Columbia Stages Announces 2008-09 Season

COLUMBIA STAGES, the award-winning producing arm of Columbia University’s Graduate Theatre Program, announces its 2008-2009 season. The highly political season will include Baal and The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht; Euripides’ Medea; Big Love by Charles L. Mee; The Woman by Edward Bond; a co-production with Origin Theatre Company; a new adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and the 5th annual New Voices New Play Festival. The 2008-2009 season begins October 22nd at The Riverside Theatre, 91 Claremont Avenue between 120th and 122nd Streets.

Bertolt Brecht’s Baal, translated by Peter Tegel, and directed by James Dacre, kicks off the season and runs October 22nd - 25th. Brecht’s revolutionary first play is a disturbing vision of immorality expressed through one man’s insatiable hunger for experience. A young poet journeys through an urban underworld, blindly striking out against conventional values and leaving in his wake the corpses of lovers and friends. With haunting imagery and grotesque characters, Baal provides a telling insight into our own age.

In November, the MFA Acting Class of 2009 presents Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a new adaptation by Ken Kaissar, directed by Yuriy Kordonskiy. As a group of pilgrims journey to Canterbury to pay homage to Thomas Becket, they engage in a battle of wits to see who can tell the most entertaining story. This contest results in breath taking narratives of glorious honor, salacious lust, unspeakable courage, relentless faith and hilarious ribaldry.

Director ALICIA DHYANA HOUSE brings Euripides’ Medea to the stage January 28th -31st. In this re-imagined production we meet Medea. Victim of a Man's World. Child Butcher. Refugee. Lover. Monster. Or was she? Behind the 2000 year-old myth of jealousy and revenge, there was once a real person.

In Charles L. Mee’s Big Love, directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh, 50 brides flee to an Italian villa to escape their arranged marriages. Their chosen grooms follow to take back what’s theirs. Inspired by Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Women and fused with Charles Mee’s bold and visceral theatricality, Big Love examines the transcendent power of love and human connection through song, dance,and an unforgettable throw down. Big Love will hit the stage February 18th - February 21st.

From March 11th - 14th, under the direction of Andrea Ferran, Edward Bond’s The Woman comes to life. After years of conflict between the Trojans and the Greeks, control of Troy is left in the hands of a woman. Hoping for a quick treaty, the leader of the Greeks sends his wife to tactfully negotiate possession of a prized statue. But when the women meet, the laws of war are changed forever.

HENNING HEGLAND directs Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera from April 1st - 4th. In this Brecht favorite, public debt is ballooning, banks are going bust, a depression is right around the corner, and Mack the Knife is leaving a trail of broken hearts and cut throats in his wake. In this masterful musical satire, love, sex, murder and theft all become tactics for survival ina society spinning out of control.

From April 15th - 26th, Columbia Stages presents Why I Stay Awake at Night: Ten 60-Minute Plays by Ten Emerging New York Writers. The production marks the 5th Annual NEW VOICES NEW PLAY FESTIVAL. The festival will feature the work of the MFA Playwriting Class of 2009: Steven Gridley, Tariq Hamami, Joshua Hill, Ken Kaissar, Josh Koenigsberg, Nick Mwaluko, Harrison David Rivers, E. Dale Smith, Matthew Ira Swaye and Melisa Tien.

 Rounding out the 2008-2009 season, MATT TORNEY directs a co-production with Origin Theatre Company, exploring the human struggle to communicate and relate in a paradoxically over-connected yet isolated world (title to be announced). Origin Theatre Company, founded in 2002 by George C. Heslin, is a not-for-profit cross-cultural theatre company dedicated to the cultivation, development, and interpretation of new and emerging European playwrights by offering New York audiences American premieres of their work. The show runs April 21 - May 17 at 59E59.

Unless otherwise noted, all performances will be at The Riverside Theatre, 91 Claremont Avenue between 120th and 122nd Streets.

Tickets to all Columbia Stages productions are free with a Columbia University ID or any other valid student ID, $15 for the general public and $5 for seniors.Tickets can also be purchased online at www.ColumbiaStages.com, by calling 212.870.6784, or by visiting the Box Office at The Riverside Theatre. Box Office hours are Thursday - Saturday, 4pm - 8pm and Sunday noon - 4pm, as well as one hour prior to performances. All seating is general admission. For more information, visit www.ColumbiaStages.com or call 212.854.3408.

ABOUT COLUMBIA STAGES

Columbia Stages is the producing arm of the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies of Columbia University's School of the Arts. Columbia Stages presents a season of graduate actor and director productions as well as an annual festival of new plays by emerging playwrights.  The theatre prwwogram offers M.F.A. degrees in acting, directing, playwriting, dramaturgy, stage management, and theatre management & producing. The goal of the program is to provide each student with the foundation for a career in professional theatre as well as the tools to embrace an ever-changing theatrical landscape and shape the future of the theatre.

www.ColumbiaStages.com

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