August Strindberg Rep Sets DAMASCUS II in '60s California, Starting Tonight

From tonight, March 12, to April 2, August Strindberg Repertory will present Strindberg's DAMASCUS II, adapted by Edgar Chisholm, directed by Robert Greer.

This is the second installment of the three-part work in which Strindberg first introduced true surrealism to the stage in the theatrical representation of the dream. Strindberg's tale of life in decadent artists' circles of 1890s Sweden will be brought to life in 1960s California and its leading character, an alienated writer, has been re-envisioned as an author modeled on Amiri Baraka.

Although the events of the Trilogy are sequential, you needn't worry about what you have missed. The production will open with a six-and-a-half minute condensation of "To Damascus, Part 1," which was presented by August Strindberg Rep in 2014. Part 3 will be presented next year. This is the first time any company has presented the trilogy complete in any language in 99 years.

The trilogy has been described as "Strindberg's most complex plays" and as "his greatest plays" due to their synthesis of a wide variety of myths, symbols and ideas with a profound spiritual analysis in a new dramatic form. They are Strindberg's most overtly autobiographical dramatic works and deal very directly with his attitude toward religion. The three plays foreshadowed styles to be seen later in Strindberg's "The Dream Play" (1902) and "The Ghost Sonata" (1907). They trace the spiritual downfall and redemption of The Stranger, an author in mid-career.

In Part 1, The Stranger persuades a high-class character named The Lady to leave her husband, a Doctor. The pair elope but their dreams of freedom are shattered by feelings of guilt. Penniless, they return to the Lady's parental home, where her pious mother persuades The Lady to read The Stranger's book, which he had forbidden her to do. Having "eaten of the tree of knowledge," The Lady drives her husband away. A broken man, he recuperates in an asylum in a convent, where he is cursed by his confessor. He returns to The Mother, who tells him he is on the Road to Damascus and that he, like Saul, must seek forgiveness. In 2014, August Strindberg Rep began its comprehensive adaptation of the Trilogy, updating Part 1 to Harlem, 1962 and envisioning The Stranger as a black radical writer in the image of Amiri Baraka (author of "The Dutchman").

Part 2 has The Stranger and The Lady living together unhappily. She is pregnant and makes his life miserable by intercepting his mail and interfering with his scientific work. Although his is primarily a literary man, he has been dabbling in alchemy and electricity (as Strindberg actually did). He hopes to turn lead into gold, not to enrich himself but to redress economic inequality by making gold worthless. Surprisingly, his experiments are successful and he is honored at a grand banquet, which turns into a farcical nightmare. He is exposed as a charlatan and stuck with the bill, which he cannot pay. The Banquet, in all its fantastic oddity, dominates the play. It is one of the most suggestive treatments ever of the ancient theme of the fickleness of fortune. Subsequently, The Stranger abandons The Lady when her daughter is born, but is persuaded to return to them by The Beggar, a sort of alter-ego he had met in Part 1, and the Confessor persuades him to return to the monastery.

August Strindberg Rep will be setting Part 2 in mid-sixties California, with its counterculture in full bloom. The production will have 60's-style period music composed by Andy Evan Cohen. Strindberg drank deeply of the exotic lifestyle of 1890's Paris and Berlin, with its free love and feminism, and this is key to the logic of this adaptation. To August Strindberg Rep, the lifestyle of California in the 60's has remarkable parallels to the societies of fin de siecle European capitols, with their avant-garde cultural movements and anarcho-syndicalist ideologies. As in Part 1, the character of The Stranger is re-imagined as a radical black writer and the class difference between The Stranger and The Lady is expressed in their racial difference. Strindberg envisioned The Stranger's alchemy as an act of political rebellion. Transporting this to modern times, it might be perfectly reasonable for a revolutionary black writer in the 60's to try to turn lead into gold to bring down the world economy, considering the distrust of the period toward the capitalist banking system, corporate culture and Military-Industrial Complex.

Among its modernist influences, the trilogy is an early example of the Stationendrama (drama of stations), common to German Expressionist plays, in which a central character passes through a series of stations, usually in a quest for redemption. On his path, he meets characters who may be versions of his own personality or the same character reappearing in different guises. Most disturbing of these in "To Damascus" is The Lady, who in Part 1 contains the redemptive features of Goethe's 'eternal woman' but in Part 2 transforms into an evil persecutor.

Jarde Jacobs plays The Stranger and Ivette Dumeng plays The Lady. The cast also includes Diana Lynne Drew, Camilla Goeritz, Tomike Lee, Al Foote III, Andres Pina and Randall Rodriguez. Set design is by You-Shin Chen. Costume design is by Zulema Griffin. Lighting design is by Leslie Smith. Sound and video design are by Andy Evan Cohen and Janet Bentley. Prop design is by Lytza Colon. Dramaturg is Janet Bentley. Producer is Jessa-Raye Court.

