UNCLE VANYA, 'LIFE AND TIMES' and More Headline Soho Rep's 2012-13 Season

Soho Rep has announced its fall-winter 2012-13 mainstage productions on the heels of its twice-extended, immensely acclaimed world premiere of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, adapted by Annie Baker and directed by Sam Gold. This fall and winter, the 13-time OBIE-winning theater will introduce New York audiences to two more highly anticipated new works, by artists whose careers Soho Rep has nurtured: Jackie Sibblies Drury's We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, directed by Eric Ting; and Nature Theater of Oklahoma's epic musical serial, Life and Times: Episodes 1-4 a Soho Rep production presented by The Public Theater as a special engagement of the Under the Radar Festival 2013. Soho Rep's 2012/13 season is produced in association with John Adrian Selzer. (The theater will announce its spring production later this fall.)

The New York premiere of We Are Proud to Present… will run November 7 – December 2 at Soho Rep (46 Walker Street). Performances will take place Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 P.M., with an additional matinee on Saturdays at 3:00 P.M. Critics are welcome as of Saturday, November 10 for an official opening on Tuesday, November 13. Tickets, which run $20 - $35 (with $0.99 Sunday tickets offered for performances on November 18 and 25), are available at www.sohorep.org and 212.352.3101.

The American premiere of Life and Times: Episodes 1-4 will run January 16 – February 2, 2013 at The Public Theater (425 Lafayette Street). The episodes can be seen in installments or, together, as a "marathon": On different weeknights (exact days vary each week) at 7:00 P.M., the company will perform Episode 1 (3.5 hours with intermission), Episode 2 (two hours with no intermission), and Episodes 3 & 4 (together, 3.5 hours with intermission). Then, on Saturday or Sunday (varies each week), the marathon (approximately 11 hours including a 30-minute snack break and a one-hour dinner break) is performed at 1:00 P.M. Tickets go on sale Tuesday, November 27 and can be purchased at 212.967.7555, www.publictheater.org, or in person at The Public Theater box office at 425 Lafayette Street.

We are Proud to Present a Presentation… is a humorous and harrowing work by a fierce new theatrical voice: the playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury, a member of Soho Rep's 2011-2012 Writer / Director Lab, in a production helmed by director Eric Ting, Long Wharf Theater's Associate Artistic Director. In the play, a troupe of American actors stumble over questions of authenticity and appropriation as they attempt to reconstruct the little-known first genocide of the 20th Century-and land in an exploration that hits closer to home. Writing in The New Yorker about the world premiere at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater earlier this year, Hilton Als said, "The show provides a thrilling opportunity to see both a serious new talent developing her voice and what an inspiring director can do to encourage it." For the New York premiere at Soho Rep, Sibblies Drury and Ting have devised an environmental new staging that will transform Soho Rep's oft-reconfigured Tribeca home.

We are Proud to Present a Presentation… features sets by Mimi Lien, costumes by Toni-Leslie James, lights by Lenore Doxsee, sound by Chris Giarmo, and projections by Jeff Larson. Casting will be announced soon.

Soho Rep's production of Life and Times: Episodes 1-4 follows the organization's premieres of previous Nature Theater of Oklahoma works: the Soho Rep-commissioned, OBIE-winning No Dice (2008) and the sold-old, extended Rambo Solo (2009). The company's last New York premiere was Romeo & Juliet (2010).

Nature Theater of Oklahoma makes a triumphant homecoming with this bold, exuberant celebration of the most epic story of all: life. Conceived and directed by Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Artistic Directors, Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, Life and Times charts one unremarkable person's account of their life, navigating a deep map of memory, from their earliest recollections through present day. The libretto of the work, which will ultimately comprise ten episodes, is a verbatim transcript of ten recorded phone conversations in which the person told their story. Life and Times continues the exploration Nature Theater of Oklahoma has pursued since No Dice: using casual, real-life speech and storytelling as the text for innovative theatrical works, thereby making something extraordinary out of the ordinary.

Episodes 1-4 represent the first "movement" of the work; upcoming episodes will depart from the theater and take other forms, including a book, a film and a radio play. Episode 1, which starts with birth and continues to age 8, fuses communist musical and "mass games" rhythmic gymnastic spectacle. In Episode 2, which spans early adolescence, the company takes up the concept of the chorus and chorus line to represent the challenges of belonging to a social group. Episodes 3 and 4 encompass high school years, including the desire for freedom from home and family life. Experimentation, rebellion, and drug use collide with religion and metaphysics-both first love and first cigarettes. In order to unlock the considerable drama associated with this particular age, Nature Theater applies the dramatic conventions of a "locked-room" mystery play.

Life and Times: Episodes 1-4 is from a conversation with Kristin Worrall, features dramaturgy by Florian Malzacher, design by Peter Nigrini, and original music by Robert M. Johanson, Julie LaMendola, and Daniel Gower. The cast includes Ilan Bachrach, Elisabeth Conner, Gabel Eiben, Anne Gridley, Matthew Korahais, Julie LaMendola, Alison Weisgall, and Kristin Worrall.

