La MaMa & Pace Dept. of Performing Arts Celebrate Tennessee Williams’ 100th Birthday

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright Tennessee Williams wrote over 70 one-act plays during his lifetime, but they were seldom produced.

To mark the centennial of Tennessee Williams' birth, three of his one-act plays will be brought to life by Pace University's Department of Performing Arts (students, alumni and faculty) in the production 3 from Tennessee, at the award-winning avant garde theater landmark La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, March 4 - 6, 2011.

The one-acts and their directors are:

And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens - Directed by Dr. Ruis Woertendyke
The Remarkable Rooming House of Mme Le Monde - Directed by Cosmin Chivu
The Pink Bedroom - Directed by Grant Kretchik

Set Designer: Justin West (mentored by Gian Marco LoForte).

Performance Schedule:

March 4 and 5 at 10pm and March 6 at 5:30pm at La Mama's The Club
Address: 74A East 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue and the Bowery), 2nd Floor, NY, NY 10003
By Subway: F/V to 2nd Avenue, #6 to Astor Place, N/R to 8th Street
Tickets $15; student and seniors $10
For tickets and information, contact Box Office (212) 475-7710 or www.lamama.org

Synopsis and Cast Information:
And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens is the first known Tennessee Williams play set in the gay world. It is the story of a New Orleans transvestite trying to make a life for herself with a brutish and exploitative sailor while suffering from "the specter of loneliness." It is a funny and touching play written in 1957 and first produced in 2004.
Cast:

Candy Delaney - Nate Gray
Karl - Kaseem Bristow
Lvin Krenning - Bradley Leboef
Jerry Johnson- Ryan Makely
Musical Accompanist- Lilah Shreeve

In The Remarkable Rooming House of Madame Le Monde, a mysteriously paralyzed man named Mint moves around his attic by swinging from hooks as he prepares for the arrival of his old friend. Teatime turns into torment and takes a bizarre route of disorientation and distortion. Written late in his life, this savage comedy is set in a seedy attic in London and highlights author's experiments with anti-mimetic dramaturgy, dramatic allegories, and comic horror.

Cast:

Mint - John-Michael Lyles
Hall - Evan Pearson
Madame Le Monde- Samantha Steinmetz
Boy - Seth Loeb

The Pink Bedroom elicits a moment between lovers wrestling with their intimate decisions. A man and his mistress meet in the setting where they've conducted their 10-year affair and each blame the other for the disintegration of their relationship. The beauty of monogamy lies in the choice - it is a mutually agreed upon commitment of fidelity that rivals animal instinct to follow our desires freely. The Pink Bedroom is an unraveling of choices made when fidelity fails to accommodate all it promised and infidelity prevails.

Cast:

Woman- Joslyn Defreece
Man- Jonathon Gabrielson
Ensemble- Alexandra O'Halloran, Amanda Ebert, Polina Ionina, Giacomo Rocchina, *Ashtain Rothchild, *Britton Smith
*Choreography

Director Bios
Ruis Woertendyke has been involved in the theatre for nearly fifty years as a director, playwright, and actor. He has directed more than one hundred shows including an early production in New York of Peter Handke's Offending the Audience, the premier of Gunter Grass's The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising, and Mister, Mister also by Gunter Grass. He has directed Chekhov, Ibsen, Shakespeare, Euripides, as well as many original plays. As an actor he played Arturo Ui in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at the Hartman Theatre, Aaron Burr in Alma, The Ghost of Spring Street at LaMama, and Chehov's On The Harmfulness of Tobacco in various venues throughout the tri-state area. His one-act plays have been seen in festivals throughout the country. He authored the highly successful acting program at Pace University and currently is the Chair of the Performing Arts Department. He proudly refers to himself as one of Ellen Stewart's babies.

