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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins to Co-Direct EVERYBODY as Part of Juilliard Drama's 2017-18 Season; Lineup Announced!
By: BWW News Desk Jul. 11, 2017
Juilliard Drama, celebrating its 50th anniversary, announces its 2017-18 season of fully staged productions featuring Juilliard's Group 47 acting students in their fourth and final year in the drama program.
This fall season's productions include Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home From the Wars, directed by LA Williams; alumnus Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's Everybody, co-directed by Danya Taymor and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins; and Pierre de Marivaux's Triumph of Love, translated, adapted, and directed by Stephen Wadsworth. In February, Juilliard Drama presents three plays in repertory: Euripides's Trojan Women, directed by faculty member Ellen Lauren; alumna Katori Hall's Hoodoo Love, directed by Kym Moore; and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, directed by faculty member Moni Yakim. All performances take place in the Stephanie P. McClelland Drama Theater at Juilliard.
Juilliard's fourth-year actors (Group 47) are Brittany Bradford, Fala Chen, Alicia Crowder, Daniel Davila, Jake Faunce, Manon Gage, Toney Goins, Michael Andrew Hahalyak, Scout James, Libby McKnight, Nicholas Podany, Hadley Robinson, Leigha Sinnott, Calvin Leon Smith, Philip Stoddard, Allen Tedder, and Anna Tullis.
Extremely limited tickets at $20 will be available at events.juilliard.edu or at the Juilliard Box Office. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard full-time students may purchase tickets for $10, only at the Juilliard Box Office. Tickets may get released closer to the date of the performances, so please check back.
Juilliard Drama 2017-18 Calendar of Events:
Father Comes Home From the Wars
Directed by LA Williams
This Obie Award winning drama from Pulitzer and Tony-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is about the mess of war, the cost of freedom, and the heartbreak of love, with all three parts seen in one night. Part 1 introduces us to Hero, a slave who must choose whether or not to join his master on a Confederate battlefield. In Part 2, Hero's loyalty is tested as the Union Army approaches. Park 3 finds Hero's loved ones anxiously awaiting his return.
Wednesday, October 11, at 7:30pm
Thursday, October 12, at 7:30pm
Friday, October 13, at 7:30pm
Saturday, October 14, at 2pm and 8pm
Sunday, October 15, at 7pm
Everybody
Co-directed by Danya Taymor and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
This modern riff on the 15th-century morality play Everyman follows Everybody (played by a different cast member at each performance) as he or she travels down a road toward life's greatest mystery. Mr. Jacob-Jenkins is an esteemed alumnus of Juilliard's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and teaches playwriting to the MFA actors in Juilliard's Drama Division.
Wednesday, November 8, at 7:30pm
Thursday, November 9, at 7:30pm
Friday, November 10, at 7:30pm
Saturday, November 11, at 2pm and 8pm
Sunday, November 12, at 7pm
Triumph of Love
By Pierre de Marivaux
Translated, Adapted, and Directed by Stephen Wadsworth
Marivaux's 1732 comedy refines the genre of commedia dell'arte with wit and substance and more than a little cross-dressing. Princess Leonide falls for Prince Agis and dresses as a male philosophy student to gain access to his household. While there, she manages to become engaged to be married to much of the household. The play is a hilarious and painful comedy about gender, love, and political machinations.
Thursday, December 7, 7:30pm
Friday, December 8, 7:30pm
Saturday, December 9, at 2pm and 8pm
Sunday, December 10, 7pm
Monday, December 11, 7:30pm
Juilliard Drama Fourth-Year Repertory
February 9-18, 2018
Trojan Women
By Euripides, translation by Emily Wilson
Directed by Ellen Lauren
After the fall of Troy, the defeated Trojan women await their fate and mourn their dead. Their city is in ruins and Hecuba, Andromache, and Cassandra expect to become Greek slaves. They attempt to protect their children and avenge their husbands by imperiling Helen, whom they blame for causing the war. One of the most admired ancient Greek plays, this 2,400-year-old anti-war work from Euripides still resonates today.
Friday, February 9, 7:30pm
Tuesday, February 13, 7:30pm
Friday, February 16, 7:30pm
Saturday, February 17, 2pm
Hoodoo Love
By Katori Hall
Directed by Kym Moore
In this tale of love, magic, jealousy, and secrets, Toulou escapes from the Mississippi cotton fields in the 1930s to pursue her dream of singing the blues in Memphis. When she meets a rambling blues man, the notorious Ace of Spades, her dreams are realized in a way she could never have imagined. Written in vivid language that evokes the blues, Hoodoo Love marked Ms. Hall's debut. She is an Olivier award winner for The Mountaintop and an esteemed alumna of Juilliard's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program.
