A.R.T. Fall Guide, November 2014 - January 2015

14 15 November – January

guide

FREE

american repertory theater | expanding the boundaries of theater

Eve Ensler

on Igniting Discourse

Freeganism

and the Politics of Trash A Princess for

The Holidays

americanrepertorytheater.org 2014/15 SEASON

O.P.C.

WELCOME TO THE AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER

Contributors Julia Bumke Robert Duffley Timothy Patrick McCarthy Brenna Nicely Christian Ronald Brendan Shea Maria Tatar

THE A.R.T. GUIDE Custom publishing Dig Publishing LLC 242 East Berkeley St. 5th Fl. Boston, MA 02118 For advertising inquiries: sales@digpublishing. com

ALICE - October 17 –- November 16, 2014 PINOCCHIO - January 30 –- February 22, 2015 THE TASTE OF SUNRISE - March 13 –- 22, 2015 SHREK THE MUSICAL - April 17 - May 24, 2015 WHEELOCK FAMILY THEATRE

PROFESSIONAL, AFFORDABLE THEATRE FOR EVERY GENERATION!

617-879-2300 www.WheelockFamilyTheatre.org A.R.T. Publication Partner

LOEB DRAMA CENTER 64 BrattLe St., Cambridge | OBERON 2 Arrow St., Cambridge

COVER PHOTO: BRIGETTE LACOMBE

OBERON

2014-2015 SEASON

MASTHEAD Managing Editor Ryan McKittrick Senior Editors Grace Geller Brendan Shea Graphic Designer Tak Toyoshima Contributing Editors Jared Fine Kati Mitchell Georgia Young Joel Zayac

The Light Princess

One of my goals as the Artistic Director of the A.R.T. has been to make the theater a center for creative thought, serving as a catalyst for dialogue and debate. O.P.C. (“obsessive political correctness”), a provocative new comedy by author, activist, and playwright Eve Ensler, asks us to confront some of the most pressing issues facing our country, exploring the politics of consumption, waste, and what it means to change the world.

DIANE PAULUS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Eve has fearlessly tackled some of the most challenging issues of our time, and she has a gift for igniting discourse and inspiring change. Eve’s landmark play, The Vagina Monologues, redefined the landscape of feminist dialogue. Its success led to the launch of V-Day, a global activist movement working to end violence against women, and also to the creation of One Billion Rising, a campaign that calls on women and men around the world to rise, dance, and demand justice for women survivors of violence.

During the run of O.P.C., the A.R.T. will host a series of postperformance events with scientists, scholars, artists, and politicians who will use the play to open up larger discussions about climate, energy, and consumption. Read on in this Guide for an exclusive interview with Eve by Harvard Professor Timothy McCarthy, as well as an article about freeganism, a movement embraced by one of the play’s lead characters.

In December, we will also remount last season’s audience favorite The Light Princess. Featuring graduate students in the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training, this delightful musical is inspired by a Scottish fairy tale about a young woman who must find her gravity before her sixteenth birthday, or risk floating away forever.

I look forward to seeing you at the theater!

1

O.P.C. The Light Princess OBERON 2014/15 SEASON 617.547.8300 | americanrepertorytheater.org

Measurable impact. Boundless possibilities.

2

Measurable impact. Boundless possibilities.

June 2014

Boston is a great city and a great region — and we have the potential to shine even brighter. The Arts Factor is an initiative established by ArtsBoston that uses data to demonstrate the positive impact that arts and culture have on Greater Boston.

Supporting the arts and cultural sector is one of the most important ways you can enrich the life of the region. Download a copy of The Arts Factor 2014 Report to learn more and share your story.

Made possible through the generous support of:

AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

What’s your Arts Factor?

ArtsBoston.org/ArtsFactor

#ArtsData

Made possible through the generous support of:

americanrepertorytheater.org 2014/15 SEASON

O.P.C.

O.P.C.

NEW AMERICAN PLAY November 28, 2014 - January 4, 2015

By Eve Ensler | Directed by Pesha Rudnick and politics that asks, “How are we to survive as a species if we insist on destroying the world we love?” A dumpster-diving freegan is doing just fine squatting in an abandoned apartment, but when her mother, a candidate running for the Senate, tries to make her toe the party line, radicalism comes into comic collision with mainstream liberalism. Mother and daughter wrestle with the inconvenient truths at the heart of consumer culture, tossed between political compromise and “obsessive political correctness.”

