MISALLIANCE, MARISOL, APPROPRIATE and More Set for Juilliard Drama's 2016-17 Season
By: BWW News Desk Jul. 15, 2016
Juilliard Drama announces its 2016-17 season of fully staged productions featuring Juilliard's Group 46 acting students in their fourth and final year in the drama program at Juilliard.
This fall season's productions include Shaw's Misalliance directed by alumna Janet Zarish; José Rivera's Marisol directed by Taibi Magar; and faculty member and alumnus Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's Appropriate directed by Lila Neugebauer.
In February, Juilliard Drama presents three plays in repertory including Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice directed by Jonathan Rosenberg; Donald Margulies's Sight Unseen directed by Hal Brooks; and Carlo Gozzi's The Serpent Woman directed by alumnus Orlando Pabotoy.
All performances take place in the Stephanie P. McClelland Drama Theater at Juilliard.
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice and The Serpent Woman are presented as part of Carnegie Hall's La Serenissima: Music and Arts From the Venetian Republic festival. Shakespeare set his epic tragedy The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice in late 16th-century Venice and Cyprus, and The Serpent Woman is a commedia dell'arte play by the 18th-century Venetian writer and satirist Carlo Gozzi.
Juilliard's fourth-year actors (Group 46) appearing in these productions are Isabel Arraiza, John Bambery, Audrey Corsa, Justin Cunningham, Lauren Donahue, Kate Eastman, Adam Ewer, Golden Garnick, Gilles Geary, Nina Grollman, Eric Harper, Matt Helm, Stephanie Mareen, Victoria Pollack, Steven Robertson, Medina Senghore, Alexander Shaw, and Rosanny Zayas.
Extremely limited tickets at $20 will be available at events.juilliard.edu or at the Juilliard Box Office. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard students may purchase tickets for $10, only at the Juilliard Box Office. Tickets may get released closer to the date of the performances, so please check the website.
JUILLIARD DRAMA 2016-17 CALENDAR OF EVENTS:
Misalliance
By George Bernard Shaw
Directed by Janet Zarish
George Bernard Shaw's 1909 farce, subtitled "A Debate In One Sitting," explodes marriage mores and explores gender roles. Over the course of one weekend on a beautiful country estate, there are eight marriage proposals as well as a plane crash, an attempted murder, and the arrival of a Polish acrobat named Lina Szczepanowska. Our heroine, Hypatia Tarleton, is engaged but unhappy about it. A diversion named Joey Percival drops out of the sky and Hypatia must decide what sort of marriage she wants. This play was Shaw's second inquiry into the institution, a follow up to his play Getting Married.
Wednesday, October 12, at 7:30pm
Thursday, October 13, at 7:30pm
Friday, October 14, at 7:30pm
Saturday, October 15, at 2pm and 8pm
Sunday, October 16, at 7pm
Marisol
By José Rivera
Directed by Taibi Magar
Winner of the 1993 Obie Award, this poetry-infused apocalyptic play follows Marisol Perez as she navigates the war torn city that was New York. The angels have left to fight a war in heaven and all of Earth will suffer until the people rise up to join the fight. Rivera's plea for compassion in a ravaged world, Marisol was described by the Village Voice as "angry, fearsome, fantastic, and poetically frenzied, without surrendering either its sanity or its mordant sense of humor."
Wednesday, November 2, at 7:30pm
Thursday, November 3, at 7:30pm
Friday, November 4, at 7:30pm
Saturday, November 5, at 2pm and 8pm
Sunday, November 6, at 7pm
Appropriate
Directed by Lila Neugebauer
Every estranged member of the Lafayette clan has descended upon their crumbling Arkansas homestead to settle the accounts of the recently deceased patriarch. As his three adult children sort through a lifetime of hoarded mementos and junk, they collide over clutter, debt, and a contentious family history. But after a disturbing discovery surfaces among their father's possessions, the reunion takes a turn for the explosive, unleashing a series of crackling surprises and confrontations.
Winner of the 2014-2015 Obie Award for Best New American Play. Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins is an esteemed alumnus of Juilliard and a playwriting professor for the MFA actors in Juilliard's Drama Division.
Wednesday, December 14, at 7:30pm
Thursday, December 15, at 7:30pm
Friday, December 16, at 7:30pm
Saturday, December 17, at 2pm and 8pm
Sunday, December 18 at 7pm
JUILLIARD DRAMA FOURTH-YEAR REPERTORY
FEBRUARY 8-19, 2017
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice
Directed by Jonathan Rosenberg
"Not to affect many proposed matches/Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,/Whereto we see in all things nature tends," says Iago to Othello in persuading him that Desdemona, having acted impulsively, must now be regretting her marriage to a Moor. And so, Shakespeare's tragedy of prejudice, mistrust, and betrayal resonates strongly in our present moment. In this production, with a cast of seven actors, director Jonathan Rosenberg investigates and examines the corrosive effect of social forces on the most intimate of human and family relationships.
