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The Actors' Gang Theater will begin previews of The Madwoman of Chaillot on Thursday, September 27th and run through Saturday, November 10th with an official press opening on Saturday, October 6th.
Written by Jean Giraudoux, adapted by Maurice Valency and directed by Tim Robbins, The Madwoman of Chaillot will kick off The Actors' Gang 2018/19 Season celebrating 37 years of provocative stories and championing artistic and cultural diversity.
Performances begin September 27th, with The Madwoman of Chaillot, and conclude on June 22nd, 2019, with The Misadventures of Spike Spangle, Farmer (Formerly Violence), written by Adam Simon and Tim Robbins and directed by Bob Turton.
Other plays include Aphrodite's Holiday Show by Lee Margaret Hanson and Adam J. Jefferis, Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo, One Act Festival/ The Classic - No Exit, by Jean-Paul Sartre and Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett, One Act Festival / The Original - Tradition by James Edward Bane and A Perfect World by Lynde Houck, a return of The New Colossus by The Actors' Gang Ensemble and Tim Robbins and Free Shakespeare in the Park, adapted by Cynthia Ettinger, the company's co-artistic director. The season poster features original artwork by Nate Kitch.
"The Madwoman of Chaillot has always been one of my favorite plays and when reading it again last year I was struck by how relevant and necessary this play is for these times we are living in now," said Artistic Director Tim Robbins.
"I thought of the spirit of defiance in Giraudoux as he wrote this play in 1943 while Nazis occupied and patrolled the streets of his home, Paris. There is a rebellious and beautiful spirit in the Madwoman herself, who believes in an indomitable truth that exists in our hearts, a truth that repels greed and cruelty. In The Madwoman of Chaillot, that greed is embodied by businessmen and politicians who would drill for oil in Paris. In a time of global climate crisis, as our politicians roll back environmental protections while wildfires rage, while a new born fascism is emboldened at home and abroad, the words written in 1943 by Jean Giraudoux ring as true and strong and as necessary as ever before. "
Using masks and puppets, many of the male characters in The Madwoman of Chaillot will be portrayed by women company members. "In workshops, the women in the company have been encouraged to use the masks to find the unbridled and entitled male character or as one cast member put it, "that guy, that f-ing guy"continued Robbins.
The Madwoman of Chaillot starts The Actors' Gang 2018/19 season with love and magic at a sidewalk café where artists, ragmen and madwomen become aware of a diabolical plan to drill for oil in the middle of Paris. The Madwoman develops a scheme with her eccentric circle of friends to stop the men and their insatiable lust for oil. Written in 1943 by Jean Giraudoux while Nazis occupied Paris this poetic satire is a celebration of love, life, defiance, and rebellion, a prevailing spirit throughout the entire 2018/19 season.
"With the Hellzapoppin Season, The Actors' Gang is excited to present eight plays with a defiant spirit and an affirmation of the power that exists in all of us to change the world," continued Tim Robbins. "The season includes three plays from Nobel Prize winning playwrights, new pieces developed by our company and satires that rip bare the hypocrisy of the powerful."
Tickets for The Madwoman of Chaillot, the first production of this season, will go on sale Friday, September 7th. General tickets will be available for $34,99. Seniors may purchase $30.00 tickets and young adults under 30 years of age, and full-time students may purchase tickets for $25.00. Continuing The Actors' Gang mission to make theater accessible to all, all Thursday evenings throughout the 2018/19 Season are "Pay-What-You-Can." Tickets are available online at www.TheActorsGang.com and by phone by calling 310-838-4264.Jean Giraudoux (Playwright)
Jean Giraudoux was born in the village of Bellac, in 1982, and studied at the École Normale Supérieure. In his youth he traveled extensively - to Germany, Italy, the Balkans, Canada, and the United States, where he spent a year (1906-07) as an instructor at Harvard. Returning to France, he served in World War I, was twice wounded, and became the first writer ever to be awarded the wartime Legion of Honor. Giraudoux was a French dramatist, a prose writer and served France as a diplomat and government official but he was first and foremost, an artist, and as such fulfilled his major responsibility, which was to be a witness.
Giraudoux's magic of style enchanted a whole generation, weary of "bourgeois" drama and "well-made" plays, into believing that there was another way of dealing with reality. His popularity was challenged only by the ideological theater of the existentialists and the even more fantastic plays of the so-called theater of the absurd. Giraudoux's dramatic and narrative style is a rich and inimitable blend of allusive prose, allegory, fantasy, and political and psychological perceptions. He tempered tragic themes with rueful comedy, as though he wished to unite the contrasting qualities of Racine, Molière, Maeterlinck, and Baudelaire.
His worldwide importance rests on such plays as Amphitryon 38 (1929), Judith (1931), Tiger at the Gates (1935), Ondine (1939), and The Madwoman of Chaillot (1945), which was published and produced after Giraudoux died. Giraudoux also wrote five novels, the best known being My Friend from Limousin (1922) and Bella (1926), and numerous short stories. He was one of France's outstanding essayists during the interwar years, best known for such literary studies as Racine (1930) and such political studies as Pleins Pouvoirs (Full Powers, 1939). At the start of World War II he served as minister of information under Premier Édouard Daladier.
Tim Robbins (Artistic Director, The Actors' Gang)
For the past 36 years, Tim Robbins has served as Artistic Director for The Actors' Gang, a theater company formed in 1982 that has over 150 productions and more than 100 awards to their credit. Past productions with The Actors' Gang include: As Writer/Director - The New Colossus (2017-18), Harlequino On to Freedom (2017), Break the Whip (2010-11), Embedded (2003-4), Mayhem, the Invasion (1992), Carnage, A Comedy (1988-89), Violence, The Misadventures of Spike Spangle, Farmer (1987) and Alagazam (1986). As Director -A Midsummer Night's Dream (2012-16), Orwells' 1984 (2006-16), Mephisto (2001), The Good Woman of Setzuan (1991), Methusalem, the Eternal Bourgeois (1985), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1984), Ubu the King (1982); In addition to producing live theater throughout the year, The Actors' Gang provides arts education to thousands of Elementary, Middle and High School students working in 12 LA USD schools and in underserved communities in the L.A. area. Since 2006, The Actors' Gang's groundbreaking Prison Project provides theatrical workshops to incarcerated men and women in 12 California prisons.
As Actor, credits include Here and Now, Marjorie Prime, The Brink, Mystic River, The ShawshankRedemption, The Player, Bull Durham and Jacob's Ladder and as a Writer/Director, Dead Man Walking, Cradle Will Rock and Bob Roberts. Robbins has won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Sag Award, the Prix d'Interprétation Masculine at the Cannes Film Festival and the Officier de L'Ordre des Arts des Lettres from the Republic of France.
For tickets, please call 310-838-4264 or visit www.TheActorsGang.com/season-2018/19 to purchase tickets online or to view the complete 2018/19 Hellzapoppin Season schedule. The Actors' Gang Theatre is located at The Ivy Substation at 9070 Venice Blvd, Culver City, CA, 90232.