The Light Princess

A new play from the author of The Vagina Monologues, O.P.C. is an exploration of consumption

OBERON

AT THE CROSSROADS

The following interview was conducted on May 7, 2014.

TIMOTHY PATRICK MCCARTHY: What inspired you to write O.P.C., and why now?

EVE ENSLER: We are clearly at a crisis in human existence. We see it in extreme weather, rise in sea level and the extinction of plants and animals — something like 200 species a day are disappearing. But the burning and fracking of more and more fossil fuel continue escalating greenhouse gases and the warming. Last summer was the hottest summer in 600 years or so. Storms, drought, flooding. And still, in the West and many other places, mad shopping and consumption continues.

TPM: Front page of the New York Times today. The climate has already changed.

PHOTO: JOAN MARCUS

EE: Yes. I’ve been reading books by people who are actually now arguing that it’s over. That there is no way back. There are therapists working with families to prepare them for the end of the world as we know it. Our world is collapsing — severe climate crisis, a mad economic situation, diabolical inequality where 85 people are making the same as 3.5 billion and the 3.5 billion are living in staggering poverty. And with this economic madness comes escalated violence in every direction. So many

EVE ENSLER IN THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES

wars: Iraq, Sudan, Congo, Syria and increased militarization of the planet. We’re talking about 1 out of every 3 women in the world being raped and beaten. How, as artists, do we respond to it? It is so huge and daunting. How can we put our voice into that yawning gulf of impossibility? And how do we speak out with the passion, intensity, warning required without being identified as insane people, you know?

LOEB DRAMA CENTER 64 BrattLe St., Cambridge | OBERON 2 Arrow St., Cambridge

Professor Timothy Patrick McCarthy Interviews Playwright and Activist Eve Ensler

3

that crossroads.

EE: I think O.P.C. is addressing this and the split

TPM: Radicals are often considered “crazy,” at least during their lifetime. To this point, one thing that really struck me in the play is the moment where Romi has a psychotic “break” that gets diagnosed as having “O.P.C.” This is the big reveal at the end of Act I, where you actually name “it.” (By the way, I love this part of the play — very dramatic!) So Romi is literally psychotic. But there’s a deeper message here about the role of radicals in society: Romi has to have a break in order to disrupt the world in which she’s living. In being diagnosed, she’s actually diagnosing the culture!

2014/15 SEASON 617.547.8300 | americanrepertorytheater.org

OBERON

The Light Princess

between liberals and progressives. Those who believe change will come working inside a corporate patriarchal racist capitalist system and those who believe change will only come with a whole new system.

4

“How do we speak out with the passion, intensity, warning required without being identified as insane people?”

TPM: I want to pick up on that because the play can be read in many ways — in all the ways you’ve just described and in others as well. One of the themes is this intergenerational relationship between Smith (the mother) and Romi (her daughter). This woman, this liberal feminist, has raised her daughter to be open minded, to see the world in progressive ways and live in the world according to those values. But Smith also has this expectation that Romi will not live outside the box, much less from a garbage can.

And Romi has chosen to opt out because she sees this world that her mother’s generation has helped to create, and she isn’t buying it. What is the play saying about intergenerational relationships among women, mothers and daughters, at this moment in history? What is it saying, if anything, about the state of feminism?

EE: Right! And the question remains: is she psychotic?

That’s a big part of the play. Is she the crazy one, or the one who’s most in tune with what’s happening here?

TPM: So is Romi the heroine of the play?

EE: I don’t think that’s for me to say.

TPM: OK, let me ask you a slightly different question: does this play need a heroine?

EE: I think we have a very interesting split in time

EE: In this play I was really trying to unearth the

now. On the one hand, we have women who — rightly so — have been fighting forever to have power inside the system. They have been left out, marginalized, underpaid, unseen, and they want in!

On the other hand, we have a younger generation that is saying, “Why would I want to be part of a system where that growth, that escalation of consumption, that ambition, that hierarchy creates the incredible economic inequality and climate crisis that is destroying the planet?” I think the play is definitely at

dialectic, to make visible the arguments that are in many of our heads. I hope the play will get people to ask questions. To challenge assumptions, and break out of our denial. And I hope it will make us laugh.

