Compagnia de' Colombari's KING LEAR at La MaMa ETC, Ellen Stewart Theatre
Dates: 7/12/2024 - 7/14/2024
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Compagnia de' Colombari
P.O. Box 17 Village Station
New York, NY 10003
Phone: N/A
Tickets: $25-$45
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Following a successful world premiere at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in June, Compagnia de’ Colombari’s fresh, vital and urgent KING LEAR debuts in New York City for a limited run of four performances at La MaMa (66 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003). Tickets are available online HERE for $45 ($25 student tickets available). Opening Night is Friday, July 12, at 7pm, with performances at 2pm & 7pm on Saturday, July 13 and 5pm on Sunday, July 14. The play, explored in five “movements,” is adapted and directed by Karin Coonrod with original music by long-time collaborator Frank London, a talented team of designers, and a diverse cast of ten actors playing King Lear and other characters. This Off-Broadway premiere marks Coonrod’s return to presenting boldly experimental Shakespeare adaptations at La MaMa after her highly lauded production of The Tempest was a NY Times Critic’s Pick in 2014.
Compagnia de’ Colombari’s KING LEAR is a primal, physical, and potent “paper crown” Lear that strips the Shakespearian classic to its essence. Coonrod utilizes her signature “multiplicity” to shift and deepen audiences’ connection with the characters. Ten diverse actors ranging in age and gender embody King Lear at the beginning and conduct a radical take-over of the text and space. Their unity fragments as they tear off their paper crowns and transform into other roles, competing for influence and diminishing the legion of Lears by their existence. Through a vigorous exploration of the characters’ egos, motivations, and power dynamics, the actors dig deep into the internal and external voyage of a stubborn, fractured soul who must lose everything to find himself. Transformation takes place in the apocalypse. Coonrod’s immersive production commands us to, as Kent says to King Lear, “See better.”
Throughout 2024, Compagnia de’ Colombari is celebrating 20 years of generating spectacle, disrupting and reconstructing texts and spaces under the direction of Karin Coonrod with a robust Anniversary Season. Of Coonrod’s direction, The New York Times proclaimed, “this experimental director has a knack for transforming high concepts into accessible theater” and calls her “a theater artist of far-reaching inventiveness” who uses a “style that deconstructs to construct.” Other season highlights include an Italian / U.S. tour of Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge (Fall 2024) and multiple U.S. tour dates for Whitman on Walls! (WoW!).
Cast and Creative Team for Compagnia de' Colombari's KING LEAR at La MaMa ETC, Ellen Stewart Theatre
Cast
Chris McLinden
Narrator, white young man, Julian
New York City: The Employees (Theater Lab), Red Hills (En Garde Arts), The Tempest (La MaMa ETC), Everything That Rises Must Converge (Compagnia de Colombari), Nicholas, Maeve, Marianne (New York Fringe.) Select Regional: Merchant of Venice (Peak Performances); Ibsen in Chicago (Seattle Repertory Theater); King Charles III (A.C.T., The Shakespeare Theater Co., Seattle Repertory Theater); Last of the Boys and Diary of Anne Frank (Steppenwolf Theater Co.);, The Lion in Winter, The Seagull, and Duchess of Malfi (Writer’s Theatre); Taming of the Shrew (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre); Twelfth Night and Cymbeline (Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival); Speak American (City Theatre, Pittsburgh); Celebrity Row (American Theatre Company); Vincent in Brixton (Appletree Theatre); Midsummer Night’s Dream (First Folio Shakespeare); The Lady From the Sea (Greasy Joan & Co.); and The Vortex (Boxer Rebellion). Film and TV: “The Night Agent,” “FBI: Most Wanted,” “Blacklist,” “Law and Order SVU,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “Alpha House,” and Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight, 5-25-77. Member of The Actors Center.
Paul Pryce
Narrator, Black man on bus
Paul Pryce is thrilled to join the Compagnia de Colombari ensemble once again! Theatre credits: King Lear, The Merchant of Venice (Compagnia de’ Colombari / Arts & Ideas Festival / La MaMa ETC), Hamlet, The Piano Lesson, Good Goods (Yale Repertory Theatre), Create Dangerously (Miami New Drama), Julius Ceasar, Pericles (Elm Shakespeare), Pecong (The National Black Theatre of Harlem), GO FORTH! (NY & US Tour), Silence & Fear (Compagnie Lieux Dits, France). Film & TV: Marvel’s “Jessica Jones,” “Narco Saints” (Netflix), “Unforgettable” (CBS). As a filmmaker & producer, Paul’s debut film, Come Out Come Out World, premiered at the Cannes Short Film Corner. His short film The Deliverer won Best Foreign Film at The Atlanta Underground Film Festival, and his feature-length screenplay for The Deliverer was a Sundance Writers Lab Short-listed Finalist. Paul teaches at Brooklyn College, HB Studio, and in South Korea. MFA: Yale School of Drama alum. Paul was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago.