IF YOU GO:
Damascus II
March 12 to April 2, 2016
Gene Frankel Theatre, 24 Bond Street (between Bowery and Lafayette, East Village)
Presented by August Strindberg Repertory Theatre in association with Theater Resources Unlimited.
Half Price Previews March 12 & 13 at 2:00 PM, opens March 16 at 7:30 PM
March 16 to April 2: Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM, Sundays at 2:00 PM.
Tickets $18 general admission; seniors and students $12.
Box office: SMARTTIX, 212-868-4444; www.smarttix.com
Company's website: www.strindberg.org
Running time: 1:50 plus intermission.

Edgar Chisholm (adaptor) translated August Strindberg Rep's 2014 production of "Miss Julie," which transported the play into the American Antebellum South. He is an award winning playwright, director, and producer. His plays include "Without Love," "Holiday Diary" (1999 National Federation of Community Broadcasters Silver Reel Award), "The Long Dance" (2010 Raymond J. Flores Playwriting Prize and the 2003 Eileen Heckart Drama award), "Unfinished Work" (2003 New American Playwrights Festival Award), "The Savage Queen" and "Bhavacakra: The Wheel of Life." His work was recently presented at the Association for Jewish Theatre Conference in Chicago. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab, a Founding member of Harlem Arts Alliance and Uptown playwrights workshop and a Director and Board member of Polaris North Theatre Workshop. He was executive producer of the theatrically released 2010 film, "Deceptive."

Robert Greer (director) is founding director of August Strindberg Rep, for which he has directed seven Strindberg plays to-date. He has staged English-language premières of numerous contemporary Scandinavian playwrights, including Sweden's Marianne Goldman, Helena Sigander, Cecilia Sidenbladh, Oravsky and Larsen, Hans Hederberg, Margareta Garpe and Kristina Lugn; Denmark's Stig Dalager and Norway's Edvard Rønning. He has also directed classics by Victoria Benedictsson, Laura Kieler, Anne Charlotte Leffler and Amalie Skram. His productions have been presented at the Strindberg Museum and Strindberg Festival, Stockholm; Edinburgh and NY Fringe Festivals, Barnard College, Columbia University, Rutgers, UCLA; Miranda, Pulse and Theater Row Theaters, La MaMa, Manhattan Theatre Source, Tribeca Lab, Synchronicity, TSI, BargeMusic; and The Duplex in LA. He has also directed plays by Mario Fratti, Sartre and Corneille here in New York. He is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, Actors' Equity; the Strindberg Society, the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study and Swedish Translators in North America.

Jarde Jacobs (The Stranger) is a Brooklyn native of Vincentian heritage and a graduate of Rutgers University's Mason Gross MFA program. He has appeared with Shakespeare in the Park in "Mother Courage" with Meryl Streep. He has also appeared in independent films and productions of Negro Ensemble Company, La MaMa and other OOB's.

Ivette Dumeng (The Lady) is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of NyLon Fusion Theatre Company (www.nylonfusioncollective.org). For August Strindberg Rep, she has played the Greta Garbo role in "Kristina" and the title role in "Miss Julie." Her other theater credits include "The Monkey Show" by John P. Shanley (LABrynth Theatre) and "The Big Funk" (NyLon Fusion). She has also appeared at 59E59, Edinburgh Fringe and Teatro Latea. Her commercials include McDonalds, Verizon and KFC. Her print campaigns include Goldman Sachs and Zappos. She has been featured in "O" and Vogue Magazines.

August Strindberg Repertory Theatre (www.strindberg.org), under the direction of Robert Greer, is committed to production of the author's best, and less often performed, plays in new translations and interpretations that illuminate the plays for today's American audience. The company made an auspicious debut in 2012 with Strindberg's autobiographical play "Playing with Fire," adapted by the late Leslie Lee. The play was re-set from a Swedish Victorian summer house to the black community of Oak Ridge, on Martha's Vineyard, in the 1920s. That production opened at The New School Theatre and expanded to an Off-Broadway production at the Gene Frankel Theatre, the company's present home. It received three Audelco nominations: Best Revival, Best Ensemble and Best Costume Design. Cast members from "Playing with Fire" returned to play their corresponding roles in an equally autobiographical play, "Easter," the next season. "Easter" was adapted from a Swedish coastal town in 1901 to Harlem in 1958. Robert Greer directed both productions.

The company presented a double-bill of Strindberg's "Casper's Fat Tuesday" and "The Stronger" in October, 2012 (in a run that was overshadowed by Hurricane Sandy). "Mr. Bengt's Wife," Strindberg's answer to Ibsen's "The Doll's House," was presented in September 2013. In Spring, 2014 the company presented "To Damascus, Part 1," adapted to Harlem, 1962. In 2014, the company presented an adaptation of "Miss Julie" set in the Antebellum South, followed by the historical drama "Kristina" (1903). Earlier this season, the company presented two of Strindberg's Chamber Plays, "The Storm" and "Burnt House," in rotating repertory. August Strindberg Rep is the resident company at the Gene Frankel Theatre.

Pictured: Ivette Dumeng (The Lady) and Jarde Jacobs (The Stranger). Photo by Farnaz Taherimotlagh.

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