The Living Theatre Closes RED NOIR 1/30

The Living Theatre, the oldest experimental theatre group still producing in the United States,

continues its 2009-10 season with world-premiere of Anne Waldman's RED NOIR. Directed by Judith Malina

Performances December 7-January 30 at The Living Theatre (21 Clinton Street)

The legendary Living Theatre continues its 2009-10 season with acclaimed poet and experimental author Anne Waldman's RED NOIR - a detective thriller based on film noir techniques and themes - with previews set to begin December 7 prior to an office press opening December 10 at The Living Theatre (21 Clinton Street) in Manhattan. Judith Malina directs.

In RED NOIR, writer Anne Waldman combines metaphors of the film noir genre and reflections on modern life in our economically and ecologically trouble ridden war culture. Set on the Lower East Side, with an array of vivid characters whose lives intertwine, the play follows a female detective as she investigates a black market deal done by many greedy hands and pursues two men, each carrying a valise - one filled with a nuclear or toxic substance; the other filled with the seeds of the future.

Integrating Ms. Malina's direction and Ms. Waldman's vast and accomplished literary catalogue, RED NOIR exposes lists of toxic chemicals, reaches out to the Middle East, and expounds upon troubles in our worldly existence in an attempt to find ways toward revelation, revolution and redemption.

The ensemble cast of RED NOIR includes Camilla de Araujo, Brent Barker, Vinie Burrows, Maylin Castro, Ben Cerf, Sheila Dabney, Jay Dobkin, Luis Christian Dilorenzi, Erin Downhour, Eno Edet, Tjasa Ferme, Ondina Frate, Gemma Forbes, Maria Guzman, Home Hynes, Silas Inches Albert Lamont, Jenna Kirk, Celeste Moratti, Martin Munoz, Lucie Pohl, Marie Pohl, Erik Rodriguez, Judi Rymer, Anthony Sisco, Lori Summers, Enoch Wu, and Kennedy Yanko.

RED NOIR has lighting design by Richard Retta; set design by Judith Malina, Ilion Troya and Richard Retta; and musical direction by Sheila Dabney. Brad Burgess serves as assistant director.

Since the 1960s, Anne Waldman has been an active member of the experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar and cultural/political activist. She has served as director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's and co-founded, with Allen Ginsberg and others, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where she remains a Distinguished Professor of Poetics and the Director of Naropa Institute's famed Summer Writing Program.

She has published more than forty books of poetry, including "Kill or Cure," "Marriage: A Sentence," "Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble," "Fast Speaking Woman" and epic "Iovis" trilogy. Her work has been widely anthologized, and her poems translated into French, Italian, German, Turkish, Spanish and Chinese. Ms.Waldman is also the editor of several volumes relating to modern, postmodern, and contemporary poetry. Her extensive historical literary, art and tape archive resides at the Hatcher Graduate Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Director Judith Malina was born in 1926 in Kiel, Germany. In 1947, after studying acting and directing at the Dramatic Workshop at the New School with Erwin Piscator, she and Julian Beck co-founded The Living Theatre as an artistic challenge to the commercial theater, producing nearly 100 production including THE CONNECTION, THE BRIG, FRANKENSTEIN, ANTIGONE, PARADISE NOW, SEVEN MEDITATIONS ON POLITICAL SADO-MASOCHISM, I AND I, and RESISTENZA. Her literary output includes the plays PARADISE NOW, MYSTERIES AND SMALLER PIECES and THE LEGACY OF CAIN; collections of her diaries including "The Diaries of Judith Malina 1947-1957" and "The Enormous Despair"; and two books of poetry, "Poems of a Wandering Jewess" and "Love and Politics." As an actress, she has appeared in films including "Dog Day Afternoon," "China Girl," "The Addams Family," "Household Saints," "Enemies: A Love Story," "The Deli," and "Nothing Ever Happens"; and television series including "ER," "Miami Vice," "The Street" and "The Sopranos."

In his New York Times review of the company's 2009 revival of THE CONNECTION, Charles Isherwood called The Living Theatre "a fierce fighter on the forward front of experimental theatre." The Living Theatre's most recent work include Judith Malina and Hanon Reznikov's EUREKA!, Judith Malina's MAUDIE AND JANE, and a revival of 1963 Obie Award-winner THE BRIG which christened the company's present home at 21 Clinton Street in 2007.

The Living Theatre was co-founded in 1947 by current artistic director Judith Malina and Julian Beck, who served as the company's executive director until his death in 1985. For more than six decades, the company has presented a unique body of work that has influenced theatre the world over, staging nearly a hundred productions, performed in nine languages in twenty-nine countries on five continents.

In the 1950s, The Living Theatre was among the first theater companies in the U.S. to produce the work of influential European playwrights such as Bertolt Brecht and Jean Cocteau, as well as modernist poets as T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. Based in a variety of small New York locations that were frequently closed due to financial problems or conflicts with city authorities, they helped originate Off-Broadway as a significant force in U.S. theatre. Their work during this period shared some aspects of style and content with beat generation writers. Also during this time, the American composer Alan Hovhaness and John Cage worked closely with The Living Theatre, composing music for its productions. In 1959, THE CONNECTION attracted national attention for its harsh portrayal of drug addiction and its equally harsh language.

The Living Theatre has toured extensively throughout the world, often in non-traditional venues, such as streets and prisons. It has greatly influenced other American experimental theatre companies, notably The Open Theatre (founded by Living Theatre member Joseph Chaikin) and Bread & Puppet Theatre. Its productions have won three Obie Awards: THE CONNECTION (1959); THE BRIG (1963) and FRANKENSTEIN (1968).

Performances of Anne Waldman's RED NOIR run December 7-January 30 at The Living Theatre (21 Clinton Street). Performances are Wednesdays-Saturdays at 8pm (with the following exceptions, no performances Friday, December 18, Thursday, December 24, and Friday, December 25; additional performances Monday, December 7 and Tuesday, December 8). Tickets are $20 (Wednesdays are Pay What You Can). For reservations call 212-352-3101 or visit www.Theatermania.com.

For additional information, visit www.livingtheatre.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.