Jason Butler Harner, Patrick Page & More to Star in TITUS ANDRONICUS 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: Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, directed by Jesse Berger. This event will premiere at 7:30 PM ET on Sunday April 23rd at the Lucille Lortel Theater (121 Christopher Street). It will also be simulcast live online. Subsequently, it will stream on demand, beginning Monday April 24th and continuing until 11:59 PM ET on Sunday, April 30th. Tony nominated actor Patrick Page will be reading the title role.

Berger says, "What a thrill to dive into this powerful play with some of the finest actors in NYC. Since Red Bull was founded, people have often asked me when we would tackle what may be Shakespeare's bloodiest and most Jacobean-in-spirit play. After a private workshop last spring, we decided the time is now! This is a rare opportunity to hear the play, which, in addition to pathos and gorgeous dramatic poetry, also offers a surprising number of laughs and theatrical thrills."

One of Shakespeare's earliest and bloodiest plays explores the desperate nihilism of a world where an unstoppable cycle of revenge has begun. Titus is Rome's greatest general and the head of a noble Roman family. When his armies vanquish the Goths, their defeated queen, Tamora - with her paramour Aaron the Moor - unleashes a fury that brings Rome, Titus, and his family to their knees. The play's exploration of humanity's capacity for inhumanity is shockingly contemporary.

The cast will feature Teagle F. Bougere (Broadway: The Crucible, A Raisin in the Sun - Outer Critics Circle nomination, The Tempest; Off-Broadway: DEBATE: Baldwin vs Buckley - american vicarious; The New Englanders [Audelco Award] - Manhattan Theatre Club; Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Macbeth - The Public Theater); Jason C. Brown (RBT: The Duchess of Malfi, The Revenger's Tragedy; The Bacchae, A Christmas Carol in Harlem - Classical Theatre of Harlem); Juliana Canfield (Fefu and Her Friends, He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box - TFANA; Sunday - Atlantic Theater Company); Jason Butler Harner (Broadway: Bernhardt/Hamlet, The Crucible, The Coast of Utopia; Off-Broadway: Hedda Gabler - Obie Award; The Village Bike - Drama Desk nomination, The Paris Letter - Drama Desk nomination; TV: "The Blacklist," "Ray Donovan," "Ozark," "The Walking Dead"); Dion Johnstone (the title role in RBT's Coriolanus; Broadway: King Lear opposite Glenda Jackson); Maurice Jones (Broadway: The Lifespan of a Fact, Saint Joan, The Cherry Orchard, Romeo and Juliet; Off-Broadway: The Merchant of Venice - TFANA; Judgment Day - Park Avenue Armory); Elizabeth Marvel (Broadway: King Lear, Picnic, Other Desert Cities, Top Girls, Edward Albee's Seascape, Taking Sides, Saint Joan); Howard Overshown (Broadway: The Lehman Trilogy, A Soldier's Play, Saint Joan, A Free Man of Color. Julius Caesar; Off-Broadway: Yellowman - Outer Critics Circle nomination); Socorro Santiago (RBT: The White Devil; Bway: The Bacchae; Off-Bway: L'illusion - NYTW; The Promise - EST; "Mozart in the Jungle"); Patrick Page (currently King Lear at Shakespeare Theatre; RBT: Your Own Thing, Coriolanus, Swan Song, Henry IV, The Duchess of Malfi; Hadestown - Tony, Lortel nominations; Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark - Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Award nominations, A Man for All Seasons - Outer Critics Circle nomination); and more to be announced.

In-Person tickets are $52 - $92 each (including $2.00 Convenience Fee). Livestream & Video On Demand tickets are $50.00 with a limited number of $25 Access tickets available (on a first come, first serve basis), thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor. To purchase tickets, go to redbulltheater.com/titus-andronicus.