That’s really important.

TIMOTHY PATRICK MCCARTHY AT A PANEL DISCUSSION FOR A.R.T.’S PRODUCTION OF ALL THE WAY

TPM: There are many interventions this play is making in the larger discourse and we’ve talked about a number of them. You are so profoundly and powerfully linked to The Vagina Monologues. You’re a feminist icon, and The Vagina Monologues is now a global phenomenon. You have inspired so many students — so many of my own students — and changed their lives. Students have been transformed by seeing The Vagina Monologues, by witnessing it, and by participating in it. But as an artist, you’ve done all this other work. Do you ever want to distance yourself from The Vagina Monologues? Do you think your plays — including O.P.C — will always be read, principally, through the lens of gender, women, sexuality? Does that bother you? Does it limit your other art? Are these issues you wrestle with?

EE: These are very good questions. None of us wants to be held up or stopped or limited by one stage of our work or career or seen through one lens. We are each so many people. Hopefully we’re all evolving.

I think being in a movement where I’ve worked for continued on page 6 >

PHOTO: GRETJEN HELENE PHOTOGRAPHY

O.P.C.

TPM: Yes! I can definitely relate.

americanrepertorytheater.org 2014/15 SEASON

O.P.C.

The Light Princess

OBERON

LOEB DRAMA CENTER 64 BrattLe St., Cambridge | OBERON 2 Arrow St., Cambridge

5

6

< continued from page 4

“In this play I was really trying to unearth the dialectic, to make visible the arguments that are in many of our heads. I hope the play will get people to ask questions.”

years to end violence against women has changed my consciousness. It’s made me understand that we can’t end violence against women unless we address poverty, racism, the environment, unless we address homophobia and transphobia, and look at these issues in a more interconnected and holistic way. Of course I will always in my heart and soul be a feminist because I know that when women are free and safe and equal and honored and cherished and thriving in their bodies and beings, all life will thrive as well. But that is not all I am. I have other concerns and curiosities. So I’m in a very exciting and also very destabilizing period in my own evolution because I don’t feel like I fit into any particular box any more.

Or maybe this is the organic evolution of feminism to what we are calling quantum feminism.

TPM: In closing, I want to ask you a couple of questions about your collaboration with the A.R.T. As you know, Diane Paulus is on quite a roll these days. She was just named one of Time’s 100 most influential people. What are you looking forward to in terms of your collaboration with the A.R.T., with Diane and her remarkable colleagues?

EE: I am thrilled to be working with Diane Paulus.

She is wildly imaginative and original, and the team at the A.R.T. is just fantastic. I feel very supported and encouraged. I can be much bolder, much more daring. The idea of having a community at Harvard, where we can put on this play and work with the Radcliffe Institute and other partners, and then bring in philosophers, economists, human rights workers, environmentalists, scientists to ask: How do we

EE: The people who inspire me are the grassroots women activists who I meet around the world.

Women in the Congo who have risen up and are transforming consciousness in the midst of war, in the midst of poverty, women like Christine SchulerDeschryver who are fierce, brave, loving, powerful leaders. Women in Afghanistan. I have an adopted daughter, Zoya, who just opened an amazing place there where hundreds of women are being educated.

Or Agnes Pareiyo, a woman who has been fighting female genital mutilation in Kenya for years. She opened safe houses, created alternative rituals to the cutting and has prevented thousands of girls from being cut. I think about grassroots women who are holding the world together, running shelters for battered women, fighting off fracking and pipelines in their local towns, demanding better pay and conditions for waiters and domestic workers, women who lay their bodies down to stop dams or mountain removal or horrific conditions in factories. These women are the future. I take my lead from them.

Timothy Patrick McCarthy holds a joint faculty appointment in History and Literature and at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he directs the Sexuality, Gender and Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He is author or editor of five books, including The Radical Reader: A Documentary Anthology of the American Radical Tradition (New Press, 2003) and Stonewall’s Children: Living Queer History in the Age of Liberation, Loss, and Love (forthcoming from the New Press). An award-winning scholar, teacher, and activist, he is currently at work on his first play, Four Harriets, in collaboration with the A.R.T.

