Trevor Nunn's PERICLES and More Set for Theatre for a New Audience in 2015-16

Theatre for a New Audience, Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz, announces its 2015-16 season, Inimitable Voices, Four plays by Shakespeare and Major American and European authors, at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place.

Mr. Horowitz says, "This will be our third season at Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Richard Maxwell's haunting and humorous exploration of what is real; Shakespeare's story of redemption, reconciliation, and forgiveness; and Ibsen's and Strindberg's investigations of marriage and the battle of the sexes couldn't be more different. But, what connects these authors is they all shape extraordinary theatrical worlds with singular language."

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Theatre for a New Audience,'s 2015-16 Season:

Isolde
September 6 - 27

The season opens with New York City Players' Isolde, a new American play about memory, identity, the ephemeral and infidelity, written and directed by Richard Maxwell, "one of the few truly original experimental theater auteurs" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times.). Isolde was inspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde. In the play, the marriage of Patrick and Isolde appears to be happy. Patrick is the owner of a successful construction company and Isolde is a star actress. But Isolde finds herself increasingly unable to remember her lines. When she decides to build her dream house, her husband is eager to help. But, the project is jeopardized by Massimo, an award-winning architect whom Isolde hires.

In its 2014, U.S. Premiere at Abrons Arts Center, Isolde sold out, but could only play nine performances and was acclaimed -- "Graphic and elegant" (Hilton Als, The New Yorker); "Five Stars...Works at an incredible, precise pitch" (Helen Shaw, Time Out). Featuring the ensemble of New York City Players veterans, Jim Fletcher, Brian Mendes, Tory Vazquez, and Gary Wilmes, Isolde moves to Theatre for a New Audience and plays September 6 through 27.

Pericles
February 14 - March 27

Trevor Nunn's most recent production in New York was 2013 -- Samuel Beckett's All That Fall. A four-time Tony and Olivier Award-winner and former Artistic Director, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre, he's "as celebrated for his staging of blockbuster musicals (Cats, Les Miserables) as for his revitalizing of classic texts" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).

As part of Theatre for a New Audience's season-long celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death (April 23, 2016), Mr. Nunn stages Pericles, one of Shakespeare's late plays. Pericles combines a fantastic adventure (a hero wandering, Odysseus-like, the world of the Aegean) with a story of a miracle. Live music will help convey the mystery and magic of the play. The Irish artist Shaun Davey (with whom Trevor Nunn worked in his film of Twelfth Night) will compose. This is the first time in his career that Trevor Nunn will have directed Pericles and staged Shakespeare with a U.S. company. Pericles runs February 14 through March 27.

A Doll's House and The Father Marriage
in rotating repertory
May 4 - June 8

Arin Arbus, associate artistic director, Theatre for A New Audience, has directed six productions of Shakespeare for the company, including acclaimed stagings of Othello and Macbeth featuring John Douglas Thompson. For the first time for Theatre for A New Audience, she will direct two provocative contemporary classics about marriage in rotating repertory May 4 through June 8 by a single company -- A Doll's House, in an adaptation by Thornton Wilder not seen in New York since its Broadway premiere in 1937, and August Strindberg's The Father in a new version in English by David Greig. This is the first time the two plays will be performed in rotating repertory. In 2012, the Belgrade Theatre in the UK produced Nora (Bergman's 90-minute adaptation of A Doll's House) and The Father; they were programmed consecutively, but not in repertory.

John Douglas Thompson returns to Theatre for a New Audience, following his award-winning performance in the 2014 production of Tamburlaine the Great, to play Torvald in A Doll's House and the Captain in The Father.

Strindberg wrote The Father as a direct rebuttal to Ibsen's A Doll's House, fulminating against Ibsen's tale of a woman bravely escaping a stifling bourgeois marriage. Lean and fresh translations will support this sense of enduring contemporaneity.

Thornton Wilder's sparkling American version of A Doll's House - a forgotten gem in his oeuvre - has not been seen in New York since its Broadway premiere in 1937. And a remarkable new version of The Father, commissioned by Theatre for A New Audience, from acclaimed Scottish playwright David Greig (The Events last season at New York Theatre Workshop and whose 2010 translation of Strindberg's Creditors played at BAM), is cut from the same lucid and immediate cloth.

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Subscriptions for Theatre for a New Audience's 2015-2016 Season include a Four-Play Package for $196, a Three-Play Package for $156, and a Flex Pass Package for $216. Subscriptions may be purchased at www.tfana.org/season or by calling (212) 229-2819, ext. 10.

New Deal tickets for ages 30 and under or full-time students of any age are priced at $20 each and can be purchased when single tickets go on sale for each production. Theatre for a New Audience's New Deal Ticket Program is supported by Macy's.

Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, Theatre for a New Audience is a modern classic theatre. It produces Shakespeare alongside other major authors from the world repertoire, such as Harley Granville Barker, Edward Bond, Adrienne Kennedy, Wallace Shawn, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Theatre for a New Audience has played Off- and on Broadway and toured nationally and internationally.

In 2001, Theatre for a New Audience became the first American theatre invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Stratford-upon-Avon. Cymbeline, directed by Bartlett Sher, premiered at the RSC; in 2007, Theatre for a New Audience was invited to return to the RSC with The Merchant of Venice directed by Darko Tresnjak starring F. Murray Abraham. In 2011, Mr. Abraham reprised his role as Shylock for a national tour.

After 34 years of being itinerant and playing mostly in Manhattan, Theatre for a New Audience moved to Brooklyn and opened its first permanent home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, in October 2013. Built by The City of New York in partnership with Theatre for a New Audience and located in the Brooklyn Cultural District, Polonsky Shakespeare Center was designed by Hugh Hardy and H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture with theatre consultants Akustiks, Milton Glaser, Jean-Guy Lecat, and Theatre Projects. Housed inside the building are the Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage (299 seats) -- the first stage built for Shakespeare and classical drama in New York City since Lincoln Center's 1965 Vivian Beaumont -- and the Theodore C. Rogers Studio (50 seats).

The Theatre's productions have been honored with Tony, Obie, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Lortel and Audelco awards and nominations and reach an audience diverse in age, economics and cultural background.

The Theatre created and runs the largest in-depth program in the New York City Public Schools to introduce students to Shakespeare, and has served more than 126,000 students since the program began in 1984. The Theatre's economically accessible ticket program includes one of the lowest reserved ticket prices for youth in the city: $20 for any show, any time for those 30 years old and under or for full-time students of any age.