ABOUT THE PLAY

Titus Andronicus unfolds in a strange universe where the characters who poignantly demand sincerity or mercy from others lack the moral standing to do so. The title character is an aged war hero, who has pledged his daughter to Rome's emperor (overruling her engagement to his brother) and lost twenty-one of his twenty-five sons in various military campaigns. Titus is committed to piety, a term that refers not only to religious observance but also to duty to parent or country. In his mind, his faithful service to the fatherland (Rome) has earned him an equivalent acquiescence from his children. However, Rome's claim to civility and Titus' code of honor are both thrown into question immediately. Titus has returned from a victorious campaign against the Goths. The Queen of the Goths and her surviving sons are among his prisoners. Titus claims the Roman gods will not allow him to grant Queen Tamora's request to spare one of her sons, whom Titus has marked for sacrifice. She rails: "Cruel irreligious piety!" Her surviving sons mutter: "Was ever Scythia half so barbarous?" and "Oppose not Scythia to ambitious Rome." These retorts expose that, in establishing its empire, Rome has engaged in the barbarism that it would project onto other peoples, such as Scythians, Goths, and Moors. Titus' piety and Roman virtue have both been shown to contain and even foster pitiless brutality. By having the expected barbarians deliver these destabilizing lines, Titus attempts to cause trouble for audience members who want to identify with Rome, producing problems of genre and expectation. In tragedy, we have come to expect if not heroes then at least antiheroes with whom we identify. But were identification really the goal of a sixteenth-century revenge tragedy such as Titus, played before audiences ruled by a militantly anti-Catholic monarch? The association of Rome with the Papacy imbues Aaron the Moor's gibes at "Popish tricks and ceremonies" with bite. If he is mocking Catholic gestures, such as signing the cross, as empty-then, for that moment as earlier when Titus withholds pity-English Protestants would seem to align with barbarians who are also committed to gross and ruthless vengeance. Perhaps, then, early revenge tragedies were not designed to produce recognizably human or morally exemplary characters. The genre featured ghostly visitations, protagonists driven mad by melancholy, ingenious subterfuge, vengeance, and suicide. Revenge tragedy was arguably a mixed genre offering audiences the spectacle of characters who rant, connive, and chew scenery-and not the philosophical profundity we've been taught to expect as the primary aim of Shakespeare. In attempting to get a hold of Titus, I find myself reminded of Mark Twain's warning preceding Huckleberry Finn: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." Titus seems designed for an audience interested in outsized characters, plot twists, spying, and spectacle. Yet, again like Huck, the moral and political stakes cannot quite be disregarded. Even if Shakespeare's audiences did not demand an explicit ethical stance, contemporary audiences might well find that imperial war, slavery, rape, and honor killing demand a moral response from us. England was not an empire in 1592 when the play debuted, but Britain became one and so did the United States. In those two nations, Rome would no longer seem available for vicarious enjoyment from a safe distance. Instead, it might appear an uncanny premonition of the barbarous elements of empires that conquer in the name of civility.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Jesse Berger has directed Pericles, The Revenger's Tragedy, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Maids, Edward the Second, Women Beware Women, The Duchess of Malfi, The Witch of Edmonton, Volpone, Loot, The Changeling, The Government Inspector and The Alchemist, since founding Red Bull Theater in 2003. Jesse has also directed across the country at Denver Center (Richard III), The Old Globe (Othello), Pittsburgh Public Theatre (Venus in Fur, Circle Mirror Transformation, An Iliad, A Number, I Am My Own Wife, The Laramie Project), PlayMakers Rep (An Iliad), Barrington Stage (Absurd Person Singular, Sleuth), Great Lakes Theater Festival, Dorset Theatre Festival, Washington Shakespeare Company, and the Utah, Idaho, and St. Louis Shakespeare Festivals, among others. Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Direction (Marat/Sade), Drama League and Lucille Lortel Award nominations for Outstanding Revival (The Maids); SDC Callaway Award nominations for Excellence in Directing (The Government Inspector, The Witch of Edmonton, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore), OBIE Award for Outstanding Direction (The Government Inspector). He is currently represented Off-Broadway by his production of Arden of Faversham at the Lortel Theater.

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 20 Off-Broadway productions and nearly 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.

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