Almeida Theater Company Announces Summer Programs

 For its annual summer festival of contemporary opera, music and theatre, The Almeida Theatre will present a programme which includes the London premiere of An Ocean of Rain, a specially commissioned opera by Yannis Kyriakides and Daniel Danis, the European premiere of Adam Rapp's Nocturne and British African Theatre Company Tiata Fahodzi's first week long residency at the Almeida.  In addition the Almeida will host a return visit from Barb Jungr, Theatre of Possibilities presented in association with the Tate Modern about the link between music and the American painter Cy Twombly and a concert by Ensemble MAE.
 
 
Yannis Kyriakides and Daniel Danis' An Ocean of Rain. 
 
The Almeida Summer Festival 2008 opens with the London premiere of Yannis Kyriakides (music) and Daniel Danis (text) new opera An Ocean of Rain - an Aldeburgh Almeida Opera, Theatre Cryptic and Ensemble MAE co-production.   Directed by Cathie Boyd, An Ocean of Rain is designed by John Otto with lighting by Zerlina Hughes and will be conducted by Bas Wiegers.  Translation is by Linda Gaboriau.   Performances are 10 (press performance) and 11 July at 7.30pm and 13 July at 7pm and tickets are £27.50, £22, £15, £6 plus concessions. 
 
Three cosmopolitan women make their annual escape to Haiti to help in an orphanage.  Their jaded bodies and souls begin to be re-awakened by the beaches and the challenges of helping the orphans.  A girl on the run from the murder of a sex tourist returns to the orphanage to shatter the comfort of the women's' lives and the sea unexpectedly reveals its hidden strength.
 
The cast for An Ocean of Rain includes Anna Dennis, Camille Hesketh, Katalin Károlyi and Hyacinth Nicholls.
 
Based in Amsterdam, Yannis Kyriakides strives to create new forms and hybrids of mixed medias.  His musical language is often characterised by the use of unorthodox sound sources and exploration of spaces that highlight physical sound, temporal experience and the conceptual use of musical language.  He is also active on the live electronic scene as an improviser, specialising in live processing.
 
A writer and visual artist, Daniel Danis is acclaimed across Canada and internationally, winning many awards, for his unique and radical writing style – a captivating blend of narration and action where past and present coexist and collide – and for his sensitive approach to fundamental human concerns, particularly the notion of the outsider.
 
Cathie Boyd founded Theatre Cryptic in 1994 where she has produced 14 pieces of work.  Her work has involved numerous international collaborations and has been seen widely in festivals across Europe and the Americas.  Her Opera credits include Gounod's Faust,  Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and, for the Almeida,  Sciarrino's Infinito Nero and Holt's Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?
 

 
Matt Wilde will direct the European premiere of Adam Rapp's one man play, Nocturne.  Performances of Nocturne are 16, 17, 18 (press performance), 19, 23, 24, 25 and 26 July at 7.30pm and 19 and 26 July at 3pm.  Tickets are £20, £15 and £6.   For Nocturne Wilde will collaborate with composer Phillip Neil Martin – currently Music Creator in Residence at the Royal College of Fashion.  The Almeida Theatre production of Nocturne will be presented at the Traverse Theatre as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe following its run in Islington.   Casting will be announced shortly.
 
Rapp's keen eye for human relationships and his deft ear for language makes for a shocking exploration of the accidental killing of a little girl by her teenage brother.   Across the decade and a half that follows the teenager becomes a man, and tries to cope with the ramifications of his guilt and the estrangement of his surviving family, while making a desperate search for redemption.
 
Award-winning Adam Rapp is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker.  His plays which have been produced in the UK include Ghosts in the Cottonwoods and Gompers, both at the Arcola Theatre, Blackbird which was performed at the Bush Theatre and Finer Noble Gases which was produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  His other work, produced in the US, includes Animals and Plants, Stone Cold Dead Serious, Faster, Trueblinker, Dreams of the Salthouse and Red Light Winter.
 
Matt Wilde is a former Associate Director of The National Theatre Studio and has worked extensively as a Staff and Associate Director for The National Theatre and Out of Joint.   For Almeida Projects he directed Roy Williams' Out of the Fog.  His other directing credits include Get Tested for the 24hr Plays at the Old Vic, The Sky's The Limit for Old Vic New Voices, Polar Bear for Birmingham Rep, On Tour for the Royal Court and Liverpool Everyman and Roy Williams' Slow Time for NT Education.  He was Co-Director with Nicholas Hytner on the revival of His Dark Materials for The National Theatre and Associate Director on David Hare's Stuff Happens, also for the National.   His is currently working on Simon Bent's Branded which will be performed at the Old Vic in May.
 

The British African Theatre Company Tiata Fahodzi will present Tiata Delights 08, a week-long presentation of work from British African writers.  Performances are 28, 29, 30, 31 July and 1 August at 7.30pm and 2 August at 6pm.   The week will culminate in a concert of eclectic British African music on 2 August at 9pm.  
 
Now in its fourth year, Tiata Fahodzi's annual new writing initiative – Tiata Delights – will present work by six emerging and established playwrights all resident in the UK.   Over the course of a week, six new plays will receive staged readings by three directors overseen by Artistic Director Femi Elufowoju, jr.  This year's season will open with a new play written by 2008 Laurence Olivier award-winner Bola Agbaje.  The week-long event concludes on Saturday 2 August with a concert bringing together a selection of UK's finest African musicians.  The confirmed line up includes Jamiroquai's Sola Akingbola, Contemporary-Gospel sensation GK Real, Sierra-Leonean Harmonica player Leon Maddy, James Lascelles and traditional African classicist Tunde Jegede.
 