Saturday, February 10, 7:30pm
Wednesday, February 14, 8pm
Thursday, February 15, 7:30pm
Sunday, February 18, 8pm
Waiting for Godot
Directed by Moni Yakim
In Beckett's existential masterpiece two tramps in a wasteland with only one sad tree pass the time while waiting for a man named Godot who never comes. Beckett was Irish, but he wrote his plays in French first because, "more and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart in order to get at the things (or the Nothing-ness) behind it." The play premiered in Paris in 1953 and London in 1955. Former Director of Juilliard's Drama Division Alan Schneider directed the American premiere in 1956. In a British Royal National Theatre poll, the play was voted "most significant English language play of the 20th century."
Sunday, February 11, 7pm
Wednesday, February 14, 2pm
Saturday, February 17, 8pm
Sunday, February 18, 2pm
Extremely limited tickets at $20 will be available at events.juilliard.edu or at the Juilliard Box Office. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard full-time students may purchase tickets for $10, only at the Juilliard Box Office. Tickets may get released closer to the date of the performances, so please check back. All performances take place in the Stephanie P. McClelland Drama Theater, Juilliard, 155 West 65th Street, 4th Floor, N.Y.C.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS:
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright whose credits include War (Yale Rep; forthcoming at Lincoln Center/LCT3), Gloria (Vineyard Theatre), Appropriate (Obie Award; Signature Theatre), An Octoroon (Obie Award; Soho Rep, Theatre for a New Audience) andNeighbors (The Public Theater). He is a Residency Five playwright at Signature Theatre and is under commissions from LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, MTC/Sloan, and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He is a 2016 MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Other honors include the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation Theatre Award, the Benjamin H. Danks Award, the Steinberg Playwriting Award, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams award. In addition to holding an MA in Performance Studies from NYU, Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins is a graduate of Juilliard's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and is the playwriting professor for the MFA Actors in Juilliard's Drama Division. He currently teaches in the Hunter College Playwriting MFA Program, where he is a Master-Artist-in-Residence.
Ellen Lauren, co-artistic director, founding member of the Siti Company. SITI credits include:Persians, Trojan Women (After Euripides), A Rite (with Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance), Café Variations, Under Construction, Radio Macbeth, Who Do You Think You Are, Hotel Cassiopeia,Death and the Ploughman, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Room, bobrauschenbergamerica,systems/layers, War of the Worlds, Cabin Pressure, The Medium, Culture of Desire, Going, Going, Gone, Orestes, Seven Deadly Sins at Lincoln Center, American Document (with Martha Graham Dance Co.). Festivals include Bonn, Iberoamericano Bogota, BAM Next Wave, Humana, Bobigny, Melbourne, Edinburgh, Singapore; Wexner, Krannert and Walker Center for the Arts. In New York: Live Arts NY, NYTW, CSC, Women's Project, Miller, Public, and Joyce theaters. Regional credits with SITI include San Jose Rep, ART Cambridge, Court Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Fox Fellowship Distinguished Achievement 2008-2010. She is a faculty member of Juilliard's Drama Division.
Kym Moore is associate professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University, and co-founder and artistic director of AntiGravity Theatre Project in Providence, RI. Recent directing credits include: Time's Up! an original multimedia performance work that will premiere at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in Romania (June 2018); Hype Hero (Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference), The Gospel of Loving Kindness (Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory); Yermedea Raw (La Mama E.T.C.). The New York Times cited this production for its "haunting images, and "energizing and frightening" performances. She directed Daniel Alexander Jones's Jomama Jones Radiate, a New York Times and Backstage critics' pick. Ms. Moore also writes and devises collaborative performances in which she serves as director and writer. Pen and Brush Inc. awarded her first prize for her devised play, The Date. Other collaborative works include: Divide and Conquer, and Flood of Fire. Brown University directing credits include: By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Hype Hero, Passing Strange, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, and Pippin, which was recognized by Broadway World as one of the "five wild, whacky and wonderful" interpretations of that musical worldwide. Ms. Moore is an associate member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, the Lincoln Center Theater Director's Lab, and the National Theatre Conference. For more information, visit: www.kymmoore.com and theantigravityproject.wordpress.com.
