Lincoln Center to Present Premiere of British Sensation 'Waves'

Great writers and great works of literature are the thematic thread running through the 2008-09 season of Lincoln Center's Great Performers "New Visions" series, this year subtitled, "The Literary Muse."  A work by celebratEd English novelist Virginia Woolf is the inspiration for the third presentation of the series. Opening on November 12, The National Theatre of Great Britain's award-winning, multi-media production of Waves will have its U.S. Premiere at The Duke on 42nd StreetSM, a New 42nd Street® project.

Waves will have two previews and eleven performances, November 12 through November 22.  A pre-performance lecture by Edward Mendelson will be held on Wednesday, November 19 at 6:45 p.m. The director and cast will also participate in a special reading, "Evening of Virginia Woolf" at the 92nd Street Y on Monday, November 17.

Waves is based on Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking 1931 novel The Waves. Directed by renowned British director Katie Mitchell, associate director of the National, who conceived and created the work in collaboration with the company's actors and video artist Leo Warner of Fifty-Nine Productions, it had its London premiere in 2006. The Financial Times called it, "The most poetically imaginative staging that London has seen in many months...a sensuously many-layered response to Virginia Woolf's novel."  The Times (London) was equally laudatory writing that in the hands of Mitchell and her collaborators the "exquisitely skilled, highly imaginative production" was no less than "art of exceptional order."

Tickets for Waves, priced at $60, are available online at LincolnCenter.org, by phone via CenterCharge, 212-721-6500 and at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office, 65 West 65th Street.  Any remaining tickets will go on sale at The Duke on 42nd StreetSM, a New 42nd Street® project.

Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness novel The Waves follows six people from childhood to old age. Almost plotless (short narrative sections advance the story), the book weaves together the characters interior monologues, in which their lives—problems, joys, regrets—unfold over the course of one day.  "A freeflowing meditation on inner life and the nature of identity," is how The Times (London) describes the novel in its review of the play.  In The National Theatre of Great Britain production of Waves, eight actors—four men and four women—embody, at different points, various aspects of each character, with several actors "depicting" a single character's voiced thoughts, facial expressions, hand gestures, and creating sound effects (the rustle of clothes, drinking, etc.) The words and actions are also captured live and reflected back, often in extreme close-up, on large video projections.

The Financial Times elaborated in its review, "Dramatic characterizations, narration, live music and sound effects, and the interplay between these live elements complement each other so exquisitely it is as if Mitchell, her actors and video artist Leo Warner have created an entirely new art form."  And its review praised the digital images that "brilliantly capture the fragmented, dreamlike narrative of Woolf's novel."  

"New Visions," which celebrates its 10th anniversary season in 2008--2009, was inaugurated by Jane Moss, Lincoln Center's Vice President for Programming.  The series presents productions specially commissioned by Lincoln Center in innovative stage presentations and groundbreaking collaborations from the world's leading directors, choreographers, and classical performers.  Opening simultaneously with Waves is a revival of György Kurtág's Kafka Fragments, settings of excerpts from the diaries and letters of Franz Kafka, directed by Peter Sellars and performed by Dawn Upshaw and violinist Geoff Nuttall.  And in May 2009, "New Visions" presents the first New York City performances of Mark Morris' Romeo & Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare that Morris based on the recently-discovered, original Prokofiev score and original dramatic concept.

Katie Mitchell, whom the Guardian Unlimited (London) called "the radical force beating in the heart of The National Theatre," was named Associate Director of the celebrated theater company in 2004. She graduated with a degree in Literature from Oxford and early in her career worked in British regional theater and with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her productions for the National include Strindberg's A Dream Play, Chekov's The Seagull, this past November's Attempts on Her Life by Martin Crimp and the upcoming Euripides drama, Women of Troy.   Mitchell has worked in opera and on concert stagings, including a production of Bach's St. Matthew Passion for the Glyndebourne Festival. She has cited Eastern European theater, Russian and Polish acting and directing techniques, in particular Stanislavsky, and contemporary artists such as German choreographer Pina Bausch, as influences. Her working method is highly collaborative, involving actors and her creative team from the Early Stages of a project.  Her commitment to psychological realism and unique stagings have sparked equal controversy and praise at home, for their perceived flaunting of time-honored British theater conventions and performance practices.  Mitchell made her American directing debut in July 2001 at Lincoln Center.  She directed The Royal Court Theatre's productions of Mountain Language and Ashes to Ashes, two plays by Harold Pinter that were part of Lincoln Center Festival 2001's Pinter celebration.

The National Theatre of Great Britain, founded in 1963, and established on London's South Bank in 1976, has three theaters the Olivier, the Lyttelton and the Cottesloe. Nicholas Hytner serves as the NT's Director. The NT presents an eclectic mix of new plays and classics, with seven or eight productions in repertory at any one time. It aims to re-energize the great traditions of the British stage and to expand the horizons of audiences and artists alike, and aspires to reflect in its repertoire the diversity of the nation's culture. At its Studio, the National offers a space for research and development for its stages and theater as a whole; and through NT Discover, addresses tomorrows' audiences.  With its extensive program of Platform performances, backstage tours, foyer music, exhibitions, and free outdoor entertainment, the National recognizes that theater doesn't begin and end with the rise and fall of the curtain. And by touring, it shares its work with audiences in the UK and abroad.  For more information visit: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk.

Leo Warner, video designer for Waves, is an Associate of The National Theatre and creative director of

Fifty Nine Productions, a film and new media Production Company that has worked on wide-ranging film, theater, opera, ballet and visual arts projects. Among those projects was the English National Opera's production of Philip Glass' Satyagraha which had its U.S. premiere at the Metropolitan Opera during the 2007-2008 season. The company also collaborated on the critically-acclaimed National Theatre of Scotland play, Black Watch, currently at Brooklyn's Arts at St. Ann's. The National's recent ...some trace of her was his fourth production with the Company and with director Katie Mitchell.  Upcoming projects for Fifty Nine Productions include Dr. Atomic for the Metropolitan Opera/English National Opera; Request Programme for Schauspiel Cologne; Dido and Aeneas for ENO/Young Vic; the Metropolitan Opera's 125th anniversary gala; and Al Gran Sole Carico d'Amore at the Salzburg Festival.

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