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| Red Bull Theater continues its 2018-’19 REVELATION READINGS with the NY Premiere of Lauren Gunderson's THE BOOK OF WILL, Directed by Davis McCallum | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 06:42 pm EST 11/29/18 | |
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| Red Bull Theater Continues Its 2018-’19 REVELATION READINGS With the New York Premiere of Lauren Gunderson's THE BOOK OF WILL Directed by Davis McCallum Featuring Marco Barricelli, Thaddeus Fitzpatrick, Jennifer LeBlanc, Orlando Pabotoy, Linda Powell, Kurt Rhoads, Antoinette Robinson, Triney Sandoval, Richard Thieriot, Reggie D. White and Nance Williamson Monday, December 10th at 7:30 PM at the Lucille Lortel Theatre Red Bull Theater (Jesse Berger, Artistic Director | Jim Bredeson, Managing Director) today announced the cast for the next REVELATION READING, The Book of Will by Lauren Gunderson, directed by Davis McCallum: Marco Barricelli, Thaddeus Fitzpatrick, Jennifer LeBlanc, Orlando Pabotoy, Linda Powell, Kurt Rhoads, Antoinette Robinson, Triney Sandoval, Richard Thieriot, Reggie D. White and Nance Williamson. This will take place on Monday December 1oth at 7:30 PM at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street, between Bleecker and Hudson Streets). "To be or not to be, Aye there's the point..." Shakespeare has only been dead three years and already they’re botching his lines at the local playhouse, and it’s up to his old friends to set the record—and all of literary and theatrical history—straight. Aging actors Henry Condell and John Heminges take on a money-hungry publisher, a drunken poet laureate, and Heminges’ own strong-minded daughter, as they piece together a little book we call the First Folio. Lauren Gunderson, one of the most-produced playwrights in America, tells this tale of human emotion and historical importance in what the Chicago Tribune described as “ a most humorous, entertaining and irreverent fashion.” According to playwright Gunderson: “The Book of Will is a play about many things - friendship, legacy, words, paper, and the very point of theatre - but the most meaningful moment of this story for me comes in a reference to comedy. Rebecca, friend of Will Shakespeare’s, says that she finds herself needing comedies the older she gets: ‘Laughter is death's greatest defiance, I think.’ Death cringes when we laugh. We can’t stop it, but laughter helps death’s survivors thrive.” As Richard Burbage says in the opening scene of The Book of Will, he knew all of Shakespeare’s plays by by heart, for “that’s the only way you get to tell everyone else what to do.” Burbage was the leading actor of the King’s Men, known to have played the roles of Richard III, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and probably many others. In Gunderson’s play, it’s 1619, three years after Shakespeare’s death, and the senior shareholders of the King’s Men, Richard Burbage, John Heminges, and Henry Condell, are sitting in a tap house near the Globe grumbling about a shoddy performance of Hamlet based on a pirated “bad quarto” of the play. Quartos, inexpensive texts often printed shortly after early performances, might be based on the acting company’s own script. But they could also be stolen, perhaps by actors based on what they can remember of their own lines and the lines of other characters. In The Book of Will the quest for Shakespeare’s authentic texts begins when Burbage dies suddenly and Heminges, Condell, and Heminges’ daughter Alice realize with a start that no one else knew the lines of the plays the way he did. Lauren Gunderson is the most produced playwright in America of 2017, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award, the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award and the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award, she is also a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and John Gassner Award for Playwriting, and a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s 3-Year Residency with Marin Theatre Company. She studied Southern Literature and Drama at Emory University, and Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School where she was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. Her work has been commissioned, produced and developed at companies across the US including South Coast Rep (Emilie, Silent Sky), The Kennedy Center (The Amazing Adventures of Dr. Wonderful And Her Dog!), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The O’Neill, The Denver Center, San Francisco Playhouse, Marin Theatre, Synchronicity, Berkeley Rep, Shotgun Players, TheatreWorks, Crowded Fire and more. She co-authored Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley with Margot Melcon, which was one of the most produced plays in America in 2017. Her work is published at Playscripts (I and You, Exit Pursued By A Bear, The Taming, and Toil And Trouble), Dramatists (The Revolutionists, The Book of Will, Silent Sky, Bauer, Miss Bennet) and Samuel French (Emilie). Her picture book Dr Wonderful: Blast Off to the Moon was be released from Two Lions/Amazon in May 2017. Red Bull Theater continues its OBIE Award-winning Revelation Reading Series, providing the unique opportunity to hear rarely produced classic plays performed by the finest actors in New York. Red Bull Theater, hailed as “the city’s gutsiest classical theater” by Time Out New York, brings rarely seen classic plays to dynamic new life for contemporary audiences, uniting a respect for tradition with a modern sensibility. Named for the rowdy Jacobean playhouse that illegally performed plays in England during the years of Puritan rule, Red Bull Theater is New York City’s home for dynamic performances of great plays that stand the test of time. With the Jacobean plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries as its cornerstone, the company also produces new works that are in conversation with the classics. A home for artists, scholars and students, Red Bull Theater delights and engages the intellect and imagination of audiences, and strives to make its work accessible, diverse, and welcoming to all. Red Bull Theater believes in the power of great classic stories and plays of heightened language to deepen our understanding of the human condition, in the special ability of live theater to create unique, collective experiences, and the timeless capacity of classical theater to illuminate the events of our times. Variety agreed, hailing Red Bull’s work as: “Proof that classical theater can still be surprising after hundreds of years.” Since its debut in 2003 with a production of Shakespeare’s Pericles starring Daniel Breaker, Red Bull Theater has served adventurous theatergoers with Off-Broadway Productions, Revelation Readings, and the annual Short New Play Festival. The company also offers outreach programs including Shakespeare in Schools bringing professional actors and teaching artists into public school classrooms; Bull Sessions, free post-play discussions with top scholars; and Master Classes in classical acting led by veteran theater professionals. Acclaimed as “a dynamic producer of classic plays” by The New York Times and “the most exciting classical theater in New York” by Time Out NY, Red Bull Theater has produced 17 Off-Broadway productions and over 150 Revelation Readings of rarely seen classics, serving a community of more than 5,000 artists and providing quality artistic programming to an audience of over 65,000. The company’s unique programming has received ongoing critical acclaim, and has been recognized with Lortel, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Off Broadway Alliance, and OBIE nominations and Awards. For tickets and more information about Revelation Readings, or any of Red Bull Theater's productions and programs, visit www.redbulltheater.com. |
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