Women's Project And SITI Company Present ROOM 3/12-27

Room, directed by Anne Bogart and based on a lifetime of Virginia Woolf's writing adapted by Jocelyn Clarke, will return to the New York stage 11 years after its world premiere when Women's Project and Siti Company begins previews Saturday, March 12, at 8:00pm for a run through March 27 at Women's Project, 424 West 55th Street.

Room traces the movement of a creative spirit in exquisite crisis; an artist in a pressure cooker of articulation; a woman who seeks room to move, room to breathe, and room to imagine.

Ellen Lauren will once again star.

The New York Times called Room "a theatrical representation of the writer's mind, an abstraction painted with theater's animated tools." And the L.A. Times raved "Ellen Lauren's masterly economy of movement, combined with Anne Bogart's unerring compositional sense, is breathtaking."

Ellen Lauren in Room.
Dixie Sheridan Photo

Virginia Woolf wrote with delicacy, humor, anger, outrage, and passion from the point of view of a highly creative woman in the first half of the 20th century. Ms. Woolf's issues are still contemporary and Room examines these notions from the perspective of the early 21st century.

Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941), a towering figure in English literature, began writing professionally in 1905. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915, and was followed by Night and Day (1919); Jacob's Room (1922); Mrs. Dalloway (1925); To the Lighthouse (1927); Orlando: A Biography (1928); The Waves (1931); The Years (1937); and Between the Acts (1941). Woolf took her own life in 1941.

Women's Project is still not afraid of Virginia Woolf.

As a member of Siti Company and its associate artistic director, Ms. Lauren's credits include: Under Construction, Radio MacBeth, Who Do You Think You Are, Hotel Cassiopeia, Death and the Ploughman, Midsummer Night's Dream, bobrauschenbergamerica, systems/layers, War of the Worlds, Cabin Pressure, The Medium, Culture of Desire, Going, Going, Gone and Orestes.

Anne Bogart is the Artistic Director of Siti Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a Professor at Columbia University where she runs the Graduate Directing Program. Works with SITI include American Document (2010) with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Antigone, Under Construction, Freshwater with Women's Project, Who Do You Think You Are, Radio Macbeth, Hotel Cassiopeia, Death and the Ploughman, La Dispute, Score, bobrauschenbergamerica, Room, War of the Worlds, Cabin Pressure, War of the Worlds: The Radio Play, Alice's Adventures, Culture of Desire, Bob, Going, Going, Gone, Small Lives/Big Dreams, The Medium, Noel Coward's Hay Fever and Private Lives, August Strindberg's Miss Julie, and Charles Mee's Orestes. She is the author of three books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book and And Then, You Act.

Sets are by Neil Patel, costumes by James Schuette; original lighting by Christopher Akerlind; sound by Darron L West; and associate lighting design is by Brian H Scott. The movement dramaturg is Barney O'Hanlon and the production stage manager is Kris Longley-Postema.

Women's Project and Siti Company
Founded in 1978 by Julia Miles, and now under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Julie Crosby, Women's Project provides a stage for women playwrights and directors, who even today receive fewer than 20% of professional production opportunities nationwide.

Women's Project (WP) produces theater created by women, providing a forum for women's perspectives on political, social, and cultural topics. During its 33 years, countless artists have achieved significant recognition through WP productions, including Anne Bogart, Eve Ensler, Maria Irene Fornes, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Leigh Silverman, and Anna Deavere Smith, among the many. WP has produced staged over 600 mainstage productions and developmental projects, and published eleven anthologies of plays by women.

Women's Project is on a roll in the last few years: Freshwater (with Siti Company), Aliens with Extraordinary Skills, crooked, Sand, Or, Smudge and Apple Cove (now through March 6).

Siti Company is an ensemble theater company led by Anne Bogart. Its mission is to create bold new productions; perform and tour these productions nationally and internationally; train together consistently; train theater professionals and students in an approach to acting and collaboration that forges unique and highly disciplined artists for the theater; and create opportunities for artistic dialogue and cultural exchange.

Founded in 1992 by Anne Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki, Siti Company began as an agreement to redefine and revitalize contemporary theater in the United States through an emphasis on international cultural exchange and collaboration. Originally envisioned as a summer institute in Saratoga Springs, New York, SITI expanded to encompass a year-round company based in New York City with as a summer season in Saratoga. The Company is known nationally and internationally as a top-level artistic collective that generates ground breaking theater while also training artists from around the world.

In addition to Artistic Director Anne Bogart, Siti Company is comprised of ten actors, four designers, a playwright, a stage manager and an executive director. The company represents a change in thinking about the relationships between artists and institutions. Siti Company has formed relationships with theaters and venues around the world who present the Company's work. Find out more at siti.org.

Box Office Info
Single tickets are $60.00 at www.Telecharge.com or 212.239.6200. Premium seats are $75. Call 212.765.2105, click www.WomensProject.org, or visit the Women's Project box office at 424 West 55th Street.

Room will perform Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 7:00pm; Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 8:00pm; Sundays at 3:00pm and 7:30pm. There is no Sunday evening performance March 13.

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