PHOTO: GRETJEN HELENE PHOTOGRAPHY

O.P.C. The Light Princess 2014/15 SEASON 617.547.8300 | americanrepertorytheater.org

OBERON

DIANE PAULUS AND EVE ENSLER AT THE OPENING OF A.R.T.’S THE SHAPE SHE MAKES

use this play to expand the current boundaries of our thinking? What I’ve always loved about theater is that it can ignite discourse, activism, and create revolutions. I witnessed The Vagina Monologues give birth to the global movement V-Day and then to One Billion Rising, so I know firsthand the power of theater. How do we use this play to really activate and amplify and support all the really good environmental movements that already exist? How do we push everyone to be bolder and be more imaginative and daring? How do we broaden the discourse and create uprisings in thought and action?

TPM: That’s wonderful. Last question: who are your inspirations? Who are the people you keep with you as you do your work and create your art?

americanrepertorytheater.org 2014/15 SEASON

O.P.C.

The Light Princess

OBERON

LOEB DRAMA CENTER 64 BrattLe St., Cambridge | OBERON 2 Arrow St., Cambridge

7

O.P.C. The Light Princess OBERON

by Robert Duffley

A comic collision between radical environmentalism and mainstream liberalism, Eve Ensler’s new play O.P.C. (“obsessive political correctness”) asks important questions about what we throw away and why. In the play’s debate about where our food comes from — and where it goes when we don’t finish it — global politics meet advocacy efforts with close ties to Cambridge.

According to a 2012 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an international research and lobbying group, forty percent of food in the United States goes uneaten. “This not only means that Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year,” the report states, “but also that the uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills as the single largest component of U.S. municipal solid waste, where it accounts for a large portion of U.S. methane emissions.” The NRDC estimates that reducing food waste by just fifteen percent would be enough to feed more than twenty-five million Americans.

Enter Romi Weil, one of O.P.C.’s dueling protagonists, and a proud freegan. Freeganism, one of the topics at play in O.P.C., is a real movement that takes the NRDC statistics as a call for radical action. Combining “free” and “vegan,” freegans eschew capitalism as an irredeemable producer of environmental

destruction. The group’s most ardent members renounce currency entirely and live off food unwanted by restaurants, supermarkets, and individuals — often edible, but unsaleable because of imperfections or sell-by dates.

Most of the press around freegans has centered on the fact that, often, this food comes from dumpsters. Freegan.info, the online hub of the grassroots movement, describes this practice as “urban foraging.” For freegans, urban foraging, or dumpster diving, is the ultimate condemnation of global capitalism: proving through their own lives that we throw away enough to live on when an estimated one in six Americans lacks a secure supply of food.

“Despite our society’s sterotypes about garbage,” freegan. info claims, “the goods recovered by freegans are safe, useable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition, a symptom of a throwaway culture that encourages us to constantly replace our older goods with newer ones.” The website organizes “trash tours” in major metropolitan areas, which introduce converts to the city’s most bounteous waste sites. According to a New York Times profile of the movement, these sites frequently include bakeries and supermarkets which, as common practice, keep goods instore for much shorter periods than their actual shelf life. continued on page 10 >

PHOTO: MARRIED TO POTATOES

2014/15 SEASON 617.547.8300 | americanrepertorytheater.org

8

TALKING TRASH AT A.R.T.

americanrepertorytheater.org 2014/15 SEASON

O.P.C.

The Light Princess

OBERON

LOEB DRAMA CENTER 64 BrattLe St., Cambridge | OBERON 2 Arrow St., Cambridge

9

10

“O.P.C. asks if the freegans are right and it’s time for a more earthconscious paradigm, or if there’s still time for existing institutions to make a difference.”

SOURCE: FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION 2011

In O.P.C., Smith Weil (Romi’s mother and a Senatorial candidate) has a hard time deciding whether to be disgusted, frustrated, or sympathetic to her daughter’s lifestyle. Criticisms of freeganism have centered on the idea that, as scavengers in today’s urbanized economy, freegans are directly dependent on the system they revile. Additionally, critics have pointed out that the movement’s looselymixed environmentalist, anarchist, and humanitarian elements are quick to name economic evils, but disinclined to offer new solutions.

In a 2013 article about freeganism, NRDC project scientist Dana Gunders argues that the problem is more one of logistics than stereotypical cold, capitalist ideologies. Though stores and restaurants might like to donate their extra food, they don’t have the resources to coordinate the processing and delivery of perishable goods already beyond legal saleability.

