsite, in the middle of a forest... And in each different spot something magical occurred -thanks to the enduring magic of Shakespeare's extraordinary and timeless text." It soon became clear that this Dream had to continue....

She adds that one of her earliest and most enduring theatrical memories was the historic production of MIDSUMMER directed by her father when she was seven years old. She saw it over fifty times and could recite most of the play by heart. Her own children grew up with this new production and had a similar experience of being drawn into Shakespeare's universe, thanks to a Midsummer Night's Dream.
Irina Brook was "born in a trunk" in Paris to director Peter Brook and actress Natasha Parry. She spent her childhood between England and France. When she was 18 she went to New York to study acting with Stella Adler and got her first taste of stage work in several off-Broadway productions. Back in Paris she played in her father's productions of Chekov's Cherry Orchard and Moliere's Don Juan at the Bouffes du Nord Theatre.

Then in London she had a busy period working in television, film and on stage. In the middle of the 1990?s she turned her energy to directing. Her first production Beast on the Moon, written by the American Richard Kalinoski, opened in London in May 1996. Then came Nicholas Wright's Mrs. Klein in Watford and Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well in Oxford.

In 1998 she directed a French adaptation of Beast on the Moon at the Vidy Theatre in Lausanne, Switzerland. The show then played in Bobigny, did an international tour and ran at the Theatre de l'Oeuvre in Paris. That production received 5 Molières, the French Theatre Awards, among which "Best Director." She also directed a version for TV, which won her the Mitrani Prize at the F.I.P.A., the International Festival of Audiovisual Programs in Biarritz.

Irina is one of the only director's ever invited to direct Ariane Mnouchkine's troupe, Theatre du Soleil in a production of All's Well That Ends Well for the Avignon Theatre Festival. In 2000 she directed Katherine Burger's Morphic Resonance at the Theatre de l'Atelier, which won her the Moliere Award for "Feminine Theatrical Revelation" and the S.A.C.D. Award for "Outstanding Newcomer".

Her young audience version of Homer's Odyssey created for the Festival of Sartrouville also ran at Paris's Bouffes du Nord Theatre.

A very prolific period followed: co productions with the Theatre de Vidy lausanne and the National theater of Chaillot: Juliette et Romeo, 2002; Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa (also invited to Tokyo;) The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams) in 2001, a co-production Theatre de l'Atelier -The Good Woman of Sechuan (Bertold Brecht) in Lausanne, followed by extensive touring, national and international. Then The Bridge of San Luis Rey, adapted from Thornton Wilder's novel co-produced by the Theatre de Sceaux and Marivaux's Ile des Esclaves at the Theatre de l'Atelier.(Paris)
In February 2006, she was invited to recreate her production of The Glass Menagerie at the New National Theatre of Tokyo with a Japanese cast.

Waiting for the Dream, led to the creation of the Compagnie Irina Brook in 2007. This production did a 3-week run in Avignon's off festival, Villeneuve-en-Scene in 2007, touring in 2007-08 in France, Bouffes du Nord in Paris, Athens, Italy, Germany, Morocco and the Festival d'Automne in Madrid.

The company 's next show was blue-grass gospel road-movie version of Don Quixote called: Somewhere...La Mancha, which was created at the 2008 Villeneuve-en-Scène (Avignon) and playd at the Bouffes du Nord and on tour.

Irina has also directed several operas. First, Mozart's The Magic Flute, co-directed with Dan Jemmet for the Reisopera in the Netherlands ; Eugene Oneguin for the Aix-en-Provence Music Festival ; an acclaimed Cenerentola at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris (three times) the Teatro Communale, Bologna, Italy and most recently at the Stockholm Royal Opera. La Traviata, a co-production with the Théâtre de Lille and Bologna won warm critical acclaim. At the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées she directed Handel's Giulio Cesare. In the fall of 2007 she was invited to direct Il Burbero de Buon Cuore by Martin y Soler at Madrid's Teatro Real.

She spent a year as director-in-residence at Shakespeare &Co. in Lenox, Massachusetts, where she adapted and directed Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost, Toad of Toad hall and a musical version of Cinderella called "CindyBella."
La Compagnie Irina Brook is now touring a very successful new TEMPETE ("The Tempest"), whilst also performing in repertoire "The Odyssey," "Somewhere la Mancha" and of course, "Dream."

In 2002, she was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture.

WAITING FOR THE DREAM is presented by La MaMa ETC in association with La Compagnie Irina Brook.

Scheduled November 3 to 7, the performance schedule for WAITING FOR THE DREAM is Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $24 ($19 for students/seniors). For performance and ticket information call 212 475 7710 or visit www.lamama.org

La MaMa Experimental Theatre is a world-renowned cultural organization led by founder Ellen Stewart. For 48 years La MaMa has passionately pursued its original mission to develop, nurture, support, produce and present new and original performance work by artists of all nations and cultures. We believe that in order to flourish, art needs the company of colleagues, the spirit of collaboration, the comfort of continuation, a public forum in which to be evaluated and fiscal support. Since La MaMa's doors first opened in 1961, our primary dedication has been to new works. Many of the best plays and playwrights of the 60's and 70's have come from our lower East Side stages and workshops. The face of Theatre as we now know it on Broadway and beyond was influenced by and infused with the spirit and work of La MaMa artists.

 

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