Roundabout Theatre Company - Page 18

Roundabout's school partner, Bronx Theatre High School, a school which Roundabout co-founded in 2003, has started a new Theatre Business/Production Management class to support the 11th grade productions at their school. In 11th grade the students collaborate on a full-scale production in their black box theatre; this year's production being Dracula.

Roundabout has been involved in educational outreach since its earliest years. Gene Feist, Roundabout's founding director, was a high school teacher in New Rochelle, spending his days teaching drama and his nights directing plays and running a fledgling theatre company. Mr. Feist understood the value of promoting theatre in public schools. Our not-for-profit status was linked to our education programming and the educational work we have engaged in over the last twenty plus years.

It's hard to believe that this production will mark Roundabout's first time bringing you the work of the great Oscar Wilde. Wilde is one of the best-known literary figures of the late Victorian period, yet many people don't realize how few theatrical works he left behind. In fact, the very social hypocrisies that he satirizes in Earnest contributed to the shortening of this famous wit's career.

This week From the Archives celebrates Brian Bedford, currently starring as Lady Bracknell in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival's production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

Outstanding graphics and images used in print and television campaigns are essential to effective promotion of Broadway productions. This week From The Archives takes a look at promotional materials from one of Roundabout's most memorable productions: Cabaret.

Name: Joseph Alessi Show: Brief Encounter Character: Albert/Fred

As promised last week, today's From The Archives features promotional materials from the early 1980s.

Have you wondered what Roundabout's logo looked like in the late 1980s? Or how much season tickets cost? Or what our print ads looked like twenty years ago? Over the next few weeks From the Archives will answer these questions. We will showcase promotional materials from our collection - subscriber letters, brochures, promotional posters and ads, and photographs.

Adam Driver can be seen in Mrs. Warren's Profession, now playing its final week at the American Airlines Theatre.

For most people the name Roundabout Theatre conjures up Ibsen and Shaw but for many New Yorkers residing in Manhattan in the late 1970s Roundabout might also mean Meredith Monk and Joyce Trisler.

Q: Give us a brief background of your career leading up to Roundabout. A: My first real theater job was working for David Merrick on the original 42nd Street. We not only had the NYC show, but did 2 national tours and a London production. I then worked in company management for a couple of general managers, and after a few years made a 180 degree turn and went to work in the NY Yankees' ticket office, ending up as the Group and Season Sales Manager there (NB: I'm a Mets fan!). I returned to the arts at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark and then found a wonderful home here at Roundabout.

This week's From The Archives features original materials by costumer Michael Krass. Mr. Krass (an Off-Broadway and Broadway costume designer who also heads the Design Program for the Playwrights Horizons Studio at New York University) has worked with Roundabout on 14 productions, beginning in 1991 with The Subject Was Roses, by Frank D. Gilroy. Roundabout's archives contain a significant amount of source materials such as these.