 

Cosmin Chivu (Director) (www.cosminchivu.com) has directed over fifty professional and university productions across Europe and the U.S. He is currently a Faculty member in the Department of Performing Arts at Pace University's New York City. Chivu also taught Master Classes on Improvisation, Directing styles, and European Drama at both the Tisch School at NYU and at CUNY. He is actively involved in developing courses in translating contemporary Eastern European plays for an American audience and has been developing new plays in The Actors Studio's Playwriting Directing workshop. He is a lifetime member of The Actors Studio, NYC and a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. He holds a Masters in Theatre Directing from The Actors Studio Drama School, New School University, NYC and a BA in Acting from the G. Enescu Art Academy, Romania.

Grant Kretchik (www.grantkretchik.com) holds an MFA in Acting from the New School University, and heads up Pace University's BFA Acting Program. Off Broadway: Silvio in The Servant of Two Masters and a youthful Sean O'Casey in I Knock at the Door and Pictures in the Hallway, both directed by Stuart Vaughan. Film/TV: Law and Order, Guiding Light, As The World Turns, Man on the Moon, and When Harry Tries to Marry (Official Selection and Marquee Screening; Austin TX Film Festival 2010). Kretchik has worked as both an actor and director at La Mama, and has been accepted into the Stage Directors Choreographers Society's 2010/2011 Observership Season. This October Kretchik assisted on the first Broadway National Tour of next to normal, directed by Michael Grief. Mr. Kretchik has been a featured guest in Lehman College's emerging artist series. He has also held positions with Entertainment Tonight and Warner Bros. Television Casting. Mr. Kretchik is a member of Actors Equity Association. His Essay "With Talent Comes Responsibility! Defining your Dream" was published in The Soul of the American Actor. www.grantkretchik.com

About La MaMa Experimental Theater Club

A world-renowned cultural organization led by founder Ellen Stewart, it has passionately pursued its original mission to develop, nurture, support, produce and present new and original performance work by artists of all nations and cultures. Since La MaMa's doors first opened in 1961, its primary dedication has been to new works. To date, over 1000 original scores have been presented on its Lower East Side stages. La MaMa has been honored with over thirty Obie Awards, dozens of Drama Desk Awards, Bessie Awards and Villager Awards. Over the past 49 years, La MaMa has grown into an arts complex of national and international celebrity. La MaMa houses three theatres, "The First Floor Theatre," "The Club" and "The Annex," an art gallery, a 6-story rehearsal/studio building, and an extensive archive documenting the history of off-off Broadway theatre - http://lamama.org

About Pace Performing Arts, New York City Campus

Faculty as working professionals (actors, Broadway/Off-Broadway directors, casting professionals) is a trademark of Pace's Performing Arts Department, located a mere two express subway stops from Broadway. Over 30 productions a year are among the attractions the undergraduate program has to offer students pursuing Bachelor of Fine Arts Degrees in Acting or Musical Theater or a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater Arts with specialized focuses in Acting, Directing or Design/Technical Theater. Read more at http://www.pace.edu/pace/dyson/academic-departments-and-programs/performing-arts

On a graduate level, The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University is the only Master in Fine Arts theater program officially sanctioned by The Actors Studio. The entire faculty is chosen and approved - and the curriculum is designed and supervised - by the leadership of The Actors Studio through its Curriculum Advisory Committee, including the Presidents of The Actors Studio, Ellen Burstyn, Harvey Keitel and Al Pacino. All students -- actors, directors, playwrights - train side-by-side as actors. All students participate in the Craft Seminars known to the world as the Bravo Network television series, "Inside The Actors Studio," hosted by James Lipton. For further information about the program, go to www.pace.edu/actorsstudiomfa

About Pace University

For 104 years Pace University has produced thinking professionals by providing high quality education for the professions on a firm base of liberal learning amid the advantages of the New York metropolitan area. A private university, Pace has campuses in New York City and Westchester County, New York, enrolling nearly 13,000 students in bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs in its Lubin School of Business, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Lienhard School of Nursing, School of Education, School of Law, and Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems. Visit Pace on the web at www.pace.edu

 

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