Danya Taymor is a director and translator originally from Northern California. Recent work includes Antoinette Nwandu's Pass Over (Steppenwolf, June 2017), Nathan Yungerberg's Esai'sTable (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), Justin Kuritzkes' The Sensuality Party (The New Group), Dan McCabe's ChrisTina Martinez (Juilliard), Susan Soon-He Stanton's Cygnus (Women's Project), BrIan Watkins' Wyoming (Lesser America) and My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer (The Flea), Sarah Gancher's The Place We Built (The Flea), Antoinette Nwandu's Flat Sam (PlayPenn), Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (Atlantic Stage 2), Anna Moench's In Quietness at Walker Space(Dutch Kills), Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (Stella Adler), Lucy Teitler's Engagements(Ensemble Studio Theater), I Hate f-ing Mexicans (The Flea) and Shakespeare's The Tempest(NYU/Stella Adler). Translations include Alejandro Ricaño's We Are Getting Better at Saying Goodbye, Luis Enrique Guitierrez Ortiz Monasterio's I Hate f-ing Mexicans, and Ettore Scola'sWorking on a Special Day. She is a 2014-2016 Time Warner Directing Fellow at Women's Project, a former 2050 fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, an artist in residence at Theatre for a New Audience, a member of Ensemble Studio Theater, an associate artist at The Flea Theater, New Georges Affiliated Artist, and a semi-finalist for the Lange-Taylor prize with Dominic Bracco. Ms. Taymor is a frequent volunteer at Covenant House, where she teaches a master class in directing twice a year and has taught theater in Ecuador and Slovakia. Other awards/fellowships include: Van Lier Directing Fellowship; Gates Foundation Grant, Rough Draft Residency at the Drama League and Lincoln Center Directors Lab. BA: Duke University Upcoming Projects: Martyna Majok's queens.
Stephen Wadsworth (Adaptor, Translator, Director) Wadsworth's productions of Aeschylus'Oresteia, Wagner's Ring cycle, a series of Marivaux comedies, the Beaumarchais trilogy, and plays and operas by Shakespeare, Molière, Handel, Goldoni, Mozart, Shaw, Wilde, and Coward, have established him as a master of the classical repertoire and a profoundly influential voice in the American theater. He has also directed plays by Anna Deavere Smith (Long Wharf), John Guare (Dallas Theatre Centre), Beth Henley (Roundabout), and Terrence McNally (Master Classon Broadway and in London's West End, starring Tyne Daly) and during the 1990s reintroduced the work of Marivaux to the U.S. in a series of translations and productions of three plays (published by Smith and Kraus as Marivaux: Three Plays). His translation and production of Molière's Don Juan (Shakespeare Theatre, Old Globe, Seattle Rep, McCarter) reimagined a lost text, excited great interest in the French academy as well as on American stages, and will be published by Smith and Kraus in early fall 2017. For his work on Marivaux and Molière he was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. He was a 2007 Harman/Eisner Artist in Residence at the Aspen Institute, a 2013 Fellow at The Sundance Institute Playwrights Retreat at Ucross, and a 2016 Sallie B. Goodman Playwriting Fellow at the McCarter Theatre, and he is creative advisor for The Sundance Institute's Theatre Lab. He is the James S. Marcus Faculty Fellow at Juilliard, where he started an intensive acting program for singers, and he has taught acting in the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program for 35 years. He wrote the opera A Quiet Place with Leonard Bernstein. His play with music,That's Not Tango (2017), a portrait of Astor Piazzolla written with Lesley Karsten, has been in development at SubCulture and plays Joe's Pub at The Public Theater in August 2017.
LA Williams is a New York-based director focused primarily on new work. He is currently a 2017-18 O'Neill/NNPN National Directors Fellow. Recent credits include Richard in 9 Poses by Sarah DeLappe (Clubbed Thumb). He has developed and directed new work at The Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Dramatists Guild of America, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, National Black Theatre, Kennedy Center, ALLIANCE THEATRE, New York International Fringe Festival, Baltimore Center Stage, Firebone Theater, Quicksilver Theatre Company, Horse Trade Theater Group and Crowded Outlet. Assistant director credits include The Royale by Marco Ramirez (Lincoln Center Theater), Ugly Lies the Bone by Lindsey Ferrentino (Roundabout Theatre Company), brownsville song (b-side for Tray) by Kimber Lee (LCT3), Romeo & Juliet (The Classical Theatre of Harlem),Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Signature Theatre Company), and The Insurgents by Lucy Thurber (LAByrinth Theatre Company). He also has a passion for championing new voices in theater. He is the founding artistic director of the Black Directors Studio, a new play reading series for emerging black directors. In 2012, he created and executive produced Celebrate! With LA Williams: a multimedia docu-series that celebrates early career theater artists. Mr. Williams is a 2016-17 Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow and currently serves on the ENCORES! Off-Center Artist Board at New York City Center. He is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, SDCF Observership program, and was the Kenny Leon Directing Fellow in 2009. Education: M.A. Emerson College, B.A. Alabama State University.