Life and Times: Episodes 1-4 are a co-production of Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Burgtheater Wien. Episode 1 was created in co-production with Internationales Sommerfestival Hamburg, Kaaitheater Brussel, Théâtre de la Ville Paris, Internationale Keuze Festival Rotterdamse Schouwburg, and the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. Episode 2 was created in co-production with Kampnagel Hamburg, le Festival d'Avignon, Théâtre de la Ville Paris, Kaaitheater Brussel, and Rosas. Episodes 3 & 4 were created in co-production with Internationales Sommerfestival Hamburg, Kaaitheater Brussel, Internationale Keuze Festival Rotterdamse Schouwburg, and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main GmbH. Funding support for Episode 1 provided by the MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Funding support for Episode 2 provided by and the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Theater Pilot, with lead funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… had its world premiere at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. Sibblies Drury's work has been featured at PRELUDE.11, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Victory Gardens 2010 Ignition Festival, American Theater Company's 10 x 10 Festival, and The Magic Theatre's Virgin Play Festival. She received a 2012-13 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, and has been a member of the 2011-12 Soho Rep Writer/Director lab, a 2010-12 New York Theater Workshop Emerging Artist of Color Fellow, and a member of The Civilians' R&D Group. She is the dramaturg and contributing writer for Zero Cost House, a collaboration between Pig Iron Theatre Company and Japanese playwright Toshiki Okada. Sibblies Drury is a NYTW Usual Suspect and a MacDowell Colony fellow, and is on committees to organize classes for Pataphysics Playwriting Workshops and The Public School New York. Sibblies Drury is a graduate oF Brown's MFA playwriting program, where she received the David Wickham Prize in Playwriting. Her play Social Creatures was commissioned by Trinity Repertory Theater Company in Providence RI, and will premiere there in 2013. She is the inaugural recipient of the Jerome New York Fellowship for 2012-2014.

Eric Ting is Associate Artistic Director at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT. For Long Wharf, Ting has directed the world premieres of Aditi Kapil's Agnes Under the Big Top and The Old Man and the Sea (which he also co-adapted), Sylvia, Bad Dates, Italian American Reconciliation, The Bluest Eye (co-production with Hartford Stage), Underneath the Lintel, It's a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play, and his adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macbeth (1969). Other work includes Donald Margulies's Shipwrecked: An Entertainment… (Shakespeare Santa Cruz), A.R.T.'s production of Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy, The Little Prince (Roundhouse Theatre) and puppet design for Bizet's The Pearl Fishers (Opera Boston). This fall, in the 30th BAM Next Wave Festival, he directed dancer/choreographer Nora Chipaumire's Miriam. Ting's work has been presented internationally, including France, Canada, Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bali. He is a founding member of the artists' collective INTELLIGENT BEASTS. Ting has served on multiple grant and fellowship panels including the Jerome Foundation and the NEA. Personal awards and grants include a TCG New Generations Future Leaders fellowship and a Jerome & Roslyn Milstein Meyer Career Development Prize.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma is an OBIE-winning New York art and performance group under the direction of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper. Since Poetics: a ballet brut, the company's first dance piece created as an ensemble, Nature Theater of Oklahoma has been devoted to making "the work we don't know how to make, putting ourselves in impossible situations, and working from out of our own ignorance and unease. We strive to create an unsettling live situation that demands total presence from everyone in the room. We use the readymade material around us, found space, overheard speech, and observed gesture, and through extreme formal manipulation, and superhuman effort, we affect in our work a shift in the perception of everyday reality that extends beyond the site of performance and into the world in which we live." Nature Theater of Oklahoma's work has been seen in 23 countries and 46 cities around the world. They are the 2010 recipients of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award and the 2012 Ambassador's Award for Cultural Diplomacy from the U.S. Embassy in Vienna. For more information, visit www.oktheater.org.

Founded in 1975, and in its theater on Walker Street since 1991, Soho Rep has built an outstanding reputation for being at the forefront of new and innovative theatre, serving as a vital center for Contemporary Theatre artists.

Soho Rep is dedicated to cultivating and producing visionary, uncompromising, and exuberant new plays. They perform to one of the youngest adult audiences in New York City, with over three-quarters aged 18-40.

Critics continue to herald Soho Rep as a go-to theatre destination for new and original works. New York Magazine has said, "this indispensable theater offers more excitement per chair than any space in town," Time Out New York says, "Soho Rep is the best theater in NYC (official)," Variety exclaims, "[Soho Rep] has claimed an increasingly vital spot...the venue has suddenly become one to watch for Manhattan theatergoers starved for new work," and The New York Times declares Soho Rep to be "The downtown powerhouse...regularly outclasses the work done on many of the city's larger stages."

Over the last decade, Soho Rep productions have garnered thirteen OBIE Awards; six Drama Desk nominations, Two Kesselring Awards for Melissa James Gibson and Mark Schultz and The New York Times Outstanding Playwriting Award for Dan LeFranc's Sixty Miles To Silverlake. In recent years, Soho Rep has presented plays by established and emerging theatre artists such as Annie Baker, Richard Maxwell, Sarah Kane, Daniel Alexander Jones, Debbie Tucker Green, Mac Wellman, Young Jean Lee and Nature Theater of Oklahoma.

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