Wednesday, February 8, at 7:30pm
Saturday, February 11, at 8pm
Sunday, February 12, at 2pm
Thursday, February 16, at 7:30pm
Sunday, February 19, at 8pm
Sight Unseen
Directed by Hal Brooks
Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies's play about a successful artist named Jonathan Waxman whose works are bought "sight unseen" won an Obie Award in 1991.With mordant humor in scenes that dart from past to present and back, the four characters deal with anti-Semitism, the legacy of the Holocaust and assimilation, the sadness of lost love, and the unanswerable question of the role of the artist at the end of a ragged century.
Thursday, February 9, at 7:30pm
Sunday, February 12, at 8pm
Tuesday, February 14, at 7:30pm
Friday, February 17, at 7:30pm
Saturday, February 18, at 2pm
The Serpent Woman
By Carlo Gozzi
Directed by Orlando Pabotoy
Carlo Gozzi's 1762 commedia dell'arte is a fairy tale about an immortal woman named Cherestani who falls in love with a mortal king name Farruscad. The Fairy King dooms the couple to eight years of tests and trials and only if they can emerge victorious will he refrain from transforming Cherestani into a serpent woman. This hilarious, ribald, fantastical world of fairies, demons and mythic beasts is the setting for a story with biblical echoes told in the highly physical commedia style.
Friday, February 10, at 7:30pm
Saturday, February 11, at 2pm
Wednesday, February 15, at 7:30pm
Saturday, February 18, at 8pm
Sunday, February 19, at 2pm
Extremely limited tickets at $20 will be available at events.juilliard.edu or at the Juilliard Box Office. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard students may purchase tickets for $10, only at the Juilliard Box Office. Tickets may get released closer to the date of the performances, so please check the website. All performances take place in the Stephanie P. McClelland Drama Theater, The Juilliard School, 155 West 65th Street, 4th Floor, N.Y.C.
Since its inception five decades ago, the Drama Division at Juilliard has become one of the most respected and renowned training programs for theater artists in the world. Under the leadership of James Houghton, the Richard Rodgers Director of the Drama Division, the program is dedicated to training versatile 21st-Century Theater artists and empowering them to thrive in an ever-evolving performing arts landscape.
Founded in 1968 by the celebrated American director, producer, and theater administrator
John Houseman and the French director, teacher, and actor Michel Saint-Denis, the four-year drama program combines vocal and physical training, extensive work on text, and appreciation of style with a fierce commitment to emotional honesty, immense physical energy, and imaginative daring. The program is both highly selective - with over 2,000 applicants for just 18 spots in 2016 - and extremely rigorous, attracting committed and focused young actors.
To add to its long-standing BFA program, in the fall of 2012, Juilliard Drama began its new MFA program, providing a diversity of experience for undergraduate and graduate students working side by side on projects that span classic texts of Shakespeare and Chekhov to contemporary works. This variety and breadth of repertoire ensures that Juilliard actors enter the profession with the experience and the craft to tackle the full spectrum of work, and to bring to life the stories of writers who are deeply ingrained in theater history as well as the exciting work of living writers.
In fact, our actors have many opportunities to explore contemporary work during their training, as an essential component of the artists' work within the Drama Division lies at the intersection with the distinguished Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program under the direction of Tony Award-winning playwright MarSha Norman and Pulitzer Prize winner and Juilliard alumnus David Lindsay-Abaire, who joins the program this fall. Actors and playwright fellows collaborate regularly on new works, which encourages the development of fresh and diverse voices in the American theater.
The Juilliard Drama program seeks not only to provide a challenging and full curriculum of training, but also to give students valuable exposure to the professional world. Over the course of their studies, our actors have many opportunities to work with professional directors, who come in to work as teachers and guest artists as well as to direct productions. For the fourth-year class, Juilliard's training aims to create a real bridge into the profession through the creation of the Juilliard Drama Division's Professional Studio hosted by Signature Theatre, recipient of the 2014 regional theater Tony Award. Signature is set in the Pershing Square Signature Center, a Frank Gehry-designed complex in the heart of New York City's Theater District. At the Studio, Juilliard's writers and actors collaborate closely on new works, building lasting artistic relationships.
This connection to the broader theater community ties into the strong ethos of citizenship and community service at Juilliard. In addition to many other opportunities for interdivisional collaboration between students, our actors and playwrights regularly join forces with music and drama students to use their art to reach out to underserved communities around the world.
Juilliard Drama's outstanding creative reputation, distinguished faculty, and rigorous professional training have enabled its alumni to excel as artists, leaders, and global citizens for more than four decades and will continue to shape the future of American theater for decades to come.
Pictured: Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage (photo by Jessica Katz).
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