Gunders praises groups that focus their energies on bridging this organizational gap. Food Not Bombs (founded in Cambridge), partners with local stores to collect and distribute surplus food for free vegan meals in public places.

Smith Weil is reluctant to take any food Romi offers her (bruschetta is one of her daughter’s favorite freegan recipes), but as a progressive politician, she is at the same time interested in getting her country thinking about its food waste. Juxtaposing these two perspectives, O.P.C. asks if the freegans are right and it’s time for a more earth-conscious paradigm, or if there’s still time for existing institutions to make a difference. As a politician and an individual, Smith comes to confront the role of the environment in her life, her campaign, and even her wardrobe.

The play comes at a timely moment in America’s national debate, but also as, on a local level, Cambridge has started to consider seriously these issues. Just this April, the city launched a pilot program for curbside composting. With eight hundred participating households in North Cambridge, the year-long pilot will test an organic waste removal program under consideration for the entire city.

Participating residents sort their trash into three bins (a green organic waste one, in addition to the usual two), and the organic waste is taken to composting

FOOD CONSUMED VERSUS FOOD LOSS* GRAIN PRODUCTS

38% LOSS

CONSUMED 62%

SEAFOOD

50% LOSS

CONSUMED 50%

FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

52% LOSS

CONSUMED 48%

MEAT

22% LOSS

CONSUMED 78%

MILK

20% LOSS

CONSUMED 80%

* Percentages calculated collectively for USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

FREEGANS RECLAIMING FOOD OUTSIDE A SUPERMARKET

facilities outside the city, rather than landfills.

The intiative comes as one considered route to the city’s goal of reducing waste by thirty percent of 2008 levels by 2020, and eighty percent by 2050.

Should Cambridge implement the program, it will join Seattle, San Francisco, and Nantucket as a local government implementing environmental strategies long practiced on an individual basis. According to a 2010 article in the Boston Globe, Nantucket’s mandatory composting program has allowed the island to send only eight percent of its waste to landfills, keeping more than sixty thousand tons of methane out of the atmosphere.

Hoping to help lead the next generation of thought about these issues, Harvard recently announced the introduction of a new secondary field in Energy and Environment. A coordinated effort between Harvard’s Environmental Science and Public Policy Program and the Harvard University Center for the Environment, the program will allow undergraduate students to explore issues surrounding energy and the environment from the perspective of their primary discipline.

Thinking about the environment from its own vantage point, A.R.T. will combine its production of O.P.C. with several off-stage initiatives. An art installation in the Loeb Drama Center’s public spaces will engage with themes of environment and sustainability. A.R.T. will also curate a speaker series investigating the issues and questions at the core of the play. Engaging experts on ecological policy, our food economy, and environmental activism from Harvard and beyond, these post-performance events will actively involve audiences in discussions about some of the play’s central questions. Are we as a society doing enough about food waste? And if not, as recent figures indicate with alarming surety, how much do we need to change?

Robert Duffley is a second-year dramaturgy student in the A.R.T./Moscow Art Theater School Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.

PHOTO: MURDO MACLEOD

2014/15 SEASON 617.547.8300 | americanrepertorytheater.org

OBERON

The Light Princess

O.P.C.

< continued from page 8

americanrepertorytheater.org 2014/15 SEASON

O.P.C.

The Light Princess

OBERON

LOEB DRAMA CENTER 64 BrattLe St., Cambridge | OBERON 2 Arrow St., Cambridge

11

O.P.C.

THE LIGHT PRINCESS

December 6, 2014 - January 4, 2015 The Light Princess

Book by Lila Rose Kaplan Music by Mike Pettry Directed by Allegra Libonati Choreography by Jeff and Rick Kuperman Staged to great acclaim last season, this adaptation of George MacDonald’s classic fairy

OBERON

tale follows a young princess cursed to live without gravity. Featuring actors from the A.R.T. Institute Class of 2015, this playful musical combines wit and humor, music and movement, to delight both children and their families.

SOARING BACK TO CAMBRIDGE

12

Last year’s world premiere family musical The Light Princess will land back in Cambridge this holiday season. A high-flying adventure combining gravity-defying choreography with an original score, the show brings George MacDonald’s classic fairy tale to breath-taking life.

