SITI Company's Bob Plays NY Fine Arts 1/19-29

For its third New York season, director Anne Bogart and Siti Company celebrate the 70th birthday year of Robert Wilson with the revival of the Obie Award-winning one-man tour-de-force, Bob. Inspired by the creative life and times of the internationally acclaimed avant-garde theater director, Bob will run at New York Live Arts, January 19-29, 2012. The 90-minute play is conceived and directed by Bogart, created and performed by Will Bond (a founding company member of SITI who has worked with Wilson), and based on hundreds of interviews Bogart collected and recorded over several decades, which were then adapted to the stage by Irish writer and dramaturg, Jocelyn Clarke.

Bob premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University in February of 1998 and had its New York premiere in April of 1998 at New York Theatre Workshop before touring the world at critical acclaim for four years. It hasn't been seen in New York since 1998.
Acclaimed as a genius, Wilson uses his own history and everyone around him as fodder for his grandiose staged spectacles. Best known for his groundbreaking 4 1/2 hour production of Philip Glass' opera, Einstein on the Beach, he rides the fast track of the ever-shrinking global art scene, and his vision has been widely adapted in every field from theater to music videos.

"Bob is not meant to be a realistic portrait of Robert Wilson, the man," Anne Bogart says, "rather a dip into an engaging perspective about family, art, and American culture." The play unfolds as a series of dramatic compositions from Wilson's past and work to get at the essence of the man. It also captures the vital moment when American pop culture and high culture collided, and his avant-garde un-credited influence on mainstream culture.

In Bob, Wilson's large-scale, high tech productions are evoked through Brian H Scott's lighting, Darron L West's evocative ‘soundscape,' and Bogart's deft use of minimal means, in which a milk bottle and an empty glass can take on huge iconic forces.

Bob was commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University and developed in association with Theatre Archa, Prague, Czech Republic. It is the first part of a trilogy which focused on the artistic process and includes Room, inspired by the life and writing of Virginia Woolf, and Score, centered around Bernstein's articulations about music.

BOB

Presented by Siti Company
Conceived & directed by Anne Bogart
Adapted by Jocelyn Clarke
Created & performed by Will Bond

Set Design: Neil Patel
Lighting Design: Brian H Scott
Costume Design: James Schuette
Original Lighting Design: Mimi Jordan Sherin
Sound Design: Darron L West

WHEN: Jan 19 - 21, 24 - 28 at 7:30 pm
Jan 22, 28, 29 at 2:30 pm
Tickets on sale now

WHERE:
New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street, NYC (btw. 7th and 8th Avenues)

TICKETS: $15 Previews (Jan 19 & 20)
$40 Reg Price at door/ $32 in advance online
Call (212) 924-0077, or online at www.newyorklivearts.org

Siti Company MONDAYS @ NEW YORK LIVE ARTS

In addition to Bob, SITI will present four public talks offering a window into different aspects of the company's creative process and methods, Siti Company Mondays @ New York Live Arts on December 12, January 23 and February 27.

December 12, 2011, 7:00 pm
From the Ground Up: Launching Café Variations
A look at how SITI builds a piece from scratch and their epic new work, Café Variations, with text by Charles L. Mee and music from the American songbook.

January 23, 2012, 7 pm
Conversations with Anne
A one-on-one interview between Anne Bogart and Brooklyn Academy Of Music's Executive Producer, Joseph V. Melillo. Melillo combines global entrepreneurship with a deep commitment to the artists he believes in. Bogart and Melillo will unpack the phenomenon of Bob and art making in the 21st Century.

February 27, 2012, 7 pm
Convergence: From Training to Stage
Featuring SITI's Advanced Winter Training participants who, together with Siti Company members, will be contributing to the build of a future SITI production.

All Siti Company Mondays are at 7:00pm
Tickets only $15, on sale now at New York Live Arts
Box Office Phone: (212) 924-0077, or online at www.newyorklivearts.org

For more information on SITI, visit: www.siti.org.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Anne Bogart is the Artistic Director of Siti Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a Professor at Columbia University where she runs the Graduate Directing Program. Works with SITI include Trojan Women, American Document (with the Martha Graham Dance Company), Antigone; Under Construction; Freshwater; Who Do You Think You Are; Radio Macbeth; Hotel Cassiopeia; Death and the Ploughman; La Dispute; Score; bobrauschenbergamerica; Room; War of the Worlds; Cabin Pressure; The Radio Play; Alice's Adventures; Culture of Desire; Bob; Going, Going, Gone; Small Lives/Big Dreams; The Medium; Noel Coward's Hay Fever and Private Lives; August Strindberg's Miss Julie; and Charles Mee's Orestes. She is the author of three books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book and And Then, You Act.

Will Bond is a founding member of Siti Company. He has performed and toured nationally and internationally in SITI's Orestes (by company member Charles L. Mee), The Medium (Obie award winner), Small Lives/Big Dreams, Culture of Desire, Bob (Obies for light and sound and three Drama Desk Nominations including best solo performance of the year), War of the Worlds, War of the Worlds - The Radio Play, Cabin Pressure, bobrauschenbergamerica, La Dispute, Death and the Ploughman, Lilith and Seven Deadly Sins (New York City Opera), Radio Macbeth, Who Do You Think You Are and Antigone. He has toured with Tadashi Suzuki and SCOT in Dionysus and with Robert Wilson's Persephone. Regional works include: Macbeth, The Lover, Creditors, Mystery of Irma Vep, Greater Tuna, Greetings, Holiday, Night Must Fall, Suddenly Last Summer, The Tempest, Hamlet. He has created original works including History of the World from the very Beginning with Christian Frederickson & SITI's Brian Scott, Crash (temporary title) a work in progress also with Brian Scott in collaboration with Deborah Hay, and I'll Crane For You a solo performance dance theater work commissioned from Deborah Hay. Will is currently Artist-In-Residence in the theater department of Skidmore College.

Jocelyn Clarke (Adaptation, Bob) is a freelance dramaturge and writer. He is a member of the artstic staff of the Sundance Theatre Lab and has taught dramaturgy at the John F. Kenedy Center in Washington, D.C., and at Columbia University. Clarke is an associate artist with The Civilians and Theater Mitu in New York. He has written six plays for Anne Bogart and Siti Company: Bob, Alice's Adventures, Room Score, Antigone and Trojan Women. Here You Are Human, his new project with the Tiger Lilies, was presented at the Archa Theatre during the Prague Quadrennial in May. Clarke's adaptation of Flann O'Brien's The Poor Mouth premiered at the Blue Raincoat Theatre in Sligo, Ireland in October.

Siti Company is: Akiko Aizawa, J. Ed Araiza, Anne Bogart, Will Bond, Gian Murray Gianino, Leon Ingulsrud, Ellen Lauren, Kelly Maurer, Charles L. Mee Jr., Elizabeth Moreau, Tom Nelis, Barney O'Hanlon, Neil Patel, James Schuette, Brian H Scott, Megan Wanlass Szalla, Stephen Duff Webber, Darron L West.

Detailed company member bios available online at siti.org