ARTicles vol. 6 i.4: Welcome

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the latest issue of ARTicles. In this edition you’ll find information about Cardenio, the world premiere by Stephen Greenblatt and Charles Mee that closes our current season, together with the first word on our plans for 2008-09. As our attention turns toward summer, there’s so much to look forward to at the A.R.T.

Chuck, one of America’s most respected playwrights, and Stephen, among our most distinguished Shakespeare scholars, have both been connected to the A.R.T. for many years. We’ve produced many of Chuck’s plays, including Full Circle, Snow in June, and presented bobrauschenbergamerica. Stephen – a senior professor in Harvard’s English Department – has often contributed to our newsletter essays and discussion groups.

Their collaboration was born when Stephen told Chuck of a late Shakespeare play, Cardenio, which only survives as an 18th-century adaptation. The story comes from an episode in Cervantes’ Don Quixote that contains many of the hallmarks of Shakespearian comedy. Chuck was fascinated, and the two of them set out to weave a contemporary play based on the original story.

The play, in Chuck and Stephen’s version, is set on the terrace of a contemporary Umbrian villa, where a group of young Americans have gathered to celebrate a wedding. It’s a beguiling midsummer pageant, infused with the spirit of Shakespearian comedy, and promises a warm and festive note to the end of our season.

The opening of Cardenio provides me with a fine opportunity to introduce the A.R.T.’s 2008-09 season, which will include two further premieres of new plays. The Communist Dracula Pageant is Anne Washburn’s spectacularly imaginative fantasy about the final days of Nikolai and Elena Ceausescu, the forging of a national identity, and the power of a president to rewrite the news. Trojan Barbie, from lauded young playwright Christine Evans, is a contemporary reimagining of Euripides’ Trojan Women, seen through the eyes of a modern-day tourist who finds herself an unwitting witness to the fall of Troy. Anne and Christine are, in my view, two of the finest young playwrights now working in this country. Their names may not yet be familiar to you, but that is certain to change over the coming years.

Other highlights next season include the long-awaited return of János Szász (Uncle Vanya, Mother Courage) to stage Chekhov’s The Seagull; a production of Beckett’s lyrical masterpiece Endgame featuring the A.R.T. resident acting company and directed by the visionary Marcus Stern (Donnie Darko, The Onion Cellar); and David Mamet’s hysterical and irreverent courtroom farce Romance, staged by Scott Zigler (Copenhagen, The Old Neighborhood.)

I’m also thrilled that we’re presenting Let Me Down Easy, Anna Deavere Smith’s meditation on the beauty and resliience of the human body; and Aurélia’s Oratorio, a spellbinding evening of illusion and magic, performed by Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter Aurélia Thierrée.

As you can see, it’s a season of tremendous range, of new plays and classics, comedy and drama, great writing and virtuosic performance. You’ll find much more information at amrep.org/2009. I warmly invite you to join us for the whole season, and look forward to welcoming you to the theatre.

Best wishes,
Gideon Lester
Acting Artistic Director