Patrick Page, Reeve Carney, Santino Fontana & More to Lead Red Bull Theater's 20th Anniversary Festival

RED BULL THEATER has revealed details for the upcoming 20th Anniversary Festival, an all-star series of workshops and readings of Shakespeare, his contemporaries, & more, celebrating twenty years of bringing rarely seen classic plays to dynamic new life for contemporary audiences, with a respect for tradition with a modern sensibility. 

“I am thrilled to invite audiences to our 20th Anniversary Festival, celebrating Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and more! This spring, we will do a deep dive into the work at the heart of our mission, sharing a plethora of classics, new works in conversation with those classics, and other special events featuring some of the most remarkable talent in the world,” said Jesse Berger, Red Bull’s Founder and Artistic Director. “It is truly exciting and meaningful to be able to look back on 20 years of sharing our work with the fantastic artists and supporters of artists that make up our community here in New York. I couldn’t be more grateful to all the people who have contributed to make our company a unique and valued Off-Broadway institution, and all of us at Red Bull are proud to bring so many of this artistic family together for one fabulous Festival of performances in April and May. Join us as we celebrate two decades of sharing great classic stories, and sow the seeds for the next 20 years!”

“There’s something special for everyone in our 20th Anniversary Festival,” added Executive Director Martin Giannini, “From conversations with great artists like Santino Fontana and Patrick Page, a new play with songs by Jacob Ming-Trent, an exploration of Aphra Behn with Rebecca Hall, a new window on Medea with Tom Hewitt, not to mention star-studded performances of four Shakespeare plays: Antony & Cleopatra, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, and The Tempest, NYC audiences are in for a rare treat.”

To purchase tickets and more information about all the events of 20th Anniversary Festival, from April 15th to May 14th, go to RedBullTheater.com

The 20th Anniversary Festival, will feature the NY premiere of How Shakespeare Saved My Life, an epic poem told by Jacob Ming-Trent with verse, rhyme, and song, on Monday April 15th, in person only performance at Sheen Center Shiner Theatre (18 Bleecker Street). Jacob tells us how Shakespeare raised him, saved him and ultimately showed him that forgiveness and mercy could set him free. "America tried to take my life, a five-hundred-year-old white dude saved it."

About the Festival 

Next up will be the in-person workshop of Shakespeare's Macbeth with Chukwudi Iwuji (NYSF: Hamlet, Othello, The Low Road - Obie Award, Lortel Award nomination, Drama League Award nomination) in the title role on  April 20th and 21st at Sheen Center Shiner Theatre (18 Bleecker Street). One of the most malevolently attractive plays of all time, Macbeth is often held up as the greatest dramatic example of the fatal flaw of ambition. But what if ambition were not the driving force behind the actions of the Macbeths? This workshop seeks to delve deeper into the core of the Macbeths' relationship - a relationship full of passion, evil, grief, and ultimately tragedy. And also there are some pretty weird sisters hanging around…what are they all about? Join us on a journey of exploration into the most Jacobean of all Shakespeare’s plays.  Also featuring Jason Bowen (Broadway: The Play That Goes Wrong; Off-Broadway: The Play That Goes Wrong; Long Day's Journey into Night - Audible, Native Son, Measure for Measure - The Acting Company; If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must be a Muhfucka - Playwrights Horizons, Crumbs from the Table of Joy - Keen Co);  Jason C. Brown (RBT: The Duchess of Malfi, The Revenger's Tragedy; The Bacchae, A Christmas Carol in Harlem - Classical Theatre of Harlem); Jason O'Connell (Off-Broadway: Becomes A Woman - Mint Theater, Judgment Day - Park Avenue Armory; Pride and Prejudice - Primary Stages; Sense and Sensibility, The Seagull - Bedlam); Derek Smith (RBT: The White Devil, The School for Scandal, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore; Broadway: The Lion King, The Green Bird - Tony Award nomination); Zuzanna Szadkowski (Arcadia, Fall River Fishing, King Lear, The Crucible, Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet - BEDLAM; Queens - LCT3); Raphael Nash Thompson (RBT: Volpone, The Witch of Edmonton, Edward II; most recently on Broadway in The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window); and Ayana Workman (Red Bull: Mac Beth; The Price of Thomas Scott - Mint, Juliet in NYSF's Romeo & Juliet).