Stacey Sherrell Scott
Narrator, Black woman with a child
Stacey Sherrell Scott is a Juilliard graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama, a business owner of an Acting and Performance Coaching business called “Setting Your Stage,” and is the program director for the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Education and Community Engagement Department. She is excited to celebrate Colombari's 20th Anniversary through the classic language of Flannery O'Connor.
Ean Sheehy
Narrator, white woman in sandals on the bus
Ean Sheehy has appeared in many episodes of “Law & Order,” “Law & Order SVU,” “Law & Order Criminal Intent,” and the HBO series “John Adams.” He also appears in the films Slow Machine and The Notorious Bettie Page. Theater: Red Eye To Havre De Grace at New York Theater Workshop and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Paramount Theater in Boston, Georgia Tech, Dartmouth College and many others, Inflatable Space at the Edenborough Fringe Festival, as well as theaters in Denver, Cleveland and other locations. Also, "Thom Pain (based on nothing)" (The Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati), "No Foreigners Beyond This Point" (Center Stage Baltimore) "Master and Margarita" (The Fisher Center), "The Making Of King Kong" (Target Margin) and "This Is The Color Described By The Time" (The Flea), Shooter (European tour), Psychic Self Defense (HERE) and many more.
ElizabethElizabeth Stahlmann
Narrator, white woman with buck teeth on bus
Broadway: Slave Play; Off-Broadway: Tectonic Theater Project’s Here There Are Blueberries at New York Theater Workshop; Here There Are Blueberries (La Jolla Playhouse, Shakespeare Theater of DC); Slave Play (Broadway Transfer at The Mark Taper Forum); Grounded (Westport Country Playhouse-CT Critics Circle Award); The Humans, The Cake (Alley Theatre); Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater; Tennessee Williams Festival; Three national tours of Romeo and Juliet, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It with The Acting Company; The Guthrie Theater; a founding member of Krymov Lab NYC, originating Onegin: In Their Own Words. TV/film credits include: “City on a Hill,” “The Equalizer,” “Law & Order: SVU,” and The Snare. She graduated from the University of MN/Guthrie Theater (BFA) and Yale School of Drama (MFA). Elizabeth is a proud member of The Actors Center.
Carlton Terrence Taylor
Lead Narrator, Black young child, Carver, on the bus
Carlton Terrence Taylor is a passionate game-changer committed to empowering generations to think critically using art as a catalyst for change. Recent credits include Tina the Tina Turner Musical (First National Tour), Deep Blue Sea and What Problem for New York Live Arts and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, The Late Show performing “The Americans” with Janelle Monáe, and Great Day in Harlem’s tribute to Janet Jackson. Theater: Illa (a hip hop musical), Ronve O’ Daniels (NYMF), How the Light Gets performing Ilathi (NYMF), Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor (with Compagnia de’ Colombari, NYC, US and international tours), Five Guys Named Moe (Black Spectrum Theatre), Songs for A New World (The 411 Theater). Film: August Rush, TV: 80th Annual Academy Awards. Carlton is the Artistic Director of Ballet and Beyond NYC’s R.Y.S.E Conservatory. “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced,” –James Baldwin.
Welker White
Narrator, white mother to Julian
Welker White's many film credits include Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (as Jo Hoffa opposite Al Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa) and Lois Byrd in Goodfellas. Other notable films include Dead Poets Society, Nora Ephron’s This Is My Life, HBO’s Emmy-winning Bad Education, and Radha Blank’s The 40-Year-Old Version. Most recently, Welker completed filming Jonah Hill’s Outcome opposite Keanu Reeves. Welker has performed on and off-Broadway and in regional theaters across the U.S., originating roles in works by playwrights John Patrick Shanley, Lisa Kron, David Ives, and Craig Lucas, among many others. She’s a member and Co-Artistic director of The Actors Center. Welker attended NYU Tisch and holds an MFA in Directing from Brooklyn College, where she has been on the acting faculty for over 15 years. With her company, The Moving Frame, Welker brings screen acting intensives to some of the most respected universities and training programs across the U.S. and abroad. Welker is a proud recipient of a Fulbright Specialist designation.