Moni Yakim is a founding faculty member of Juilliard's Drama Division and also the founding artistic director of the Performance Theater Center (P.T.C.) Training Center and has been a principal performer in mime companies of Etienne Decroux, and Marcel Marceau. He studied at Le Théâtre National Populaire, Paris, and performed with Le Théâtre Franco-Allemande. Mr. Yakim has directed in Israel and Europe. In the U.S., he has directed contemporary and classical plays for Yale Rep., American Shakespeare Festival, Juilliard Drama, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway. He has directed the original production ofJacques Brel Is Alive and Well ...and at the Village Gate in New York City. Mr. Yakim has produced on Broadway, in Europe, Israel, and throughout the U.S. and has directed operas for American Opera Center, Metropolitan Opera Studio, Boston Concert Opera, Stony Brook Festival, Lake George Opera Festival. Awards include: best director,Jacques Brel,L'histoire du soldat. He has created movement forRobocop,Robocop 2, andRobocop 3. He is the author of Creating a Character. Mr. Yakim is a former head of the movement departments at Yale School of Drama, Stella Adler Conservatory, and Circle in the Square.
About The Juilliard School's Drama Division
Since its inception five decades ago, the Drama Division at Juilliard has become one of the most respected and renowned training programs for theater artists in the world. The program is dedicated to training versatile 21st-Century Theater artists and empowering them to thrive in an ever-evolving performing arts landscape.
Founded in 1968 by the celebrated American director, producer, and theater administrator John Houseman and the French director, teacher, and actor Michel Saint-Denis, the four-year drama program combines vocal and physical training, extensive work on text, and appreciation of style with a fierce commitment to emotional honesty, immense physical energy, and imaginative daring. The program is both highly selective and extremely rigorous, attracting committed and focused young actors.
To add to its long standing BFA program, in the fall of 2012, Juilliard Drama began its new MFA program, providing a diversity of experience for undergraduate and graduate students working side by side on projects that span classic texts of Shakespeare and Chekhov to contemporary works. This variety and breadth of repertoire ensures that Juilliard actors enter the profession with the experience and the craft to tackle the full spectrum of work, and to bring to life the stories of writers who are deeply ingrained in theater history as well as the exciting work of living writers.
In fact, Juilliard actors have many opportunities to explore contemporary work during their training, as an essential component of the artists' work within the Drama Division lies at the intersection with the distinguished Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program under the direction of Tony Award-winning playwright Marsha Norman and Pulitzer Prize winner and Juilliard alumnus David Lindsay-Abaire, who joined the program last fall. Actors and playwright fellows collaborate regularly on new works, which encourages the development of fresh and diverse voices in the American theater.
The Juilliard Drama program seeks not only to provide a challenging and full curriculum of training, but also to give students valuable exposure to the professional world. Over the course of their studies, our actors have many opportunities to work with professional directors, who come in to work as teachers and guest artists as well as to direct productions. For the fourth-year class,Juilliard's training aims to create a real bridge into the profession through the creation of theJuilliard Drama Division's Professional Studio hosted by Signature Theatre, recipient of the 2014 regional theater Tony Award. Signature is set in the Pershing Square Signature Center, a Frank Gehry-designed complex in the heart of New York City's Theater District. At the Studio, Juilliard's writers and actors collaborate closely on new works, building lasting artistic relationships.
This connection to the broader theater community ties into the strong ethos of citizenship and community service at Juilliard. In addition to many other opportunities for interdivisional collaboration between students, our actors and playwrights regularly join forces with music and drama students to use their art to reach out to underserved communities around the world.
Juilliard Drama's outstanding creative reputation, distinguished faculty, and rigorous professional training have enabled alumni of the program to excel as artists, leaders, and global citizens for more than four decades and will continue to shape the future of American theater for decades to come.
Pictured: Juilliard Drama's 2017 Production of Othello by William Shakespeare (photo by Jessica Katz)
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