Tuesday April 23rd (7:30pm) will offer the New York  Premiere of God’s Spies by Bill Cain, directed by Nathan Winkelstein, in person at Sheen Center Shiner Theatre. What do you write after you have written the world’s greatest play? Hopefully, not another Timon of Athens. Fortunately for Shakespeare, he is caught in the middle of the pandemic of 1603 and theaters are closed for a year. The plague opens his eyes to the mysteries of life and death when he is quarantined with a young Puritan lawyer and a mature streetwise prostitute. Will Shakespeare thrive creatively? Will his follow up play be as disappointing as his last? Or will he write his masterpiece? Featuring Matthew Rauch (Red Bull Theater’s The Duchess of Malfi - Actors Equity Award/Joe A. Callaway Award, The Revenger's Tragedy, Edward II; Broadway: The Great Society, Junk, The Merchant of Venice, Prelude to a Kiss; TV: “Partner Track” - Netflix; “Banshee” - Cinemax; “Blue Bloods”) with additional cast to be announced shortly.
 

Friday April 26th and Saturday April 27th will offer The Rover by Aphra Behn, directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch and featuring Santino Fontana (RBT: Your Own Thing; Tootsie — Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama League nomination; Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella — Tony, Outer Critics Circle nominations;  Sons of the Prophet —Lortel Award; Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama League Award nominations; The Importance of Being Earnest — Actors Equity/Clarence Derwent Award; Brighton Beach Memoirs — Drama Desk Award, most recently:  I Can Get It for You Wholesale), along with Kelley Curran (for Red Bull: ‘Tis Pity She's a Whore - Actors Equity Joe A. Callaway Award, The Duchess of Malfi; TV: “The Gilded Age;” Broadway:  Present Laughter; Off-Broadway: The Half-God of Rainfall - New York Theatre Workshop/American Repertory Theater; The Winter's Tale - Theatre for a New Audience; Angels in America - Signature Theatre; The Dingdong - Drama League nomination),  Darryl Gene Daughtry, Jr. (Broadway: The Inheritance; Off-Broadway: Coriolanus - Public Theater/Delacorte);  Zachary Fine (Broadway: China Doll with Al Pacino; Off-Broadway: Arden of Faversham, Coriolanus - Red Bull Theater, Fashions For Men - Mint Theater); Ismenia Mendes (Red Bull Theater’s Mac Beth; “Orange Is the New Black;” Marys Seacole - LCT3; The Liar - CSC;  Cressida in Troilus & Cressida - NYSF); and more to be announced  In Person Workshop at Sheen Center Shiner Theatre. It's Spain, during carnival, and anything can and does happen. Two Spanish sisters don masks and take to the streets, one to reunite with her true love, the other to find a man and evade her fate at the nunnery. Enter a trio of English rakes looking for kicks, and we get raucous and raunchy Restoration comedy at its best. From the pen of the first professional female playwright comes a play that challenges 17th-century notions of marriage, while asking timeless questions of sexual politics. How far will women go, to follow their hearts' desire? And just how badly can men behave, before they have to put a ring on it? 

