Stageview march 2015 issuu

MAR 2015 - MAY 2015

SYRACUSE STAGE: |1| SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD |3| OTHER DESERT CITIES SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY DRAMA: |5| MEASURE FOR MEASURE |7| AVENUE Q

R h es u p m e a c n t it for y T

o fully appreciate Sizwe Banzi is Dead, it helps to understand the encompassing oppressiveness of South Africa’s apartheid era Pass Laws.

Apartheid essentially established and enforced a wildly unequal distribution of land in South Africa. Minority whites controlled 90% of the land, including all major cities, while blacks (called Bantus) were restricted to ten disparate rural reserves scattered throughout the country.

These so-called “homelands” were assigned by ethnicity to deliberately fragment the black population and prevent alliances among the various groups. Overcrowding, poverty, and lack of opportunity came to define life in the “homelands”.

Consequently, many blacks had no alternative but to leave the reserves to seek work in white areas in order to support their families. The Pass Laws were enacted and strictly enforced to restrict movement by blacks in white areas.

Chief among the provisions of the Pass Laws was the requirement that all blacks over the age of 16 carry at all times a government issued identification called a pass book. The pass book contained personal information, a photograph, race description, and endorsements from government

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officials and/or white employers indicating where the individual could live and work.

Black South Africans were not permitted to remain in white areas for more than 72 hours without authorization. To do so was a criminal offense, and police could demand to see a pass book at any time without reason. Failure to produce a pass book, or producing a pass book lacking the proper authorization, led to immediate arrest. Between 1952 and 1986 (the end of apartheid) millions of individuals were arrested under the laws.

Sizwe Banzi is Dead was created in 1972

by Athol Fugard, Winston Ntshona, and John Kani. The three men developed the play by improvising situations based on Kani and Ntshona’s lives. (Kani and Ntshona are black; Fugard is white.)

Consequently, while the topic is deadly serious, the play is highly comedic and lively, as the characters attempt to make sense of the absurdity governing so much of their lives. Throughout, there is a sense of comradery and shared hardship that the audience is invited to share.

It is within the oppressive environment of the Pass Laws that Sizwe Banzi is Dead takes place. Sizwe Banzi is a young man who has left his wife and four children in King William’s Town to seek work in Port Elizabeth. Having had no success and his time limit up, his options are appalling: stay and continue looking for work and risk arrest and the fine and imprisonment it comes with, or return to King William’s Town and watch his wife and children waste “away their one and only life in dust and poverty.” Unexpectedly, a third option appears, but it comes with an unusual and highly personal cost.

As Kani, who directs this current production, notes, the play “hit a raw nerve with our audiences”. It also attracted the attention of the Secret Police, and that attention would figure prominently in the production history of Sizwe Banzi is Dead.

After performances in various town halls and one in Athol Fugard’s garage, the three men planned to premiere Sizwe Banzi in October of 1972 at South Africa’s first “non-racial” theatre, The Space Theatre in Cape Town. The police closed the theatre on the scheduled opening night.

Consequently, the official premiere took place about a year later outside South Africa, at London’s Royal Court Theatre,

where before long, it inspired anti-apartheid demonstrations. The production, directed

by Fugard and starring Kani and Ntshona, was so successful that it transferred, along with a companion piece The Island, to the Long Wharf Theatre in Connecticut before moving to Broadway.

Sizwe Banzi and The Island ran for 159 performances on Broadway and in an unprecedented move Kani and Ntshona were jointly awarded the 1975 Tony Award for Best Actor. Then, from the heights of international success, the actors were thrust to depths of a South African prison. Upon returning to their homeland, Kani and Ntshona were arrested and spent 23 days in solitary confinement. Only a major outcry from the international arts community secured their release.

Since that time, Sizwe Banzi is Dead has been revived numerous times, often with Kani and Ntshona reprising their roles. It is now regarded as a classic of South African theatre. The production that opens at Syracuse Stage on February 27 involves collaboration with two prestigious theatres:

The Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ. The production has added significance because in serving as director, Kani has an opportunity to work with his son, Atandwa Kani, a leading actor in South Aftica today, who assumes the role originally created by his father. The play that spoke so eloquently of the everyday struggles of so many speaks again through and to a new generation, many of whom were not even born when apartheid was the law of the land.

