Duncan Macmillan and 59 Productions Adapt Paul Auster's CITY OF GLASS, Premiering March 2017
By: Marianka Swain Sep. 08, 2016
CITY OF GLASS, the first part of Paul Auster's landmark three-part novel, The New York Trilogy, will be brought vividly to life in spring 2017 in a dazzlingly original stage adaptation by Tony Award-winning 59 Productions (An American in Paris, War Horse, David Bowie Is) and Olivier Award-nominated playwright Duncan MacMillan (People, Places and Things, 1984). The production premieres at Manchester's HOME in March and then plays London's Lyric Hammersmith from April. It's one of two major theatre commissions for HOME's new season, the other being David Watson's version of Ibsen's GHOSTS, directed by Polly Findlay.
In 2017, as Auster turns 70 and The New York Trilogy, his first-ever work of prose fiction, marks three decades in publication, the first part of this celebrated trilogy which has captivated the imaginations of readers across the world will be staged in Manchester and London ahead of its international tour. This production of City of Glass is the first-ever stage adaptation of one of Auster's novels in the UK.
"It was a wrong number that started it." When reclusive crime writer Daniel Quinn receives a mysterious phone call from a man seeking a private detective in the middle of the night, he quickly and unwittingly becomes the protagonist in a real-life thriller of his own. He falls under the spell of a strange and seductive woman, who engages him to protect her young husband from his sociopathic father. As the familiar territory of the noir detective genre gives way to something altogether more disturbing and unpredictable, Quinn becomes consumed by his mission, and begins to lose his grip on reality. Will he be drawn deeper into the abyss, or might unmasking this dark story of familial abuse and religious conspiracy provide the purpose and meaning he needs to rebuild his shattered life?
City of Glass marks the first theatre production originated by the multi-award-winning company of artists, 59 Productions. Renowned for creating visual content and technical design for many of the world's greatest venues, including the National Theatre, Royal Opera House, The Metropolitan Opera New York, Lincoln Center, Salzburg Festival, Schaubühne Berlin, and the Sydney Opera House, as well as for countless productions in London's West End and on Broadway, 59 Productions won a coveted Tony Award in 2015 for their design work on An American in Paris.
City of Glass is directed by 59 Productions' founding director Leo Warner who has led the company's creative team for over 15 years on projects such as the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony (video design), Vivid LIVE 2014: Lighting the Sails of Sydney Opera House (director), and the United Nations Global Goals Launch (director). He has worked extensively across Europe with director Katie Mitchell (Waves, Reise durch die Nacht, The Forbidden Zone), and co-directed Fräulein Julie with her for Schaubühne, Berlin.
59 Productions is adapting this extraordinary and hallucinatory literary thriller for the stage in collaboration with writer Duncan MacMillan (Lungs, People, Places and Things, 1984), renowned Danish choreographer and movement director Kim Brandstrup (London Royal Ballet, Danish Royal Ballet, Rambert) and a Tony and Olivier award-winning creative team including Sound Designer Gareth Fry (The Encounter, Let the Right One In, Harry Potter) and composer Nick Powell (Wolf Hall, The Nether, The Wonderful World of Dissocia).
Featuring design inspired by the acclaimed graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, this brand new production will feature many of the groundbreaking techniques that have made 59 Productions "the leading purveyors of video for theatre in the world" (The Guardian). Cutting-edge projection-mapping, combined with stagecraft, magic and illusion will immerse audiences into Quinn's increasingly dystopic and fragmented world.
Paul Auster's City of Glass, written in 1981/2 and first published in the United States in 1985, appeared in the UK as the initial volume in The New York Trilogy (1987). One of the great masterpieces of contemporary American fiction, it has been translated into more than 40 languages and has never been out of print in the past three decades. The novel sets out in the guise of a mystery thriller in the noir detective genre, before ultimately revealing itself to be concerned primarily with the life-or-death psychological struggle of its main protagonist, Quinn. It sets up many of the long-running themes of Auster's literary career: language, identity, coincidence and choice. The idea for the story has its origins in real-life: Auster once received two unexplained phone calls from someone asking for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and to this day, says that he regrets not having tried to help the stranger on the phone. Through Quinn and City of Glass he allows himself to imagine an alternative world in which the phone rang for a third time, and the course of his life was altered.
Described as "one of the foremost chroniclers of New York", Paul Auster is the best-selling author of Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Man in the Dark, The Brooklyn Follies, The Book of Illusions, The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his other honours are the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke and the Prix Medicis Etranger for Leviathan. He has also been short-listed for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions) and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (The Music of Chance). His work has been translated into more than forty languages. His latest novel, 4 3 2 1, an epic story of America in the 1950 and 60s, will be published in January 2017.
59 Productions is the multi award-winning company of artists behind the video design of the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games, the Tony Award-winning An American in Paris, globe-trotting smash hit, War Horse, and the design of record-breaking David Bowie is exhibition. 59 Productions combine technology and art to tell amazing stories. Led by Directors Leo Warner, Mark Grimmer, Lysander Ashton and Richard Slaney, they are world leaders specialising in design for stage and live events. Since 2006, 59 Productions has been involved in more than 150 productions across the world at venues including the National Theatre, Royal Court, Young Vic, the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, New York's Metropolitan Opera as well as at theatre festivals in Edinburgh, where they are Associate Artists to the International Festival until 2018, Salzburg, Berlin and Avignon.
Duncan MacMillan is a writer and director. To date, his plays include: People Places and Things (National Theatre/Wyndham's Theatre); 1984, adapt. George Orwell (Headlong/Nottingham Playhouse/Almeida/West End and international tour, co-adapted with Rob Icke); Every Brilliant Thing (Paines Plough/Pentabus Theatre/Edinburgh Festival/UK and international tours); 2071, co-written with Chris Rapley (Royal Court Theatre/Hamburg Schauspielhaus); The Forbidden Zone (Salzburg Festival and Schaubühne, Berlin); Wunschloses Unglück, adapt. Peter Handke (Burgtheater Vienna); Reise durch die Nacht, adapt. Friederike Mayröcker (SchauspielhausKöln, Festival d'Avignon, Teatertreffen); Lungs (Roundabout season at Paines Plough and Sheffield Theatres/Studio Theatre, Washington DC, US) and Monster (Royal Exchange). He was the recipient of two awards in the inaugural Bruntwood Playwriting Competition in 2006. Other awards include the UK Theatre Best Director (with Robert Icke), 2014; Best New Play at the Off West End Awards 2013 and the Nestroypreis for Best German Language Production, 2013. He has twice been nominated for an Olivier Award in the Best New Play category. His work with director Katie Mitchell has been selected for Theatertreffen and the Avignon Festival, and continues to run in rep and tour the world.
CITY OF GLASS is directed by Leo Warner and adapted by Duncan MacMillan from the first novel of The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, and the graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. It features set design by Jenny Melville, video by Lysander Ashton, movement by Kim Brandstrup, sound by Gareth Fry and original music by Nick Powell. It is a 59 Productions, HOME & Lyric Hammersmith production, commissioned by 59 Productions.
HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, Manchester M15 4FN homemcr.org Box office: 0161 200 1500 Run: 4 - 18 March 2017 (press night: 9 March)
Lyric Hammersmith, Lyric Square, King Street, London W6 0QL lyric.co.uk Box office: 020 8741 6850 Run: 20 April - 13 May 2017 (press night: 26 April at 7pm)
Picture credit: 59 Productions
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