Robert Cuccioli, Ro Boddie & More to Star in THE WONDER OF WOMEN Reading

RED BULL THEATER today announced the complete cast for its online benefit reading of The Wonder of Women (The Tragedy of Sophonisba) by John Marston.

Nathan Winkelstein directs a cast that features Ro Boddie (Seize the King - The Classical Theatre of Harlem, A Play Is a Poem - Atlantic Theater/Center Theatre Group, Pride Plays - Rattlestick, Socrates - Public Theater), Robert Cuccioli (Broadway: Jekyll & Hyde - Tony Award® nomination, Drama Desk and OCC Awards;, Off-Bway: And the World Goes 'Round (OCC Award); The White Devil - Red Bull Theater; Caesar & Cleopatra, Mrs. Warren's Profession - Gingold Theatrical Group); Cara Ricketts (Time and the Conways - Roundabout, Measure for Measure - Theatre for a New Audience), Derek Smith (Broadway: The Lion King, The Green Bird - Tony Award® nomination, and Red Bull Theater's The White Devil, The School for Scandal, and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore), Sarin Monae West (Merry Wives of Windsor - Public Theater, Vanishing Point - NY Fringe Festival), and more to be announced.

"It's wonderful to be able to serve a worldwide audience with an online reading of this phantasmagoric John Marston tragedy! You won't get another chance to take this one in, and - with a crackerjack cast under Nathan's direction - it's sure to be a wild ride," said Jesse Berger, Red Bull Founder and Artistic Director.

Sensational melodrama, overt eroticism, and splashes of wry wit color John Marston's grimly dark Jacobean tragedy-inspired by events from Roman history. A dauntless princess is tested in a crucible of moral absolutes, ruthless ambition, and utter depravity. After her wedding night is interrupted by the onset of war, Sophonisba emerges from a series of conspiracies with heroic virtue as the "just shame of men" and multi-faceted "wonder of women." The Wonder of Women will premiere LIVE on Monday January 31st at 7:30 PM EST. A recording of that livestream will be available until 7:00 PM EST on Friday, February 3rd - then it disappears.

Red Bull Theater is committed to continuing connection during this historic time. Red Bull's online readings offer the unique opportunity to hear rarely-produced classic plays, and brand new plays in conversation with the classics, performed by the finest actors in New York. All of Red Bull Theater's current online offerings are FREE, but advance reservations are recommended. Tax-deductible donations are encouraged to support Red Bull and invest in the vitality of classical theater for a contemporary audience.

On Thursday, February 3rd at 7:30 PM EST, there will be a free online Bull Session: An interactive discussion of the play and its themes with director Nathan Winkelstein, scholar Tanya Pollard, and members of the company.

Scholar Tanya Pollard explains: "Written and staged between severe plague outbreaks, The Wonder of Women joins a cluster of contemporary tragedies in abandoning England for remote worlds. Like King Lear (1606), Timon of Athens (1606), Antony and Cleopatra (1606), and Pericles (1607), it takes place in a distant pagan past; like some of these plays, as well as Othello (1604), it also conjures the foreign spaces of the Mediterranean basin and North Africa. These plays offer, in the words of Coriolanus (1608), the possibility of "a world elsewhere" - an alternative to the claustrophobic urban spaces of plague-ridden London. For better and for worse, these other worlds prove unruly, racially mixed, and unbound by conventional gender norms. Among their marvels - especially in The Tragedy of Sophonisba - is a new model of heroism embodied by women... For all its dark tragic turns, The Wonder of Women sounds a note of triumph in its portrait of a woman whose glory cannot be dimmed." a??

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