Tiata Fahodzi was founded in 1997 under the aegis of Theatre Royal Stratford East, where the company's founder and current artistic director Femi Elufowoju, jr served as a trainee director.  The Company produces new writing from established and emerging writers alongside classics exploring the richness and heritage of theatre sourced from people living within British African communities.  Tiata Delights has a strong track-record of discovering new plays which subsequently receive full productions.  These include Oladipo Agboluaje's The Estate and Michael Bhim's Pure Gold for Soho Theatre and Levi David Addai's Oxford Street for the Royal Court.  Recently Tiata Fahodzi presented Roy Williams' Joe Guy which was directed by Femi Elufowoju, jr at Soho Theatre to great acclaim. www.tiatafahodzi.com
 
Femi Elufowoju, jr worked for six years as an actor, performing at the Royal Court and making radio plays for the BBC.  In 1996 he trained as a Regional Theatre Young Director at Theatre Royal Stratford East before forming Tiata Fahodzi in 1997.  His credits as a Director for Tiata Fahodzi include Joe Guy, The Estate, The Gods are Not to Blame, and national tours of Abyssinia, Makinde and Bonded.  His other theatre credits include Bone for the Royal Court, Medea and Off Camera for West Yorkshire Playhouse, Dealer's Choice for Salisbury Playhouse, Tickets & Ties and It's Good to Talk for Theatre Royal, Stratford East.
 
 
For one night only on 22 July at 8pm, award-winning singer Barb Jungr returns to the Almeida after her sell out concert last year.   Tickets are £20, £15 and £10.
 
Following last year's collection of Bob Dylan songs, Barb Jungr and her musicians return to the Almeida with her much requested chansons repertoire including the specially commissioned translations that have brought Jungr two New York Awards and established her career in the UK.  The concert will also include material by Jacques Brel and Leo Ferre as well as some of the British and American chansons writers including Richard Thompson, Elvis Costello and Jungr's great love Bob Dylan.
 
Jungr is the recipient of the 2008 New York Nightlife Award for 'Outstanding Cabaret Singer' and the 2003 New York Backstage Award for 'Best International Artist'.  She has released 6 albums for Linn Records Label, including this year's Just Like A Woman - Hymn To Nina (featuring the repertoire of Nina Simone) which has again brought her critical acclaim and rave reviews. www.barbjungr.co.uk
 
On 12 July at 7.30pm Ensemble MAE will perform Yannis Kyriakides' Dream of the Blind and works by Eric Satie & Cor Fulher, Felix Profos, Felipe Waller & Martha Colburn, Robert Ashley and Claudio Baroni &Fabian Macaccio in a concert complementing An Ocean of Rain.  Tickets are £15, £10 and £6.
 
Since 1980 the Dutch Ensemble MAE has developed itself from an improvisation collective into an ensemble that explores new musical and multidisciplinary territories.  Straddling a broad spectrum of experimental traditions, the Ensemble has built up a repertoire of over 150 works written for its particular instrumentation by composers such as founder Maarten Altena, Robert Ashley, Richard Ayres, Allison Cameron, Jack Body, Alvin Curran, Guus Janssen, Yannis Kyriakides, Martijn Padding, Steve Martland, Solex, Paul Termos, and has collaborated on projects with guest musicians such as Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, Misha Mengelberg, Roscoe Mitchell, Butch Morris, and John Zorn.
 
 The Almeida's fourth collaboration with Tate Modern – Theatre of Possibilities - uses the gallery's exhibition of Cy Twombly to illuminate key areas in Twombly's creative life.   Theatre of Possibilities is directed by Mike Ashman and the music director is Richard Bernas who will conduct the Almeida Ensemble accompanied by mezzo soprano Sally Burgess.  There will be two performances on 20 July at 7pm (plus pre-performance talk at 6pm by Nicholas Cullinan, Assistant Curator of the Tate Exhibition) and 21 July at 7.30pm.   Tickets are £18, £10 and £6.  Theatre of Possibilities is presented in association with Tate Modern www. tate.org.uk 

Theatre of Possibilities features a rare opportunity to hear Pierre Henri's Voile d'Orphee, as well as the UK premiere of John Cage's late ensemble work Fourteen and Sally Burgess (who performed Pierrot Lunaire for Schoenberg/Kandinsky as part of Almeida Opera 2006 and Lorca and Music for Almeida Opera 2007) will sing Claudio Monteverdi's Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. 
Coinciding with Cy Twombly's 80th year, the Tate Exhibition (19 June – 14 September 2008) will be the first major retrospective in the UK for twenty years of the work of this artist.  It will present a unique opportunity to examine his paintings, drawings and sculpture across his long and distinguished career.  Born in 1928 in Lexington Virginia, Twombly studied in Boston, New York and Black Mountain College, Carolina. In the mid 1950s, following travels in Europe and Africa, he emerged as a prominent figure among a generation of artists working in New York that included Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The exhibition will focus on key cycles of related works, multi-part works and some of Twombly's monumental series of paintings interspersed with more intimate rooms devoted to drawings and sculpture.  

For more information please visit www.almeida.co.uk. 
 

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