On Monday April 29th (7:30pm): The Tempest by William Shakespeare, directed by Jesse Berger and led by Patrick Page (RBT: Coriolanus, The Duchess of Malfi; currently: All the Devils Are Here; Hadestown - Tony Award nomination, Grammy Award; Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, Lion King). A shipwreck, a magical island, and a tale of love, revenge, and inheritance frame Shakespeare’s final, and one of his most beloved plays. Prospero, the unjustly deposed Duke of Milan, holds sway over the island home of his exile through command of the magical arts, raising his daughter Miranda in isolation save for the island’s creatures and spirits, until a storm washes ashore a cadre of visitors whose arrival portends danger, romance, and reconciliation.  In person at The Loreto Theater at Sheen Center. Featured in the cast are Jason Bowen (Broadway: The Play That Goes Wrong; Off-Bway: The Half-God of Rainfall - New York Theatre Workshop; If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka - Playwrights Horizons, Long Day's Journey into Night - Audible at Minetta Lane); Reeve Carney (Hadestown — Outer Critics Circle nomination; Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark); Robert Cuccioli (Broadway: Jekyll & Hyde - Tony Award nomination, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards; Les Miserables; Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark; Off-Broadway: The White Devil for Red Bull Theatre; Caesar & Cleopatra, Mrs. Warren’s Profession - Gingold Group); Carson Elrod (RBT: The Alchemist; Broadway: Peter and the Starcatcher, Reckless, Noises Off;  Off-Broadway: The Tempest, Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well - NYSF);  Anthony Michael Martinez ((Romeo & Juliet - CSC, I'll Be Damned -Vineyard); Jacob Ming-Trent (RBT: The Alchemist -  Lortel Award nomination; Merry Wives - Drama Desk nomination; Father Comes Home from the Wars - Lortel Award); Howard Overshown (Broadway: The Lehman Trilogy, A Soldier's Play, Saint Joan, A Free Man of Color. Julius Caesar; Off-Broadway: Yellowman - Outer Critics Circle nomination); Lily Santiago (upcoming: Mary Jane - MTC; RBT’s Mac Beth); Derek Smith (RBT: The White Devil, The School for Scandal, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore; Broadway: The Lion King, The Green Bird - Tony Award nomination); Myra Lucretia Taylor (Broadway: ​​Tina: The Tina Turner Musical - Tony Award nomination, Macbeth, Nine, Electra, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Mule Bone;  Off-Broadway: The Lucky Ones - Lortel Award nomination; Familiar - Lortel Award nomination, Outer Critics Circle Award nomination; School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, Love, Loss, and What I Wore);  Raphael Nash Thompson (RBT: Volpone, The Witch of Edmonton, Edward II; most recently on Broadway in The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window); and more to be announced. 

Rebecca Hall (Broadway: Machinal - Roundabout: Theatre World Award, Outer Critics Circle nomination; Off-Broadway: The Cherry Orchard - Brooklyn Academy of Music: Drama Desk nomination; Animal - Atlantic Theater: Drama League nomination; Film: Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona - Golden Globe nomination, Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon, The Town with Ben Affleck) will lead the cast in a rare revival of Or, What She Will by Liz Duffy Adams, directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch on Monday May  6th   (7:30pm) at Sheen Center Shiner Theatre. Hailed by The New York Times as “ a playful, funny and inventive comedy by Liz Duffy Adams. Ms. Adams fares remarkably well. Her language has a natural period flavor and a formidable wit; her characters possess the spark of fully animated spirits; and she weaves into her story both biographical detail and cultural context with grace.” Sprung from debtors’ prison after a disastrous overseas mission, Aphra is desperate to get out of the spy trade. She has a shot at a production at one of only two London companies, if she can only finish her play by morning despite interruptions from sudden new love, actress Nell Gwynne; complicated royal love, King Charles II; and very dodgy ex-love, double-agent William Scott—who may be in on a plot to murder the king in the morning. Can Aphra Behn – poet, spy, and soon to be  first professional female playwright — save Charles’ life, win William a pardon, resist Nell’s charms, and launch her career, all in one night? 
 

