SITI Company Concludes Finale Season With RADIO PLAY Tour

The award-winning Siti Company, a leading New York-based theater ensemble celebrated locally and internationally, concludes its Finale 30th Anniversary Season with the Radio Play tour, a series of three theatrical works inspired by the groundbreaking radio shows Orson Welles created with the Mercury Theatre in the late 1930s.

The SITI radio plays are co-directed by Darron L West, Tony Award winning sound designer, and Anne Bogart. Of this collaboration, Anne says, "For many years, Siti Company shared a deep interest in the iconoclast American director Orson Welles and his innovations around theater, film, and in particular, radio. Through Welles, we realized that the radio play format brings a great deal of imaginative freedom to both artists and audiences. Hearing or speaking one story while seeing or embodying another is far more engaging and entertaining than the standard method of seeing and hearing the same information at the same time. The possible meanings and nuances expand exponentially and delightfully."

At the conclusion of the finale season in December 2022, Siti Company will cease to operate in its current iteration as a touring, teaching, performing ensemble with an administrative staff and a studio. The business entity that remains, SITI, Inc, will provide service to the field, functioning as a bridge between the legacy of SITI and new generations of ensembles for exploration of international artistic endeavors, and as a hub for archival inquiries, training inquiries and alumni support.

Siti Company kicks of its Radio Play tour on October 19-22 at NYU Skirball with Radio Macbeth, Orson Welles' adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy. Late at night in the guts of an abandoned theater, actors circle restlessly around the common shared warmth of a rehearsal table, moving through Shakespeare's briefest and perhaps most magnetic play. Around them, in the perimeter of the space, the ghosts of all previous productions hover and encroach. The spirits of ambition, violence, fortune, free will, and madness flicker and glow. The actors cling to the sanity of words while the chaos of history grows to be undeniably present with them in the room.

Then, from October 26 - November 5, Siti Company will present War of the Worlds - The Radio Play at the Laurie Beechman Theatre at the Westbank Cafe. On the foggy, fall evening of October 30, 1938, America went to war with Mars! Adapted for radio by Howard Koch and starring Orson Welles, War of the Worlds was presented as a Halloween thriller, or as Welles put it: "The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying 'boo!!'" But for those who tuned in late, "normal" programming appeared to be interrupted by the startling news that there were "explosions occurring on Planet Mars!" Reports followed stating that a "huge, flaming object" had fallen to earth on a farm near Grover's Mill, New Jersey. More landings were soon reported, and an anxious radio audience came to the frightening conclusion that Earth was the target of a full-scale invasion by aliens!! SITI's staged dramatization arrives just in time for Halloween 2022

Siti Company will host a special 30th anniversary benefit performance of War of the Worlds - The Radio Play on October 26 with an event that honors co-founder and co-artistic director Anne Bogart. All funds raised for the event will directly support SITI's Legacy Plan, including transition grants to the ensemble members at the end of 2022.

After fruitful work-in-progress performances in December 2021, Siti Company returns to the Fisher Center at Bard on December 16-18 to premiere a uniquely SITI A Christmas Carol. Gideon Lester, Fisher Center Artistic Director, says, "For thirty years, the legendary Siti Company has been one of the most inspiring and influential American theater ensembles. It's an honor for the Fisher Center at Bard to collaborate with the company to create their finale production - a wholly original adaptation of A Christmas Carol that brings Dickens' words to new life through the theatrical power of imagination, in SITI's inimitable style. Anne Bogart is a Bard alum, so this is a fitting homecoming. We're delighted to continue our collaboration with her at her alma mater, and to welcome her superb collaborators back to the Sosnoff Theater." Sparked by listening to Orson Welles' 1939 Christmas Eve radio play, featuring Lionel Barrymore, Orson, and many of the Mercury Theatre on the Air regulars, this wondrous adaptation is steeped in the intimacy and alchemy of Dickens' magical words, conjuring the world of Scrooge and his adventure with the ghosts of the past, present and future from a bare stage and the magic of our shared imagination. The performance of a seasonal ritual offers hope and redemption for us all.

Tickets are on sale now for all three shows!

Following a two-year planning process that began in 2017, Siti Company determined that its mission was rooted in the passions of like-minded individual artists-its ensemble members-and not a larger self-sustaining institution. In early 2019, Siti Company members, board, and staff decided to conclude the ensemble and producing entity at the 30 year mark, ending with intention after decades of collaboration. In the fall of 2020, Siti Company announced the SITI Legacy Plan, which includes the finale 30th anniversary season, the creation of a robust physical and digital archive (to be unveiled in October 2022), and a new book, written by the company (also coming in October, published by Yonkers International Press). All of these activities are currently underway thanks to generous funding from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Community Trust, New York City Department of Culture Affairs in partnership with City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts.

"The question that we asked was, are we an institution that continues on indefinitely, or are we a group of artists who circled around one another thirty years ago and then stayed together based upon a shared vision about collaborative creation?" said Anne Bogart, Co-Artistic Director of Siti Company. "After much consideration, it became clear that we are a specific group of likeminded artists moving through time and space together. And now, here we are, taking our next step, but united in our intention to help others to carry the tradition forwards, each in their own fashion."

Please visit www.siti.org for more information on Siti Company and the Radio Play tour.

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