“Sizwe Banzi became a statement that articulated the anger of black people against these laws,” says the elder Kani. “It is a play about apartheid, about freedom, about liberation, and about standing up and having your voice heard.”

But, he adds, the play has strong resonance for audiences today. “Sizwe transcends time, location, geography, even gender. It’s about the universal struggle of identity, of the dignity of the human being, and the respect for humanity.”

As South African critic Janet Smith noted in her review of the play at the Market Theatre: “There are still battles for freedom all over the world which could be mapped onto this play and find relevance today.”

The arrival of Sizwe Banzi in Syracuse marks a continuation of Stage’s partnership with South African theatres that began when Tim Bond’s production of The Brothers Size transferred to the Market and the Baxter Theatres in 2012. At that time, Bond and managing director Jeff Woodward indicated their desire to establish an exchange that would bring South African productions to Syracuse. Sizwe Banzi fulfills that desire.

The play also marks the first collaboration between Syracuse Stage and Princeton’s McCarter Theatre Center, a Tony Awardwinning regional theatre.

- Joseph Whelan

FEB. 25 - MAR. 15 wed. FEB 25 7:30 pm p thur. FEB 26 7:30 pm p fri. FEB 27 8 pm op sat. FEB 28 3 pm, 8 pm sun. MAR 1 2 pm pl wed. MAR 4

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wed. MAR 11 7:30 pm thur. MAR 12 7:30 pm pl fri. MAR 13 8 pm sat. MAR 14 3 pm ad, 8 pm sun. MAR 15 2 pm o p = preview op = opening d = discussion s = ASL interpreted o = open captioning ad = audio described h = happy hour pl = prologue w = Wed@1 PRESENTING SPONSOR:

SPONSORS:

Elinor Spring-Mills & Darvin Varon

MEDIA SPONSORS:

PHOTOS: ABOVE JOHN KANI OPPOSITE PAGE MNCEDISI SHABANGU (L.), ATANDWA KANI (R.) PHOTOS BY MATT PILSNER.

SEASON SPONSOR:

SYRACUSE STAGE | 2

POLITICS ARE PERSONAL Jon Robin Baitz on Other Desert Cities

Playwright Jon Robin Baitz

Other Desert Cities opened off-Broadway to critical acclaim in 2011, and moved quickly to Broadway at the Booth Theatre later that year. It earned playwright Jon Robin Baitz the Outer Critics Circle Award, a New York Times Critics’ Pick and, in 2012, it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony nominee for Best Play. In a review of the world premiere, The New York Times said it “brings to mind the kind of plays New York audiences regularly enjoyed from the 1920s through the ’50s: literate, thoughtful, well-tailored topical dramas in which people spoke with a fluency, wittiness and sense of timing we only wished we could command in real life.”

PRESENTING SPONSOR

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SPONSORS

MEDIA SPONSORS

SEASON SPONSOR

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ther Desert Cities concerns the Wyeth family, two generations, parents and children, and the tumult that arises when daughter Brooke arrives for a Christmas gathering in Palm Springs toting the manuscript of a family memoir she has written. Parents, Polly and Lyman, are prominent California Republicans with ties going back to the Reagan years. Brother Trip has found success as a producer of a reality television show. Brooke, who has one published novel, has been struggling of late and the completed memoir represents the end of a long and unproductive period.

However, her account of an episode from her youth alarms her parents who express serious reservations about publishing the book. The holiday weather outside may be delightful, but inside a tempest is brewing.

“As an artist, I find this play poses very potent and troubling questions,” notes Tim Bond, who directs the production. “When is seeking the truth about family secrets off limits? Who determines what family stories get told? What is a writer’s responsibility to her family and to her art?”

Bond expects the play to have great resonance with audience members. “I suspect nearly every family has secrets that have been deemed too dangerous or damaging to be spoken, let alone written about and made public,” he explains. “The consequences of maintaining family secrets or seeking to reveal explosive truths are seemingly catastrophic to the psychic survival of the family and its members.” In the play, Baitz addresses this dilemma in ways that are humorous and harrowing—much like family life.