Patrick Page will take on the title role of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, directed by Jesse Berger, on Friday May 10th and Saturday May 11th for an in-person workshop at Sheen Center Shiner Theatre. One of Shakespeare's earliest and bloodiest plays explores the desperate nihilism of a world where an unstoppable cycle of revenge has begun. Titus is Rome's greatest general and the head of a noble Roman family. When his armies vanquish the Goths, their defeated queen, Tamora - with her paramour Aaron the Moor - unleashes a fury that brings Rome, Titus, and his family to their knees. The play's exploration of humanity's capacity for inhumanity is shockingly contemporary. Also featuring Teagle F. Bougere (Broadway: The Crucible, A Raisin in the Sun - Outer Critics Circle nomination, The Tempest; Off-Broadway: DEBATE: Baldwin vs Buckley -  american vicarious; The New Englanders [Audelco Award] - Manhattan Theatre Club; Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Macbeth - The Public Theater), Derek Smith (RBT: The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, The School for Scandal, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore; Broadway: The Lion King, The Green Bird - Tony Award nomination); and John Douglas Thompson (RBT: Women Beware Women; Tony Award nomination - Jitney; two Drama Desk Awards, two Obie Awards, Outer Critics Circle Award, Lucille Lortel Award).  Additional casting to be announced.

Red Bull Theater celebrates Mother’s Day as only it can: with a double dose of the most famous mother of them all: Medea! First up on Sunday May 12th at 7:30pm (Mother’s Day) is Euripides’s Medea, in a new version by Ben Power, starring Elizabeth Marvel (Broadway: King Lear opposite Glenda Jackson, Picnic - Roundabout; Other Desert Cities, Edward Albee's Seascape - LCT, Top Girls - Manhattan Theatre Club;  Saint Joan - National Actors Theater,  Taking Sides opposite Ed Harris; Off-Broadway: Long Day's Journey into Night - Lortel and Drama League nominations; Julius Caesar, Henry V, Troilus and Cressida - Public Theater/Delacorte; The Little Foxes, Hedda Gabler [Actors Equity Award], Play Yourself, A Streetcar Named Desire [Obie Award] - NYTW). Medea is a wife and a mother. For the sake of her husband, Jason, she left her home and bore two sons in exile. But when he abandons his family for a new life, Medea faces banishment and separation from her children. Cornered, she begs for one day’s grace. It’s time enough. She exacts an appalling revenge and destroys everything she holds dear. Ben Power’s version of Euripides’s tragedy Medea premiered at The National Theatre, London, in July 2014. “You leave feeling both appalled and strangely elated - the sure sign that a tragedy has hit its mark,” said the Daily Telegraph. “Love and vengeance with a modern twist,” declared The Times. This marks the US Premiere!
 

Then, on Monday May 13th Tom Hewitt (Broadway: Hadestown, Chicago, Amazing Grace, Doctor Zhivago, Jesus Christ Superstar, Dracula, the Musical, The Boys from Syracuse, The Rocky Horror Show - Tony and Drama Desk nominations, Art, The Lion King) will offer his acclaimed one-man Another Medea, written & directed by Aaron Mark at Sheen Center Shiner Theatre. At once ancient and contemporary, this provocative mono-thriller is Grand Guignol horror in the style of Spalding Gray. The story of the incarcerated Marcus Sharp, a charismatic and enigmatic New York actor who recounts in gruesome detail how his obsessions with a wealthy doctor named Jason and the myth of Medea lead to horrific, unspeakable events. The New York Times said “Played with great suppleness by the handsome, silver-haired Broadway veteran Tom Hewitt, Marcus is a disarming psychopath....in this darkening tale, we watch his life unravel...some unnerving moments...This play is partly about loving the theater: the story of a man who loses his way after he exiles himself from the stage.” 

Additional Festival events will include two “Person Place Thing” live in-person podcast recordings hosted by Randy Cohen: Santino Fontana on Thursday, April 18th (7:30 PM) and Patrick Page on Wednesday, May 8th (7:30 PM) at Sheen Center Shiner Theatre.  Person Place Thing is an interview show based on this idea: people are particularly engaging when they speak not directly about themselves but about something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing that are important to them. The result?  Surprising stories from great talkers. Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, the Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for “Late Night with David Letterman” for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s “TV Nation.” He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for The New York Times Magazine. Currently he is the host of “Person Place Thing,” a public radio program. 

During the month of festivities, Red Bull will also share free student matinee performances of a special production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet for its Shakespeare in Schools students, continuing the company's 2-decades of dedication to serving students and teachers with educational opportunities to interact with the classics at the heart of its mission.

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