South Pacific is set to embark
on a journey from New York City and Broadway on the East Coast to San
Francisco and the Golden Gate Theatre on the West Coast.
The production will be directed
by the director of the 2008 Broadway revival at the Lincoln Center�s
Vivian Beaumont Theatre.
Under Bartlett Sher�s direction that revival earned 11 Tony Award
nominations and seven wins. This incredible production helped revive
a musical whose message of tolerance is as topical now as it was when
it first debuted in 1949. The new production will tour the United States
beginning in September 2009, with Sher busy now preparing to put together
another great show.
Sher has recently become a
superstar director in the world of Broadway, the Steven Soderbergh or
Guy Ritchie of the world of live performance. Sher began back in 2000,
as the Intiman
Playhouse artistic director
in Seattle. There he cut his teeth as the director of such critically
acclaimed productions as Nickel and Dimed, Nora, Arms and Man, Cymbeline,
and Titus Andronicus.
The success of those plays
eventually gave him the chance to direct at such stages as Chicago�s
Goodman Theatre and, eventually on Broadway as a Tony Award nominated
director of The Light in the Piazza in 2005 at the Lincoln Center.
Sher had earned acclaim as
a classical director after productions at the Metropolitan Opera
in the Lincoln Center,
but it was his success handling a much beloved, yet flawed musical like
South Pacific that earned him the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award
in 2008 that finally made him a household name among theater aficionados.
He has been busy since earning
such honors, directing Joe Turner�s Come and Gone at the Broadway
Belasco Theatre and returning to the Intiman Playhouse to direct the
world premieres of The Singing Forest and Prayer for My Enemy.
Now he returns to the city
of his birth, San Francisco, to begin a new big-budget production that
must survive the pitfalls of a touring show to even begin to compare
to his acclaimed open ended production in New York.
He will have to begin a new
the search for the right actor and actress for each part. He is an unforgiving
evaluator of talent, as
chronicled by the New York Times.
This may be his most difficult project yet, as he must prove adaptable
for each stage and the tiring trip to new cities selling South Pacific tickets throughout the country in college
towns and tiny metropolises.
Despite the challenges ahead,
the touring production could have no better director than Sher to start
the tour with the best intentions, to create another wonderful adaptation
of the classic musical that has survived glorious years on Broadway
and many movie adaptations.
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