RED Opens at Historic Asolo Theater, 3/30

John Logan's award-winning drama makes its way to the Historic Asolo Theater as a co-production with Maltz Jupiter Theatre at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art as a part of the 2011-2012 Asolo Repertory Theatre season.

"It's particularly exciting that we are on this creative journey with the Ringling Museum," said Producing Artistic Director Michael Donald Edwards. "Asolo Rep has frequently partnered with the museum on projects in the past, and we fervently believe in each other's goals and objectives. This production represents a true marriage of the missions of both institutions."

Steven High, the Executive Director of The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, spoke more about the Ringling's programming running with Red: "In addition to Red, there are two additional thought-provoking Art of Our Time projects concurrently underway at the Ringling: Luminosity, a focus exhibition presented in conjunction with Red, which explores how artists through the ages have captured and engaged the quality and characteristics of light, and the installation of a new work by Sanford Biggers, recipient of the Hermitage Artist Retreat's Greenfeld Prize." Widely considered one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Mark Rothko was an Abstract Expressionist painter and a fiercely intellectual art theorist. In creating his artwork, Rothko drew from a deep emotional and intellectual well, proclaiming "the exhilarated tragic experience is for me the only source of art." A man of complexity and contradictions, Rothko was sometimes warm and generous but other times withdrawn, his mercurial personality resulting, perhaps, from his lifelong feelings of isolation and marginalization.*

*Reprinted with permission from Onstage, the Goodman Theatre's magazine for subscribers. By Neena Arndt.Red2 Set amid the swiftly-changing cultural tide of the early 1960s, the play takes place in Mark Rothko's New York studio when Rothko was commissioned to create a series of grand-scale paintings for New York's elite Four Seasons restaurant. Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant, the abstract expressionist painter works feverishly to complete the largest commission in the history of modern art. Red uses visual drama to explore art, commerce, demons, ideas, and the nature of creativity as a whole.

"This play centers on the tense polarities that exist between young and old, employer and employee, master and apprentice, mentor and mentee, father and son," said Red's director, Lou Jacob. "Rothko warns his assistant Ken, 'Consider; I am not your rabbi, I am not your father, I am not your shrink, I am not your friend, I am not your teacher – I am your employer. You understand?' Despite Rothko's blunt disclaimer, he becomes all of these, and we come to understand the combustible energy that existed within Rothko's studio."

The show sponsors for Red are actually Treviso Restaurant, Mezzacorona Wine, WSMR 89.1, SRQ Media Group and the Sarasota County Tourist Development Tax revenues. Red is produced in partnership with The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art and as a co-production with Maltz Jupiter Theatre.