Creative Team
Karin Coonrod
Director, Adapter & Artistic Director (Compagnia de" Colombari)
Karin Coonrod is the founding Artistic Director of Compagnia de’ Colombari and has directed on stages worldwide. Notable productions include KING LEAR (International Festival of Arts & Ideas; La MaMa ETC); Henry VI, Love's Labor's Lost (Public Theater, NYSF); King John, Julius Caesar (Theater for a New Audience); Enrico IV (American Repertory Theater); Everything That Rises Must Converge (New York Theater Workshop); texts&beheadings/ElizabethR (Folger Theatre; BAM/Next Wave Festival); and The Merchant of Venice (Venice, Italy; International Festival of Arts & Ideas; Peak Performances at Montclair State University; The Hopkins Center; Dartmouth University). Coonrod, with Compagnia de’ Colombari, has launched new theater traditions in Orvieto, Italy and brought works into detention centers, jails, schools, pubs, libraries, parks, museums, galleries, piers, churches, and the streets. The book The Transnational Theatre of Karin Coonrod (Bloomsbury Press UK) is currently in development. She teaches directing at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.
Flannery O'Connor
Author
Flannery O’Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as many reviews and commentaries. When she died in 1964 at 39, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers. The New York Times deemed her story Everything That Rises Must Converge one of “the few masterpieces in the form in English.” Her Complete Stories won the 1972 US National Book Award for Fiction.
Compagnia de’ Colombari
Performing & Presenting Company
Compagnia de' Colombari is an international collective of performing artists, generating theater in surprising places for over 20 years under the vision of director Karin Coonrod. Colombari intentionally clashes cultures, traditions and art forms to bring fresh interpretations to the written word. It is founded on the twin principles that the magic of great theater can happen anywhere and be accessible to everyone. Colombari was born in Orvieto, Italy, in 2004, where the company re-imagined the medieval mystery plays and performed them in the streets and piazzas. The company launched a parallel theatrical experience at its New York City home base that same year. Colombari's 20th anniversary season focuses on unique theatrical adaptations of works by Walt Whitman, Flannery O'Connor and William Shakespeare. Compagnia de' Colombari's 20th Anniversary Season programs are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), The Eucalyptus Foundation, and support from other funders and donors.
Carlton Terrence Taylor
Assistant Director & Music Director
Carlton Terrence Taylor is a passionate game-changer committed to empowering generations to think critically using art as a catalyst for change. Recent credits include Tina the Tina Turner Musical (First National Tour), Deep Blue Sea and What Problem for New York Live Arts and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, The Late Show performing “The Americans” with Janelle Monáe, and Great Day in Harlem’s tribute to Janet Jackson. Theater: Illa (a hip hop musical), Ronve O’ Daniels (NYMF), How the Light Gets performing Ilathi (NYMF), Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor (with Compagnia de’ Colombari, NYC, US and international tours), Five Guys Named Moe (Black Spectrum Theatre), Songs for A New World (The 411 Theater). Film: August Rush, TV: 80th Annual Academy Awards. Carlton is the Artistic Director of Ballet and Beyond NYC’s R.Y.S.E Conservatory. “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced,” –James Baldwin.
Jacob Russell
Production Stage Manager
Jacob Russel is a creative, multi-disciplinary theatrical Stage Manager. Pulitzer Finalist, Here There Are Blueberries(PSM @ New York Theatre Workshop and ASM @ La Jolla Playhouse & Shakespeare Theatre Company). Company member with Krymov Lab NYC and was Production Supervisor and Production Stage Manager on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin: In Our Own Words (Under the Radar & La MaMa). Select theatre stage management credits: Velour: A Drag Spectacular!, to the yellow house, Kiss My Aztec!, The Who’s Tommy benefit concert (La Jolla Playhouse), Good Vibrations (Irish Arts Center), The Essential Straight and Narrow (The Mad Ones), The Library (The Public Theater), David Mamet’s The Christopher Boy’s Reunion (Odyssey Theatre), Lisa D’Amour’s Mad Moon (The NOLA Project), Pilobolus’s Big FIVE-OH! touring internationally and nationally, Dave Harris’s Cat Sitter (1st AD/Oregon Shakespeare Festival), I aspire to approach every process with equanimity, vulnerability, and a commitment to anti-racist stage management. M.F.A.: University California San Diego.
Anna Crivelli
Company Manager
Christopher Akerlind
Lighting Design
Karin Coonrod and the Company
Costume Design
Oana Botez
Hat Design
Damarius Kennedy
Costume Coordinator
Jennifer Harrison Newman
General Manager
Sofia Crouch
Development Manager
Cindy Sibilsky
Publicist, Marketing & Communications Manager
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About the Theatre
La MaMa ETC, Ellen Stewart Theatre Frequently Asked QuestionsFAQ
Compagnia de' Colombari's KING LEAR (7/12/24-7/14/24)
La MaMa ETC, Ellen Stewart Theatre is at P.O. Box 17 Village Station, New York, NY.
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