Columbia Stages Presents Brecht's THE THREEPENNY OPERA April 1-4

Columbia Stages presents THE THREEPENNY OPERA, a play with music after John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, in Three Acts, music by Kurt Weill, German translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann, adaptation and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht, English translation by Michael Feingold, and directed by Henning A. Hegland, running April 1st - 4th, 2009, at The Riverside Theatre, located in the historic Riverside Church at 91 Claremont Avenue between 120th and 122nd Streets.

Public Debt is ballooning, banks are going bust, a depression is right around the corner, and Mack the Knife is leaving a trail of broken hearts and cut throats in his wake. In this masterful musical satire, love, sex, murder, and theft all become tactics for survival in a society spinning out of control.

The production will feature the ten-piece orchestra of Opera Cabal and a company of 18 including: Erin Alexis, Daryl Brown, Oliver Burns*, Alyssa Ciccarello, Rebecca Comerford*, Mitchell Conway, Uys Du Buisson, Candice Fortin, Erin Gorski*, R. Paul Hamilton*, Michael Hanson, Caroline Kaplan, Linn Maxwell*, Amy Miller, Neal Moeller*, Roger Mulligan, Mario Quesada, and Jade Rothman with production stage manager Melissa Denizard and general manager Christopher Taggart. *These Actors and Stage Managers are appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association.

Tickets for THE THREEPENNY OPERA can be purchased online at www.ColumbiaStages.com, by calling 212.870.6784, or by visiting the box office at The Riverside Theatre. Box office hours are Thursday -Saturday, 4:00PM - 8:00PM and Sunday noon - 4:00PM, as well as one hour prior to performances. All seating is general admission.

The show runs one week only with evening performances Wednesday - Saturday, April 1st- 4th at 8:00PM and one matinee performance Saturday, April 4th at 2:00PM.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:

Wednesday, April 1st at 8:00PM

Thursday, April 2nd at 8:00PM

Friday, April 3rd at 8:00PM

Saturday, April 4th at 2:00PM

Saturday, April 4th at 8:00PM

The creative team also includes: music director Nicholas DeMaison, choreographer Erin Kelly, set designer Akiko Nishijima Rotch, lighting designers Raquel Davis and Natalie Robin, costume designer Marina Reti, sound designer Amy Altadonna, video/visual designers Matt Griffin and Gokul Chakravarthy, fight choreographer Felix Ivanoff, dramaturg Brendan Padgett, and assistant director Tiffané Henry.

HENNING A. HEGLAND (Director) has been working as an artist, performer, and director since 1997 in NYC and London. He received his B.A. in directing and design from Middlebury College in Vermont, an M.A. in devised theatre from Dartington College of Artsin Devon, U.K. (an arts research institution), and is currently an M.F.A candidate in directing at Columbia University. His directing work includes: onepeopleenemy, a devised solo show based on Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (DartingtonHall); CCLIT by Matthew Ira Swaye (Atlantic Stage 2); BUSSTOP, a devised engagement with Inge's play; as well as Heiner Müller's hamletmachine and thosewhowalkagain - GHOSTS by Henrik Ibsen.

Henning is a co-founder of Blind Ditch Performance (www.blindditch.org), a performance group based in Devon, England. Blind Ditch's work includes: whowantstobeaheronow?; Small Possessions Daily; Land Marked; and Wishes for a Better Future. Henning received support from the British Arts Council and was selected for the Plateaux Festival at Mousonturm in Frankfurt, Germany. Henning assisted Christopher Alden with Monteverdi's Orfeo, the first opera at the newly constructed Opera House in Norway. He has trained and interned with companies and artists including: SITI, Theatre MITU, the Wooster Group (during their House/Lights development), and Deborah Hay. Henning is the recipient of the Wallenberg Award for promoting global understanding and dialogue. For more information please visit www.politiscopes.com.

Michael Feingold (English Translator) has worked in the American theatre for over three decades as a translator, playwright, lyricist, director, dramaturg, and literary manager. He is best known,however, as the chief theatre critic for New York's weekly newspaper, The Village Voice, where his work has won him the coveted George Jean Nathan Award and made him a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism. In 2001-2, he was named a Senior Fellow of the National Arts Journalism Program. He has taught dramatic literature, criticism, and dramaturgy at Columbia, at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and at the O'Neill Critics Institute. Mr. Feingold was the first Literary Manager of the Yale Repertory Theatre, and subsequently served as Literary Director of The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and Literary Manager of the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is currently serving as Literary Advisor to New York's Theatre for a New Audience. He has been an O'Neill Conference Playwright and is a "Usual Suspect" at New York Theatre Workshop where he has had several readings of his own plays as well as of translations in progress. Mr. Feingold is a graduate of Columbia University and the Yale School of Drama.

COLUMBIA STAGES (Producer) is the producing arm of the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies of Columbia University's School of the Arts. Columbia Stages annually presents a season of graduate actor and director productions as well as a festival of new plays by emerging playwrights. The theatre program at Columbia University's School of the Arts offers M.F.A. degrees in acting, directing, playwriting, dramaturgy, stage management, and theatre management and producing. The goal of the program is to provide each student with the foundation for a career in professional theatre as well as the tools to embrace an ever-changing theatrical landscape and shape the future of theatre.

Score and Libretto used by arrangement with European American Music Corporation, agent for The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc. and agent for Stefan Brecht.

This Equity Approved Showcase is funded in part by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc., 7 East 20th Street, New York, NY 10003

www.ColumbiaStages.com

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