BAM Opens PERSEPHONE with Julia Stiles, 10/26-30

BAM presents the music-theater work Persephone, a collaboration between New York's trailblazing Ridge Theater ensemble and three exceptional contributors from across various disciplines. In this multimedia production, which centers around a 19th-Century Theater troupe, the mythology surrounding the Greek character of Persephone-the beautiful and doomed daughter of Zeus and Demeter who was abducted by Hades into the Underworld-is explored though songs, narrative,
projections, and instrumental music.

The title character is played by film and theater actress Julia Stiles (the Bourne trilogy, Oleanna on
Broadway), a longtime Ridge associate who first appeared onstage with the company at age eleven.

Warren Leight-HBO's In Treatment, Tony Award winner for Side Man-wrote the book, which
highlights the Persephone myth's ability to illuminate ideas about gender, power, loss, mysticism, and the natural world in different ways during different eras. The music is a collaboration between
composer/performer Ben Neill and vocalist/songwriter Mimi Goese, who also plays Demeter, and
combines samples of works by 19th-century composers with the sounds of contemporary rock and
electronica.

About the artists
Ridge Theater has established itself as one of America's premier creators of multimedia theater,
opera, and new music performance. Ridge productions are epic visual and aural works that typically
position performers within film and video projections, redefining traditional theatrical boundaries.
Dramatic staging by acclaimed director Bob McGrath and haunting film work and projections by
filmmaker Bill Morrison (Decasia) and visual artist Laurie Olinder are hallmarks of the Ridge style.
Ridge Theater Productions have been presented at venues such as the American Repertory Theater, BAM (The Death of Klinghoffer, 2003 Next Wave; Lightning at our feet, 2008 Next Wave), Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Royal FestivAl Hall, and Walt Disney Concert Hall. Their work has been described as "hallucinatory, oddly beautiful, and disturbing" (Chicago Tribune). Ridge Theater and its collaborators have received numerous awards including multiple Village Voice OBIE and NY Dance & Performance (Bessie) Awards, an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Design in the Theater, as well as fellowships from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Five films from Ridge productions are part of the Permanent Collection of the Museum of Modern Art. More information can be found at www.ridgetheater.org.
Trained as a dancer, Mimi Goese has worked in postmodern dance, performance art, theater, film,
and music since 1984. Goese has performed with seminal art bands Hugo Largo and Mimi, and
collaborated with composers Julia Heyward, A. Leroy, John Moran, Moby, Porl Thompson of the Cure, and Hector Zazou, as well as contributing to soundtracks for the experimental films Anemone Me, directed by Suzan-Lori Parks, and Jo Andres' Dreaming Out Loud. Collaborators have included choreographers and dance companies Jo Andres and DANCENOISE, Butoh artist Poppo Sharishi, theater directors Richard Elovich, Ain Gordon, and Bob McGrath of Ridge Theater, and film directors Andres, Michael Stiller, and Abigail Simon. Goese has received two Bessie Awards, one for musical composition (with A. Leroy) and the other for her performance in Ridge Theater's production of John Moran's Little Retarded Boy. This is her first collaboration with composer
Ben Neill.

Ben Neill is a composer, performer, producer, and inventor of the mutantrumpet, a hybrid electroacoustic instrument. His music blends electronica, classical, and popular music influences, blurring the lines between DJ culture and acoustic instrument performance. Neill has recorded eight CDs and has been called "a creative composer and genius performer" (Time Out New York). He has performed extensively at all the major international music festivals and has collaborated with numerous other composers and musicians including David Behrman, John Cale, John Cage, Coil, and DJ Spooky.

In 2008, Neill composed original music for two films, Guest of Cindy Sherman and 911-911, an
animated film by artist Mel Chin which premiered at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2009. In
2005, Palladio, Neill's interactive movie in collaboration with visual artist Bill Jones premiered at the
Thalia Theater at Symphony Space in New York. ITSOFOMO, a major collaborative performance
piece with the late artist David Wojnarowicz, was exhibited at New York's New Museum and featured in the PBS documentary Imagining America.

Warren Leight's play Side Man won the 1999 Tony Award for Best Play and was a 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Other plays include No Foreigners Beyond This Point (Drama Desk Award nomination),
Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine (American Theatre Critics Association Award nomination), and the book
for the musical Mayor (Drama Desk Award nomination). Leight is an enthusiastic supporter of the 24
Hour Plays festival, to which he has regularly contributed; his one-act play Mars Has Never Been ThisClose was recently published in its anthology, Twenty-Four by Twenty-Four.
Leight is the show runner and executive producer of the upcoming FX drama Lights Out. Previously,
he was the show runner and executive producer of HBO's Emmy-nominated In Treatment (for which
he won a Peabody Award and a Humanitas Prize nomination) and the Edgar Award-winning Law and
Order: Criminal Intent. He also wrote and directed the film The Night We Never Met and co-wrote the documentary Before the Nickelodeon (New York Film Festival). Leight is a former President of the Writer's Guild of America East and a current member of the Dramatists Guild Council.

Julia Stiles began her career on stage with Ridge Theater and has since appeared in Twelfth Night
(Shakespeare in the Park), Fran's Bed (Playwrights Horizons), and in both the London and Broadway
revivals of David Mamet's Oleanna.

Stiles, who graduated from Columbia University in 2005, has starred in three Shakespearean film
adaptations: Hamlet, O, and Ten Things I Hate About You, for which she earned the Chicago Film
Critics Award for Most Promising Actress. Other film credits include The Business of Strangers, Save
the Last Dance, David Mamet's State & Main, Mona Lisa Smile, and a recurring role opposite Matt
Damon in the Bourne trilogy. This fall, she guest stars on the acclaimed Showtime series Dexter.
Co-commissioned by Virginia Tech for the Department of Theatre and Cinema at Virginia Tech and by BAM for the 2010 Next Wave Festival.

Persephone is made possible by generous support from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech.

Photo Credit: BWW-Staff

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