Theatre For A New Audience Extends NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND, Closes 11/28

The New York premiere of Notes from Underground, adapted for the stage by the OBIE Award-winning actor Bill Camp and RoBert Woodruff, is extended through Sunday, November 28. The production, opening November 11 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center's Jerome Robbins Theater, 450 West 37th Street, is directed by Mr. Woodruff and stars Mr. Camp as the Underground Man.

"The greatly anticipated Notes from Underground has sold nearly all of the tickets available for the initial engagement," said Theatre for a New Audience Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz when announcing the one-week extension.

Theatre for a New Audience, in association with Baryshnikov Arts Center, is presenting the New York premiere of Yale Repertory Theatre's production of Notes from Underground, based on the revolutionary novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Notes from Underground is translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

When it premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2009, The Boston Globe described the production as"brutal, funny, agonizing and profound...It is at once a faithful adaptation of Dostoevsky's strangely modern novel and a brilliantly original and theatrical work of art."

"I am a sick man...I am a wicked man," cries the Underground Man, one of modern literature's first and most remarkable antiheroes. A former government official who has defiantly withdrawn from a corrupt society, the Underground Man wages his own personal war on everything-and everyone-around him.

Bill Camp is the Underground Man in his and RoBert Woodruff's adaptation
of Notes from the Underground . Joan Marcus Photo

This haunting, compelling play is based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's landmark 1864 novella, Notes from Underground. The Underground Man, having resigned his position as a civil servant to live in isolation, holes up in a squalid office cluttered with discarded equipment and wet snow. Obsessively reliving old wounds and spurning any chance at affection, he begins a descent into madness that is at times heartbreakingly funny, at times disquieting, but always honest, searing and unforgettable.

Also on stage with Mr. Camp are sound designer/composer Michaël Attias as Apollon and Merritt Janson as Liza, both of whom will also perform the music.

The creative team for Notes from Underground includes scenic designer David Zinn, costume designer Moria Sine Clinton, lighting designer Mark Barton, sound designer and composer Michaël Attias, projection designer Peter Nigrini and associate projection designer Daniel Vatsky.

Bill Camp previously appeared on stage for Theatre for a New Audience in Howard Brenton's Sore Throats in 2006, Measure for Measure in 1996 and Macbeth in 1999. Mr. Camp won an OBIE for Homebody/Kabul and appeared on Broadway in Coram Boy, Heartbreak House, Jackie, Saint Joan and The Seagull, and at the New York Shakespeare Festival in Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus and Twelfth Night.

Mr. Woodruff's most recent production for Theatre for a New Audience was Rinde Eckert's Orpheus X last season; his previous productions for the Theatre have included Edward Bond's Chair in 2008, Edward Bond's Saved in 2001 and Changling in 1997. He is the former artistic director of the American Repertory Theater. In the 1970s, Mr. Woodruff was virtually the sole director of Sam Shepard's work, starting with The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife in 1976 which was followed by the American premiere of Curse of the Starving Class at the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1978, the world premieres of Buried Child (1978) and True West (1980) at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco and then in New York, and the touring productions of Tongues and Savage/Love, which MR. Shepard co-authored with the performer Joseph Chaikin. In the last three decades, he has directed plays at Lincoln Center Theater, the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. In 2002, Mr. Woodruff succeeded Robert Brustein as the second Artistic Director in the history of the American Repertory Theater, a post he held until 2007. He serves on the faculty of Yale University where he directed the world premiere of Notes from Underground in at Yale Repertory Theatre in March of 2009.

Tickets for Notes from Underground are $75 ($60 if purchased before October 3) and may be purchased via SmartTix at www.smarttix.com or (212) 868 4444.

For ages 25 and under or full time students, $10.00 New Deal tickets may be purchased in advance for any performance. New Deal tickets are sold on a first come, first served basis along with all other tickets. There are no restrictions on the number of New Deal tickets available for each performance, but there is a limit of two that can be purchased via the phone or online. Valid ID listing proof of age or full time student status must be shown for each New Deal ticket purchased; failure to show proof of age/student ID will result in a surcharge for a full-price ticket.

Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, Theatre for a New Audience's <www.tfana.org > mission is to help develop and vitalize the performance and study of Shakespeare and classical drama. The Theatre vigorously engages with Shakespeare and plays from the world repertoire. The Theatre has produced twenty-nine of the Bard's plays with directors who include Sir Peter Hall, Mark Rylance, Bartlett Sher and Julie Taymor, and a diverse repertory by authors such as Harley Granville Barker, Edward Bond and Adrienne Kennedy. It has played on Broadway and toured nationally and internationally. In 2001, Theatre for a New Audience became the first American theatre invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Stratford-upon-Avon. Cymbeline, directed by Bartlett Sher, premiered at the RSC, and in 2007, Theatre for a New Audience was invited to return with The Merchant of Venice starring F. Murray Abraham and directed by Darko Tresnjak. Mr. Abraham and The Merchant of Venice will tour the United States this spring.

The Baryshnikov Arts Center is the realization of a long-held vision by artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov, who sought to build an arts center in Manhattan that would serve as a gathering place for artists from all disciplines. BAC's opening in 2005 heralded the launch of this mission, establishing a thriving creative laboratory and performance space for artists from around the world. BAC's activities encompass a robust residency program augmented by a range of professional services, including commissions of new work, as well as the presentation of performances by artists of excellence at varying stages of their careers. In tandem with its commitment to supporting artists, BAC is dedicated to building audiences for the arts by presenting contemporary, innovative work at affordable ticket prices. In February 2010, BAC opened the Jerome Robbins Theater, which serves as an organic extension of the existing center, featuring multi-disciplinary work, emerging talent, and International Artists, and including artist-centered activity that fosters creative exploration. For more information, please visit <www.bacnyc.org >.

Yale Repertory Theatre <www.yalerep.org > is dedicated to the production of new plays and bold interpretations of classics and has produced well over 100 premieres-including two Pulitzer Prize winners and four other nominated finalists-by emerging and established playwrights. Eleven Yale Rep productions have advanced to Broadway, garnering more than 40 Tony Award nominations and eight Tony Awards. Yale Rep is also the recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Established in 2008, the Yale Center for New Theatre is an integrated, artist-driven initiative that devotes major resources to the commissioning, development and production of new plays and musicals at Yale Repertory Theatre and across the country. Professional assignments at Yale Repertory Theatre are integral components of the program at Yale School of Drama, the nation's leading graduate theatre training conservatory.

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