Geva Theatre Center's 43rd Season Continues with RED

The enthralling, Tony Award-winning drama inspired by the life of artist Mark Rothko continues the 2015-2016 ESL Wilson Stage Series as Geva Theatre Center presents Red by John Logan and directed by Skip Greer in the Elaine P. Wilson Stage from October 20 through November 15.

At the height of his career, famed abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko struggles with a series of grand-scale paintings for New York's Four Seasons restaurant. When his new assistant challenges his artistic integrity, Rothko must confront his personal demons or be crushed by the ever-changing art world he helped create. An electrifying, intellectually riveting and visceral battle of wills, and the winner of six Tony Awards, including Best Play.

Born Marcus Rotkovitch in Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, Mark Rothko immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of ten, settling in Portland, Oregon. A gifted student, Rothko attended Yale University on scholarship from 1921-23, but disillusioned by the social milieu and financial hardship, he dropped out and moved to New York to "bum around and starve a bit." A chance invitation from a friend brought him to a drawing class at the Art Students League where he discovered his love of art. He took two classes there but was otherwise self-taught. Rothko painted in a figurative style for nearly twenty years, his portraits and depictions of urban life baring the soul of those living through The Great Depression in New York. The war years brought with it an influx of European surrealists, influencing most of the New York painters, among them Rothko, to take on a neo-surrealist style. Rothko experimented with mythic and symbolic painting for five years before moving to pure abstraction in the mid 1940s and ultimately to his signature style of two or three rectangles floating in fields of saturated color in 1949. Beginning in the early 1950s Rothko was heralded, along with Jackson Pollock, Willem deKooning, Franz Kline and others, as the standard bearers of the New American Painting - a truly American art that was not simply a derivative of European styles. By the late 1950s, Rothko was a celebrated (if not wealthy) artist, winning him three mural commissions that would dominate the latter part of his career. Only in the last of these, The Rothko Chapel in Houston was he able to realize his dream of a truly contemplative environment in which to interact deeply with his artwork. Red presents a fictionalized account of Rothko's frustrated first attempt to create such a space in New York's Four Season's restaurant. Rothko sought to create art that was timeless; paintings that expressed basic human concerns and emotions that remain constant not merely across decades but across generations and epochs. He looked to communicate with his viewer at the most elemental level and through his artwork, have a conversation that was intense, personal and, above all, honest.

In addition to Red, playwright John Logan is the author of more than a dozen other plays including Never the Sinner and Hauptmann. His adaptation of Ibsen's The Master Builder premiered on London's West End in 2003. He is a prolific screenwriter and had three movies released in 2011: Hugo, Coriolanus and Rango. He is one of the screenwriters for the two most recent James Bond films, Skyfall and Spectre, and he has written the screenplay for Genius, starring Colin Firth and Jude Law, due to be released in 2016. Previous film work includes Sweeney Todd (Golden Globe award); The Aviator(Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA and WGA nominations); Gladiator (Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA and WGA nominations); The Last Samurai; Any GivenSunday; and RKO 281 (WGA award, Emmy nomination).

First produced by London's Donmar Warehouse in December 2009, Red was directed by Michael Grandage and starred Al Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as his assistant, Ken. The production, along with its two actors, transferred to Broadway's Golden Theatre in March 2010 where it ran for a limited engagement. It was nominated for seven Tony Awards and won six (the most of any play that season) including Best Play. Red also garnered the 2010 Drama League and Drama Desk Awards.

Making their Geva Theatre Center debuts in Red are Stephen Caffrey as Mark Rothko and John Ford-Dunker as his protégé, Ken. Stephen Caffrey'sstage credits include Yes, Prime Minister at the Geffen Playhouse; Red at Playmakers; Galileo at Cleveland Play House; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nestat Portland Centre Stage; Victoria Musica at Cincinnati Playhouse; The Constant Wife at Pasadena Playhouse; Bach At Leipzig at South Coast Rep;Heartbreak House at Berkeley Rep; The Voysey Inheritance, The Real Thing, A Doll's House at A.C.T. San Francisco; Thirty Six Views at Laguna Playhouse;The Body of Bourne at the Mark Taper Forum; All's Well That Ends Well at Santa Cruz Shakes; Bargains at The Old Globe; The Miser at Hartford Stage; I Hate Hamlet at The Royal George; What You Get & Expect for N.Y. Theatre Workshop; King Lear, Henry IV (for which he has recently been nominated for an Ovation Award) and Autumn Garden at Anteaus; The Scarlet Letter for Classic Stage Company and Restoration Comedy at Seattle Rep, among others. His extensive TV and film credits include "American Odyssey," "CSI Miami," "Columbo," Lt. Myron Goldman in "Tour of Duty," "Chicago Hope," Andrew Preston Cortlandt in "All My Children," "The Profiler," "Blowback," "Showtime," "Seinfeld," Cinema Verité for HBO, Longtime Companion,Buried Alive, Indiana Jones Chronicles, Nothing Lasts Forever, and Murder of Innocence, among others. John Ford-Dunker's regional theatre credits include The Glory of the World, That High Lonesome Sound, So Unnatural a Level, Dracula and A Christmas Carol at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Other theatre credits include Hands on a Hardbody at Park Playhouse; Thoroughly Modern Millie; The Producers; Next to Normal; Big Love; The Importance of Being Earnest; The Normal Heart; Stags & Hens; Spring Awakening; Almost, Maine; Sunday in the Park with George; Soldiers Circle at UWSP; andWonderful Town at Quisisana Resort. Mr. Ford-Dunker received his B.F.A. in Musical Theatre from University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and is a NFAA Young Arts Silver Award Winner and an Irene Ryan Nominee.

Red is directed by Skip Greer (Geva productions of Doubt; Almost, Maine; Freud's Last Session; Last Gas and The Mountaintop). The design team includes Robert Koharchik (scenic design), Ann Emo (costume design), Kendall Smith (lighting design) and Dan Roach (sound design).

The 2015-2016 Wilson Stage Series is sponsored by ESL Federal Credit Union. Red is produced with support from Lead Co-Producer Buckingham Properties; Co-Producers JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Rockcastle Florist; Associate Producer Madeline's Catering and Media Sponsor WXXI.

For this production, Geva has partnered with the University of Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery (MAG), which has a Rothko painting, "Untitled", 1961, on display on loan from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo for Rochesterians to enjoy. Jonathan Binstock, the Mary W. and Donald R. Clark Director of the MAG and an expert in contemporary art, will be the on-stage guest at a post-show discussion following the 6pm performance of Red on Tuesday, October 27.

Tickets start at $25.

(585) 232-GEVA (4382), Website: www.gevatheatre.org

Geva Theatre Center, 75 Woodbury Blvd, Rochester, NY 14607

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