Ivo van Hove to Present OPENING NIGHT World Premiere at B.A.M.

Following visionary New York productions of The Misanthrope (2007) and Hedda Gabler (2004), Flemish director Ivo van Hove returns with Opening Night, a U.S. premiere engagement that also marks the New York debut of his company, Toneelgroep Amsterdam. A joint production by Toneelgroep Amsterdam and the Belgium-based company NTGent, Opening Night transforms director John Cassavetes' award-winning 1977 film to the stage. Five performances of Opening Night will take place in the BAM Harvey Theater on Dec 2-6 at 7:30pm. Tickets, priced at $20, 30, 45, and 55, may be purchased by calling BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100 or by visiting www.BAM.org.

Opening Night tells the story of a famous actress, Myrtle, starring in a play in which her character must come to terms with aging. After an avid fan/autograph-seeker is killed, the actress begins a downward personal spiral, confronting her own issues of mortality. Despite insincere support from her colleagues in the production, the actress works her way back from her crisis of the soul. As in other Cassavetes screenplays, Opening Night is filled with the awkwardness, pain, and joy of raw human interaction.

Cassavetes realized Opening Night in 1977, but his idea for a "backstage" film about an aging stage actress actually dated to the 1960s. The subject of aging was important to the writer/director and many of his films' female characters struggle with the loss of youthful energy and physical beauty. Opening Night, starring his wife, actress Gena Rowlands, was the first film in which Cassavetes made a connection between this issue and his own reality-the world of film and theater, actors and actresses. The screenplay also examines the tension between society and the individual, with the protagonist's theater-family serving as the society she rejects in despair-and ultimately returns to for survival.

Ivo van Hove has long admired the work of John Cassavetes. "When I grew older," says the director, "I connected with the merciless but tender [regard for] his characters and the way he treated the relationships between them. His films are very adult analyses of human beings and as a logical consequence they are still explosive and very meaningful for people today."

According to The Netherlands' De Telegraaf , "Director Ivo van Hove gives his actors enough space...he ferrets humour and drama out of the colliding egos of the theatrical personalities and portrays the mysterious crooked ways of a creative process. In the meantime, he brings bigger themes out into the limelight...Opening Night expresses that performing is not only a way of living, it is also a way of surviving."

According to Le Monde, "Very cleverly, Ivo van Hove has not renounced the tools of cinema to intensify his staging." The production's voice amplification permits introspection and creates intimacy with the performers. Cameramen move about the stage, emphasizing the structure of the play as well as the protagonists' emotions; their footage is transmitted to monitors and to a large screen at the rear of the set. The video screen, flanked by audience seating, creates a vast performance space that evokes a set from the original film-Myrtle's enormous hotel room.
Opening Night's cast includes Elsie de Brauw (Myrtle), Jacob Derwig (Maurice), Oscar van Rompay/Sanne de Hartogh (Gus), Sarah Bourgeois (Lena), Fedja van Huet (Manny), Katja Herbers (Dorothee), Johan van Assche (David), Anne Prakke (Leo), Sanne den Hartogh/Servé Hermans/Alwin Pulinckx (Kelly), Chris Nietvelt (Sarah), and Hadewych Minis (Nancy).
 
Toneelgroep Amsterdam is Holland's prime theatre company and the official municipal theater company of Amsterdam , based in Amsterdam 's Stadsschouwburg Theater. With an average of five new plays and 300 performances each year, the company plays to audiences of over 90,000 annually. Toneelgroep Amsterdam operates on an international level, working with guest directors such as RoBert Woodruff (U.S.), Krzysztof Warlikowski (Poland),  Johan Simons (Netherlands),  Thomas Ostermeier (Germany) and also  performs outside the Netherlands on stages in Germany, the U.S., France, Austria, and Belgium. The company has been invited by festivals such as Ruhr Triënnale, Wiener Festwochen, and Festival d'Avignon. The award-winning repertoire of Toneelgroep Amsterdam includes Shakespeare's Roman tragedies and The Taming of  the Shrew, Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from  a Marriage, and John Cassavetes' Opening Night. www.toneelgroepamsterdam.nl
 
NTGent is based in Ghent (Belgium) and works as a theater company in an international context. It works with an open ensemble which consists of actors, authors, directors, dramaturges, and designers. The company focuses on the work of director Johan Simons (Netherlands), but other theater makers develop their ideas in so-called "satellites." NTGent exists in dialogue with society. In addition to producing plays, NTGent chooses to participate actively in the public debate on human and global views. Thus the theater has grown into an open space where  contemporary theater makers and spectators share their thoughts, fears, and dreams. The repertory of NTGent deals with important themes about mankind (as in the adaptation of novels by Arnon Grunberg and Michel Houellebecq), about leadership through historical and contemporary texts (the Greeks, Shakespeare, former Prime Minister Wilfried Martens) and about morality, through  performances that give meaning to reality in a very direct, almost documentary way.
www.ntgent.be
 
Ivo van Hove was born in Belgium in 1958. He began his career as a theater director in 1981, directing his own work. He served as artistic director of the theater companies AKT, Akt-Vertikaal, De Tijd, and Zuidelijk Toneel. Since 2001, van Hove has been general director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam. Recent productions for his company include Tony Kushner's Angels in America and a repertory engagement of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Anthony and Cleopatra. Van Hove has directed Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for The Flemish Opera. For New York Theatre Workshop, he directed Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (2004) and Molière's The Misanthrope (2007). Productions by van Hove have appeared at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Biennale in Venice, the Holland Festival, and in cities including Lisbon, Paris, Hanover, and Rome.
Ivo van Hove in Conversation with Charles L. Mee

On Dec 6 at 4:30pm, director Ivo van Hove (who has staged Charles L. Mee's A Perfect Wedding and True Love) joins the American playwright for their first public discussion of theatrical interpretation and the creative process. The conversation takes place in the BAM Hillman Attic Studio and tickets may be purchased by calling BAM Ticket Services (718.636.4100) or by visiting www.BAM.org.

About the Next Wave Festival
BAM's Next Wave Festival, which enters its 26th season in 2008, has permanently changed the landscape of culture through breakout performances, landmark productions, daring experiments, and once-in-a-lifetime moments. The Festival originated as a fall series entitled "The Next Wave/New Masters." In November 1981, Philip Glass' new opera, Satyagraha, was presented as one of four productions under the Next Wave moniker. A more ambitious series followed in 1982, including a two-evening performance work by Laurie Anderson-United States: Parts I-IV. From the seeds of these two rich years grew an idea for something bolder and riskier. The Next Wave Festival, dedicated to exciting new works and cross-disciplinary collaborations by promising young artists, was launched in October 1983. Pieces that previously had been presented in downtown lofts and small "black box" theaters were staged in the exquisite 2,100-seat BAM Opera House (later renamed the Howard Gilman Opera House), a renovated 1,000-seat playhouse (the Helen Carey Playhouse, now home to BAM Rose Cinemas), and a flexible 300-seat performance venue (the Lepercq Space). In 1987, with Peter Brook's Mahabharata, BAM opened another large stage-the 874-seat Majestic Theater-since renamed the Harvey Theater in honor of Harvey Lichtenstein (former president and executive producer). Since 1999, BAM has been led by President Karen Brooks Hopkins and by Executive Producer Joseph V. Melillo, who curates the Next Wave Festival and served as the producer of the inaugural festival.

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