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Juilliard Press Release
The Juilliard Drama Division Announces
Euripides’ The Trojan Women, translated by Nicholas Rudall The School of Night by Peter Whelan, directed by David Warren Blue Window by Craig Lucas, directed by Martha Banta The King Stag by Carlo Gozzi, adapted by Shelley Berc and Andrei Belgrader, Sir Patient Fancy by Aphra Behn, directed by Brendon Fox Each year the Juilliard Drama Division’s Spring Repertory reprises the fourth year actor’s Preview Season from the fall. The 2003 spring series opens with two productions in March: Euripides’ The Trojan Women, translated by Nicholas Rudall and directed by Juilliard alumna Joanna Settle, and The School of Night by Peter Whelan, directed by David Warren. Performances of The Trojan Women take place in Studio 301 on Thursday, March 20 through Monday, March 24 at 8 PM. Performances for The School of Night are on Friday, March 21 through Monday, March 24 in the Drama Theater at 8 PM. The 2003 Spring Repertory Season continues with three productions in April: Craig Lucas’s Blue Window, directed by Martha Banta, Sir Patient Fancy by Aphra Behn, directed by Brendon Fox, and an adaptation by Shelley Berc and Andrei Belgrader of The King Stag by Carlo Gozzi, directed by Andrei Belgrader, who is head of Juilliard’s Artist Diploma Program in Theater Directing. Performances of Blue Window take place on Tuesday, April 1 through Friday, April 4 at 8 PM in the Drama Theater. Performances of The King Stag are on Saturday, April 12 through Tuesday, April 15 at 8 PM in the Drama Theater. Performances of Sir Patient Fancy take place on Thursday, April 24 through Sunday, April 27 at 8 PM in the Drama Theater. The 2002-2003 season features actors in Juilliard's Group XXXII: Will Beinbrink, Jeff Biehl, David Briggs, Marcello Butron, Dawn Gardner, Norm Lee, Sarah McMinn, Kelly Miller, Jessica Weixler, Jessica Chastain, Marco de La Cruz, Graham Hamilton, Julie Jesneck, Jasmine Jobity, Luke Macfarlane, Joaquin Perez-Campbell, Holly Troupe, and Michael Urie (John Houseman Prize Award Winner). All tickets to the Spring Repertory performances are $15, with TDF available, and may be purchased at the Juilliard Box Office beginning February 17. The box office, located at 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, is open Monday to Friday, 11 AM to 6 PM. For more information please call (212) 769-7406 or visit our Web site at www.juilliard.edu. Commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company a decade ago and premiering in Stratford, England, in 1992, Peter Whelan’s drama The School of Night received its U.S. premiere this fall at Juilliard. It has been described by Time Out London as "A cracker of a play." The play is inspired by the 16th century murder of English poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe, a maverick of Elizabethan theater who often was found among the best and brightest set of his day. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, educated at Cambridge, and in the company of Thomas Kyd, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the mysterious Tom Stone, Marlowe was killed on May 30, 1593 in a pub brawl - or was he? The School of Night explores the mystery surrounding Marlowe’s death and his association with the clandestine group called the School of Night. The play was premiered in Stratford-upon-Avon before moving to London at the RSC’s Pit Theatre during 1992-1993. First performed in 415 B.C. and still one of the most widely produced Greek tragedies, Euripides’ The Trojan Women probes the psychology of human despair. After the Trojan men were killed, the Trojan women were at the mercy of their captors. Every woman was to be distributed among the victors. Even the Trojan queen, Hecuba, is to become the possession of the hated Odysseus; her daughter Cassandra has been allotted to Agamemnon, and it is revealed that her other daughter Polyxena has been slaughtered on the tomb of Achilles. However, Cassandra foretells of the disasters that will come upon their conquerors. One critic called Blue Window "a marvel, an intricate and quiet piece that never stops surprising you." New York playwright Craig Lucas, author of plays Prelude to a Kiss and Reckless, and the film Longtime Companion, does not present a story in Blue Window; rather he provides numerous clues for numerous stories. As the nervous Libby is preparing a dinner party, we are introduced to her guests in their apartments, as they prepare themselves to attend. The six strangers do not seem to communicate with each other; but instead become part of a collage that manages to combine an Italian opera aria, a jazz piano solo, passages from Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hesse, Eugene O’Neill, Buster Keaton, and Descartes, as well as game shows, family therapy, and sky-diving. The King Stag by Carlo Gozzi is an 18th-century fairytale for all ages. It’s a story of a king in search of a wife; however, King Deramo is not just searching for any wife. Having rejected 748 candidates, Deramo is only interested in Angela, the beautiful daughter of his Second Minister - who also is loved by the evil Tartaglia. With the help of a magical statue, an enchanted forest, and Deramo’s own magical powers, the tale end happily ever after. Juilliard presents this play in an adaptation created by Shelley Berc and Juilliard’s own directing program head, Andrei Belgrader. Aphra Behn, the 17th-century female playwright, was known for breaking "the unwritten rules that sought to limit the female experience." Behn’s plays were as colorful as her life (an affair that included dozens of plays and episodes working for the crown as a secret agent in Europe). Sir Patient Fancy is a ribald comedy of love’s labors and losses, infidelity, and class differences, with mistaken identities, unrequited love, and wanton foolishness. In the play’s "Epistle to the Reader", Aphra Behn writes, "The play has