The story follows a princess who has lost her physical and emotional gravity to a witch’s curse. Her parents and the kingdom’s wisemen try everything to keep her on the ground: weights, ribbons, and a whole string of suitors. But nothing works. If she doesn’t find a way to get back on the ground by her sixteenth birthday, she might float away forever.

Featuring graduate students in the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training, the show casts a theatrical spell on a vibrant classic of children’s literature. George MacDonald, the original story’s author, could be called the grandfather of modern fairy tales. His writings have captured imaginations for over a century, influencing the work of Lewis Carroll, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Philip Pullman. His stories inspire compassion and originality, as well as a sense of adventure, in readers of all ages.

Born in Scotland in 1824, MacDonald worked as a Congregational minister and professor. He began writing poems and stories to amuse his large family — with his wife Louisa, he had eleven children in all. In his career, MacDonald published more than fifty books. His fantasy novels The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and The Princess and Curdie (1883) remain popular today, while his best-known fairy tales are collected in Phantastes (1858) and Adela Cathcart (1864).

MacDonald believed that fairy tales could rejuvenate a

real world in need of magic, awakening and celebrating the imagination. Full of dreams and visions, his stories frequently represent a character’s journey into his or her own subconscious.

In a landscape of tall castles, deep mines, and vast libraries, MacDonald’s characters (and his readers) find an inner strength.

The Light Princess is just such a journey. Struggling to find her gravity, the Princess must learn empathy. Her physical lightness functions as a playful metaphor for this challenge. And, just like the Princess, the characters with gravity also come to discover a capacity for imagination. MacDonald’s allegory is just as much about what keeps us up as what ties us down: triumph, in the end, is finding a balance.

After its run at A.R.T., the production will be presented at the New Victory Theater in New York City. Located on 42nd St, the New Victory Theater is one of the only theaters in the U.S. devoted exclusively to developing and presenting theater for young audiences. In 2012, the theater received a special Drama Desk Award for “providing enchanting, sophisticated theater that appeals to the child in all of us, and for nurturing a love of theater in young people.”

Robert Duffley is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./Moscow Art Theater School Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.

The Light Princess will play from December 6, 2014 to January 4, 2015 at A.R.T., and at The New Victory Theater in New York from February 27 to March 8, 2015.

PHOTO: EVGENIA ELISEEVA

2014/15 SEASON 617.547.8300 | americanrepertorytheater.org

by Robert Duffley

americanrepertorytheater.org 2014/15 SEASON

Giuseppe Verdi | Anya Matanovic AS VIOLETTA

MUSIC BY

OCTOBER 10, 12, 15, 17, 19 | 2014 Giuseppe Verdi | Anya Matanovic AS VIOLETTA

Photo by Matthu Placek Photo by Matthu Placek

Photo by Lu Zang

Photo by Kristin Hoebermann Photo by Kristin Hoebermann

Photo by Lu Zang

Photo by Arielle DonesonPhoto by Arielle Doneson

MUSIC BY

LA TRAVIATA

AS ISOLT

NOVEMBER 19, 20, 22, 23 | 2014 Frank Martin | Chelsea Basler AS ISOLT

MUSIC BY

LeošLOVE Janácek | Elaine Alvarez THE POTION NOVEMBER 19, 20, 22, 23 | 2014 KÁTYA KABANOVÁ

MUSIC BY

AS KÁTYA

MARCH 13, 15, 18, 20, 22 | 2015 Leoš Janácek | Elaine Alvarez AS KÁTYA

MUSIC BY MUSIC BY

MUSIC BY

KÁTYA KABANOVÁ DON GIOVANNI

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Jennifer Johnson Cano AS DONNA ELVIRA MARCH 13, 15, 18, 20, 22 | 2015 MAY 1, 3, 6, 8, 10 | 2015 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Jennifer Johnson Cano AS DONNA ELVIRA

DON GIOVANNI

3, 6, 8, 10 | 2015 Subscriptions onMAY sale1,now.

Single tickets on sale July 31.

BLO.ORG | 617.542.6772 Subscriptions on sale now. Single tickets on sale July 31.

