Photo Flash: THE MISANTHROPE Plays At PS122
By: Gabrielle Sierra Jul. 10, 2009
The Misanthrope is an ensemble-created contemporary explosion of Moliere's classic social comedy inspired in equal part by Ingmar Bergman, indie rock, and the New York rental market, it explores the nature of desire in our generation. The world is both familiar and strange - set in present day New York among a group of artists and intellectuals, The Misanthrope looks at how we form and destroy our social communities. Feelings of love, desire, jealously and insecurity are masked and unmasked throughout the play in comedic and dramatic fashion with music, movement, and verse.
Featuring: Matt Biagini, Michael Guagno, Fatih Gençkal, Elisa Matula, Maylin Murphy, Mike James, Wil Petre, Johanna Weller-Fahy, Ross Cowan, Rachael Richman, and James Rutherford.
Designed by: Ásta Bennie Hostetter (costume), Yi Zhao (light), Nicolas Benacerraf (set). Stage Managed by Sarah Helgesen. Directed by Anna Brenner
The Misanthrope will play as part of the underground zero festival at Performance Space 122 (150 First Avenue at East 9th Street), Thursday July 16 at 7:30, Friday July 17 at 9:30pm, Saturday July 18 at 9:30pm, and Sunday July 19 at 7:30pm Tickets ($15) are available online at www.ps122.org or by calling 212-352-3101.
Anna Brenner, Director
ANNA BRENNER is a New York-based theatre director. Her work in theatre and video has been seen in New York and Chicago with the following companies: Target Margin, The Neo-Futurists, Around the Coyote, and Women in the Director's Chair. She has trained with the Siti Company, interned at the Wooster Group, and assisted Tina Landau at Steppenwolf. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago and currently attends the MFA Directing program at Columbia University, where she most recently directed signal through the flames by John Douglas Weidner and Clocked by Steven Gaultney. She is traveling to Poland in August to work with Gardzienice and will direct Three Sisters this October.
Tony Harrison, Translator
Tony Harrison was born in Leeds in 1937.
His many collections of poems include: THE LOINERS (awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1972); PALLADAS: POEMS (1975); from THE SCHOOL OF ELOQUENCE (1981); CONTINUOUS (1981); SELECTED POEMS (Penguin, 1984 second ed. 1987, third ed.1995); v. (Bloodaxe Books, 1985 new enlarged ed. 1989); THE GAZE OF THE GORGON (Bloodaxe, 1992, awarded Whitbread Prize for Poetry); THE SHADOW OF HIROSHIMA and other film poems (Faber, 1995, awarded the William Heinemann Prize 1996) and LAUREATE'S BLOCK AND OTHER POEMS (Penguin, 2000); UNDER THE CLOCK (Penguin 2005); His COLLECTED POEMS were published by Penguin in 2007).
Tony Harrison is Britain's leading theatre and film poet. He has written several pieces for the National Theatre including THE MISANTHROPE (1973) PHAEDRA BRITANNICA (1975) BOW DOWN (1977) THE ORESTEIA (1981 awarded the European Poetry Translation Prize)
THE MYSTERIES (1985 & 2000) and THE PRINCE'S PLAY (1996). He has also both written and directed for the National Theatre, THE TRACKERS OF OXYRHYNCHUS, which had its world premiere in the ancient stadium of Delphi, Greece, and opened in the Olivier, NT in 1990, SQUARE ROUNDS in1992 and FRAM in 2008. He has also written and directed plays for unique theatrical spaces, POETRY OR BUST (1993) at Salt's Mill, Saltaire, THE KAISERS OF CARNUNTUM (1995), in a Roman Amphitheatre at Carnuntum on the Danube between Vienna and Bratislava, and THE LABOURERS OF HERAKLES (1995) on a mountainside in Delphi. These plays are published in five volumes PLAYS 1, PLAYS 2, PLAYS 3, PLAYS 4, and PLAYS 5, (Faber and Faber). All the volumes have introductions either by critics or the poet himself. He more recent work for the stage is HECUBA for the RSC, which he also directed for the Kennedy Centre, Washington, for the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, New York and Delphi. HECUBA is published by Faber and Faber (2005) He directed his play SQUARE ROUNDS in Russian translation at the Tanganka, Moscow, 2007.
Matt Biagini, Actor (Alceste)
Matt Biagini is a native New Yorker and is thrilled to be appearing in this production. Recent New York credits include Galileo (Urban Stages), Telephone/Landscape (Target Margin), Learning Russian (The Flea), 365 (The Public), and Writing Fellows (Culture Project.) Regional: The Witching Hour, The Fairy Garden (Williamstown), Richard II, Tartuffe (u/s Yale Rep.) Matt is a proud graduate oF Brown University, and an MFA Candidate at Yale School of Drama, 2011. AEA.
Elisa Matula, Actor (Celimene)
Elisa Matula is New York based actor and singer. New York theatre includes: Brains (Looking Glass Theater, Dixon Place); The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, (NY Int'l Fringe Festival,Time Out NY Critics' Pick); Out of the Blue (CUNY Pen World Voices Festival); StJohnsTheatre's (HH) HamletHouse (Warsaw Club, Zebulon); The Assembly's What I Took in my Hand (Ontological-Hysteric); Baldwin Soup Kitchen, Bazaar Godard, The Whitman Project (StJohnsTheatre); Assassins Hours, The Interpreter (Dome Theatre). She has co- created and performed in original works throughout France as well as at the Edinburgh, Avignon, and Prague Fringe Festivals. She is a graduate of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris and has studied and worked with Pantheatre of Paris. www.elisamatula.com
www.annabrenner.com
www.eastriver.org
www.weird.org/ugz
www.PS122.org
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