The Fountain Theatre Celebrates 20 Years, Announces New Season

Fresh from receiving six 2009 Ovation Award nominations (including two for Best Production of a Play and one for Best Overall Season), the multiple award-winning Fountain Theatre celebrates 20 years of excellence with an exciting 2010/2011 season of premieres.

"Our 20th Anniversary Season is a celebration of who we are as a theater," explains Fountain co-artistic director Stephen Sachs. "We continue our commitment to three masters for whose work we're well known: Wilson, Williams, and Fugard. Yet, two of their plays we're producing are new works to our audiences. In addition, we'll premiere two new plays by important playwrights emerging on the American theater landscape. With a mixture of premieres of new plays, a fresh look at a celebrated masterpiece, a world premiere Flamenco dance/drama - plus dance concerts at both the Fountain and the Ford Amphitheatre - the new 20th Anniversary Season has it all."

The 2010/11 season line-up includes the United States premiere of Athol Fugard's newest play, The Train Driver; the West Coast premiere of Tennessee Williams' final full-length play, A House Not Meant to Stand; the West Coast premiere of The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza; the Los Angeles premiere of Opus by Michael Hollinger; a fresh look at August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; and the world premiere of the Flamenco dance/drama DJ: Don Juan in LA.

First up, opening February 6, is The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza. Working closely with the playwright to develop a brand new, completely reworked version of the script that premiered last year at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, Ben Bradley directs the West Coast premiere. Part history, part mystery and part ghost story, Bayeza's jazz/gospel/folk integration of past, present, fact and legend turns the story of the 1955 murder of 14-year old Emmett Till, whose shocking death helped spark the infant civil rights movement, into a soaring work of music, poetic language and riveting theatricality. February 6 - March 6 (previews Jan. 30-Feb. 5).

In Spring, 2010, Simon Levy will direct the Los Angeles premiere of Michael Hollinger's Opus, the universally acclaimed new play that was the recipient of the 2006 Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Citation from the American Theatre Critics Association. A former classical musician-turned-playwright, Hollinger has penned a smart, funny and compelling exploration of artistic passion in this story about the musical ambitions and personal dynamics of a 'highly strung' string quartet.

Master playwright Athol Fugard hands the reins for what he calls "the most important play I've ever written" to Stephen Sachs (director of Fugard's Road to Mecca, Exits and Entrances, Victory, and Coming Home), who will direct the United States premiere of The Train Driver in Summer, 2010. Adolphus Ward (LA Weekly, LADCC, NAACP Awards for Gem of the Ocean) costars in the story of a tormented train driver who is compelled to visit a makeshift graveyard in the middle of nowhere, determined to find the unmarked grave of the woman he unintentionally killed. It's a haunting, mesmerizing and deeply personal journey into the human soul.

On July 23 and 24, The Fountain Theatre returns to the Ford Amphitheatre to present Sonidos Gitanos/Gypsy Flamenco with Maria Bermudez and the Chicana Gypsy Project. This explosive ensemble from Jerez de la Frontera (Spain's "City of Flamenco") returns to the U.S. with star dancer/artistic director Maria Bermudez and special guests. The Los Angeles Times wrote, "There is blistering and then there is hot! Flamenco dancer Maria Bermudez and her company of musicians and dancers nearly torch the stage with their high combustible yet tradition-bound program. Sonidos Gitanos... white-hot passion!"

Fall, 2010 brings A House Not Meant to Stand, a 'new' play by Fountain favorite Tennessee Williams. Described by the playwright as a "Southern gothic spook sonata," his final full-length work had received only one production prior to his death in 1983, remaining unpublished until 2008. Simon Levy (Summer and Smoke, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore) brings the West Coast premiere of Williams' dark, expressionistic comedy about the disintegration of a blazingly dysfunctional family on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to the Fountain stage.

Blues music soars in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the third chronological work in his unprecedented decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the 20th century African American experience. Next winter, multiple award-winning Ben Bradley, director of Gem of the Ocean (set in 1904) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1911), moves on to 1920s Chicago, where legendary blues singer Ma Rainey lays down some tracks with a group of black musicians. But what erupts in the session is more than music. Winner of the 1985 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play, Ma Rainey delves into issues of race, art, religion, and the historic exploitation of black recording artists by white producers with an explosive mix of drama and music.

The season will close with a bang in Spring, 2011 with the world premiere of DJ: Don Juan in L.A., created and directed by Fountain co-artistic director Deborah Lawlor. This contemporary version of the Don Juan story is set to the passionate rhythms of Flamenco in a nightclub in Los Angeles, where DJ is the town's hottest dee-jay. Flamenco sensation Timo Nunez stars in this sexy and steamy tale of love, passion and duende. Red-hot dancing and pulsating music burn up a sultry night in L.A. Ole!

Now entering its eighth smash year at the Fountain, Forever Flamenco! continues on the first and third Sunday of every month. Forever Flamenco! is a live concert of a Flamenco cuadro or group, consisting of one or two guitarists, a singer, three dancers, and often a percussionist. With the roster constantly changing with every show, each performance is unique and offers a different "mix" of Flamenco artists - some local, some invited from cities around the United States, some visiting from Spain. The Fountain Theatre's intimate setting provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to see world-class Flamenco up close, making it ideal to experience maximum Flamenco intensity. The LA Weekly has honored The Fountain Theatre as "L.A.'s most significant venue for Flamenco."

Celebrating its 20th year, The Fountain Theatre is one of the most successful intimate theaters in Los Angeles. Housed in a charming two-story complex in Hollywood, California, the Fountain provides a nurturing, creative home for multi-ethnic theater and dance artists. The Fountain serves as an artistic home for such noted playwrights as Athol Fugard, Lee Blessing, Dael Orlandersmith, Israel Horovitz, and enjoys successful relationships with the literary estates of Tennessee Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald and August Wilson. Fountain projects have been seen in several major theaters around the country, including Victory Gardens (Chicago), the Guthrie (Minneapolis), Off-Broadway at Primary Stages (New York), and internationally at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland (winner of the Fringe First Award).

Members of the Fountain Theatre artistic team have created plays and productions that have launched the new Getty Villa classical amphitheater at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu; inaugurated the new Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis; and made into a CBS Movie-for-Television and a BBC Radio Drama. The Fountain was instrumental in launching, hosting and guiding the Deaf West Theatre Company at the Fountain in 1991. That company went on to win the Tony Award for its acclaimed ASL-version of Big River on Broadway in 2003.

The Fountain is also the premier venue for Flamenco music and dance in Los Angeles. Since 1990 it has produced over 500 world-class Flamenco concerts on its intimate stage and seven seasons at the 1200-seat Ford Amphitheatre. The Fountain has also toured Flamenco projects throughout the Western United States.

Over its two-decade history, the Fountain has won over 200 awards for theater excellence in Los Angeles. It is the only intimate theater in Los Angeles to win the Ovation Award (L.A.'s version of the Tony Award) for Best Production of a Play four times - and the Fountain has just been nominated twice again in 2009. Plays created and developed at the Fountain Theatre have won the PEN Literary Award for Drama (and twice been PEN Finalists), the Ovation Award, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, LA Weekly Award, the Media Access Award and nominated for the New York Outer Critics Circle Award. Actors Equity Association presented its Diversity Award to the Fountain for the theater's multi-cultural programming. Heralded as "a living treasure" by the LA Weekly, The Fountain has been honored by the Los Angeles City Council for "enhancing the cultural life of Los Angeles."

For more information about The Fountain Theatre's 2010/11 Season, call (323) 663-1525 or go to www.FountainTheatre.com.