BLO.ORG | 617.542.6772

LOEB DRAMA CENTER 64 BrattLe St., Cambridge | OBERON 2 Arrow St., Cambridge

| Chelsea Basler Frank Martin LA TRAVIATA OCTOBER 10, 12, 15, 17, 19 | 2014 THE LOVE POTION

MUSIC BY

13

OPC OBERON

The Light Princess

THE DONKEY SHOW, 2009-PRESENT

OBERON: 5 YEARS ON THE SCENE OBERON is the second stage and club theater of the A.R.T. In addition to hosting and

developing performances by hundreds of local and emerging artists each year, it has also

2014/15 SEASON 617.547.8300 | americanrepertorytheater.org

been home to some of A.R.T.’s most innovative productions, including The Shape She Makes,

14

The Lily’s Revenge, Prometheus Bound, Cabaret, and The Donkey Show.

AMANDA PALMER AND THE CAST OF CABARET, 2010

LENA HALL AND UZO ADUBA IN PROMETHEUS BOUND, 2011

ACT III OF THE LILY’S REVENGE, 2012

americanrepertorytheater.org 2014/15 SEASON

Every Saturday night, audiences can also catch The Donkey Show at OBERON. Conceived by Randy Weiner and directed by A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus, this celebrated smash hit continues for its sixth season, bringing audiences the ultimate disco fantasy — a crazy circus of mirror balls and feathered divas, of roller skaters and hustle queens, inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

SEÁN MARTIN HINGSTON AND SUSAN MISNER IN THE SHAPE SHE MAKES, 2014

November 18 – 23, 2014 Written by and featuring Ruby Wax

pool (no water) is a visceral play about the fragility of friendship and the jealousy inspired by success.

SHIDA A New Musical In Development November 5 – 7, 2014 Book, Music, & Lyrics by Jeannette Bayardelle Directed by Andy Sandberg Broadway veteran Jeannette Bayardelle (The Color Purple) returns to A.R.T. after 2010’s Best of Both Worlds with her inspirational one-woman musical set to a soulful score of rock, jazz, R&B, and gospel.

CURRENT ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE TOUCH PERFORMANCE ART’S ACOUSTICAELECTRONICA, 2012-PRESENT

SANE NEW WORLD

Inspired by her book and drawing from her own struggles with depression and a Masters in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy from Oxford University, Sane New Word is a manual on how to survive the 21st century, and helps us understand why we sabotage our own sanity.

THE MIKADO March 31 – April 5, 2015 Presented by The Hypocrites Directed by Sean Graney The Hypocrites return with their vibrant and zany reimagining of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

THE HYPOCRITES’ PIRATES OF PENZANCE, 2013

LOEB DRAMA CENTER 64 BrattLe St., Cambridge | OBERON 2 Arrow St., Cambridge

In addition to supporting local artists, OBERON has also become a destination for artistic development for performers from across the country and world. This season, the following companies and artists will perform at OBERON: One Year Lease Theater Company from New York; Jeannette Bayardelle, last seen in A.R.T.’s 2010 Best of Both Worlds; Ruby Wax, returning to OBERON from London with her new one-woman show; and Chicago-based company The Hypocrites, seen at A.R.T. in the 2013 production of Pirates of Penzance, presenting their inimitable take on The Mikado.

Ruby Wax:

October 15 – 18, 2014

By Mark Ravenhill Presented by One Year Lease Theater Company Directed by Ianthe Demos

OBERON

PHOTOS: MARCUS STERN; GRETJEN HELENE PHOTOGRAPHY; ROBERT TERRY PHOTOGRAPHY; EVGENIA ELISEEVA; WALTER MCBRIDE AND MARIELLE SOLAN

OBERON recently launched a multi-year program of work and mentorship with three local performance groups: ToUch Performance Art, Liars & Believers, and Boston Circus Guild. During their residencies, these artists will not only have access to A.R.T. resources, but also opportunities to collaborate with one another and A.R.T. staff on both artistic and operational goals.

POOL (NO WATER)

The Light Princess

Since its inception in 2009, OBERON has become a destination for theater and nightlife in Harvard Square, acting as an incubator for local and visiting talent, and expanding the boundaries of the theatrical form. The venue offers a wide range of opportunities to experience the work of individual artists and companies who are using this unique space in innovative ways.

O.P.C.

JEANNETTE BAYARDELLE (BEST OF BOTH WORLDS) IN SHIDA

15