no other misfortune but that of coming out for a Womans: had it been owned by a Man, though the most Dull Unthinking Rascally Scribbler in Town, it had been a most admirable Play." Joanna Settle is an alumna of the first group of young directors accepted in 1995 into Juilliard’s advanced program for director training, studying with Michael Kahn, JoAnne Akalaitis, and the late Garland Wright. For five years previously, she had worked with the avant-garde Mabou Mines, where she was a resident artist in 1994. During the first summer break from Juilliard, in 1996, Ms. Settle directed a production of Balcony for Chicago’s newly formed company, Thirteenth Tribe - which is now known as Division 13 - and since 1997, after completing the program at Juilliard, Ms. Settle has directed all but one of their productions and became their artistic director. Among her other Division 13 credits are: the award winning BLOOD LINE: The Oedipus/Antigone Story, and several Beckett plays, Play, Rockaby, and Cascand, and in 2001 she directed Ionesco’s absurdist twist on Shakespeare, Macbett. Ms. Settle’s freelance credits include two productions of Penthesilea by Heinrich Von Kleist and the Rossini opera Il Seor Bruscino. She made her film debut in 2001 with the featurette Night, Night, and has taught and directed at various university theater programs. In 2000, Ms. Settle received a two-year Career Development Grant for Directors from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) administered by Theatre Communications Group (TCG). David Warren directed Holiday at Circle in the Square, receiving an Outer Critics Circle nomination for best revival, Summer and Smoke and Misalliance at Roundabout Theater Company, and Hobson’s Choice at Atlantic Theatre Company for which he received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for best revival. He has directed the premieres of Richard Greenberg’s The Dazzle, Hurrah at Last, Night and Her Stars, and his adaptation of Pal Joey; Nicky Silver’s Pterodactyls, for which he won an Obie Award, as well as Silver’s The Eros Trilogy, Raised in Captivity, Fit To Be Tied, and My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine; Tom Donaghy’s Minutes from the Blue Route and From Above; Leslie Ayvazian’s High Dive; William Luce’s Baptiste: The Life of Molière; William Finn’s Romance in Hard Times; Eric Overmeyer’s Mi Vida Loca; Albert Innaurato’s Gus and Al; Jeffrey Essmann’s and Michael John LaChiusa’s Triplets in Uniform and Artificial Intelligence; and Harmony by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman. Mr. Warren’s other credits include west coast productions of Raised in Captivity and Jon Robin Baitz’s Martha Banta is artistic director and co-founder of the Adirondack Theatre Festival, founded eight summers ago in Glens Falls, New York. She has directed five world premieres at the Adirondack Theatre Festival, and several other productions including Margaret Edson’s Wit, Yasmina Reza’s Art, and Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women. Ms. Banta was the artistic associate at New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) for five years where she developed cast, directed, or found new plays. Some New York directing credits include new plays at the Clark Theater at Lincoln Center, New York Theatre Workshop, New Georges, Soho Repertory Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theater, One Dream Theater, Westbank Café, Columbia University, Tiny Mythic Theatre Company, Orange Thoughts Theater, and The 52nd Street Project. In addition, she has worked developing and directing new plays for The Public Theater, the York Theatre Company, ASCAP, NYTW, La Mama Theatre, the Ensemble Studio Theatre (E.S.T.), and Syracuse Stage. She was the assistant director of Rent in New York City and tours in the U.S. and London, and directed the first foreign language productions of Rent in Japan and Germany. This past year she directed the new play Hallowed Ground by Laura Harrington at Portland Stage Company in Maine, and directed Barbara’s Blue Kitchen by Lori Fischer at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Currently her Playhouse Disney Live is running at Disney’s MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. This year Ms. Banta is serving as resident director for Mamma Mia! on Broadway and is developing a new play with Tyrone Henderson based on the short stories of Richard Wright. She has been a guest teacher at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Dartmouth, and Vassar. Andrei Belgrader is the director of award-winning stage, film, and television projects, as well as an actor and teacher whose stage adaptations, created most frequently with Shelley Berc, have been produced coast-to-coast. Since 1992 Mr. Belgrader has been a professor of acting and directing at the University of California, San Diego. Before that, from 1978-92, he was associate professor at the Yale University School of Drama. He has directed numerous works for Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, and American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, including the 1983 production of Waiting for Godot that garnered "Best Director" and "Best Play" awards from the Boston Theatre Critics Circle. He also has directed for The Goodman Theatre in Chicago; CSC Repertory, The West Bank Café, New York Stage and Film, and The Changing Space in New York; as well as for American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, Watermann Theatre in London, and the Edinburgh Festival. Among these productions are Mr. Belgrader’s own adaptations including Rameau’s Nephew, Scapin, Servant of Two Masters, Ubu Rock, and The Imaginary Invalid, all created with Shelley Berc. They also created The King Stag, commissioned by American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. By himself, Mr. Belgrader has created a stage adaptation of The Little Prince.
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