Other Desert Cities marked the debut of a Baitz play on Broadway, but he has a long and celebrated career as both a playwright and screenwriter. Baitz is one of the most produced living playwrights on American stages right now and stands among the most respected writers in the country, known for his well-crafted, powerful plays that have earned their place in the annals of American drama. At a recent production of Other Desert Cities at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, he spoke about his initial inspiration for this family drama, and the intersection of politics and personal life: Jon Robin Baitz: Initially, I was interested in all of the interconnected impasses that had occurred in American life and my own at the same time. Culturally in the time period – the play starts in 2004 – the smoke was starting to clear from the first moments of a long war, and sides were very vividly drawn in the country. There was a sense that there had been a sea change within the conservative movement and that there was a kind of nostalgia for the old Republicans – Reagan Republicans, and prior to that, Eisenhower Republicans. This new kind of conservatism is fascinating to me. It seems to be very aggressive and involve a lot of new language like “preemptive” and “unilateralism.” And I wondered how that had happened and I also wondered how the old Republicans were reacting to it.

At the same time I was involved in figuring out my own relationship with California, which is my natural habitat – but one that I don’t have a very peaceful relationship with – and I started to see this play. The Palm Springs in the play is a kind of battleground, but a battleground at the end of

America, where all the promise of the West has been frozen in time. There were these anachronistic Americans living in a kind of cinematic library of old Hollywood movies, old versions of Western success. They were flitting around in my head, as was my own increasing anxiety about the role of the writer in the lives of others, and the responsibility that a writer has to himself and the people he loves. I had recently created and left a TV show – Brothers and Sisters – in Los Angeles, and sworn never to go back to that life, and I thought I’d try and do some of the things that Brothers and Sisters would not permit me to do: to write about the family as a narrative, and a certain kind of privileged America, which is acknowledged in the play.

I strive to find the exact point in a narrative where the personal and the political intersect perfectly, because I find the two things completely inseparable. America is currently in a giant political debate, and you see a kind of war going on that’s actually a very old war. I’m trying to mirror that in the play. Our elections are about the soul of this country, which is what makes them so harrowing. It’s like every four years there’s open heart surgery here, and having had heart surgery I can’t conceive of doing it again and again throughout one’s life. I see the country as really broken, much as the family in the play is breaking.

APR. 8 - APR. 26 wed. APR 8 7:30 pm p thur. APR 9 7:30 pm p fri. APR 10 8 pm op sat. APR 11 3 pm, 8 pm sun. APR 12 2 pm pl wed. APR 15 2 pm o, w, 7:30 pm thur. APR 16 7:30 pm h fri. APR 17 8 pm sat. APR 18 3 pm pl,s, 8 pm sun. APR 19 2 pm, 7 pm d tues. APR 21 7:30 pm wed. APR 22 7:30 pm thur. APR 23 7:30 pm pl fri. APR 24 8 pm sat. APR 25 3 pm ad, 8 pm sun. APR 26 2 pm o p = preview op = opening d = discussion s = ASL interpreted o = open captioning ad = audio described h = happy hour pl = prologue w = Wed@1

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WHERE FREUD MEETSS T E A M P

UNK

In some sense, Freud has to be seen as a prose version of Shakespeare, the Freudian map of the mind being in fact Shakespearean. There’s a lot of resentment about this on Freud’s part because I think he recognizes it. What we think of as Freudian psychology is really a Shakespearean invention, and, for the most part, Freud is merely codifying it. This shouldn’t be too surprising. Freud himself says,"The poets were here before me,” and the poet in particular is necessarily Shakespeare.

Harold Bloom, The Paris Review, 1991

Shakespeare wrote Measure for Measure in 1604. It immediately preceded three of the four great tragedies—Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, which were written in succession between 1604 and 1606. Measure for Measure is often regarded as Shakespeare’s last comedy, his farewell to the form, but it belongs more comfortably to a sub-group of so-called “problem” plays that includes All’s Well that Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida, written just prior to Measure for Measure.

These plays contain a blend of forms: comedy, tragedy, and even elements of the later romances. At the time, they would have been considered wildly experimental for their genre bending innovations. Collectively, they mark a period of transition in Shakespeare’s work.

Measure for Measure is also considered an urban play, set in a Vienna overcome by licentiousness and corruption.

It is city of shadows and secrets fueled

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by sexuality—deeply repressed and openly expressed—and governed by a puzzling Duke, whose inexplicably odd behavior sets the play in motion.

Having recognized the moral decline of his city, and feeling himself culpable in that decline because of his lax enforcement of certain very rigid laws, the Duke announces his intention to leave Vienna for an indeterminate time, and to turn over his authority to a trusted aid, Escalus, and a young man of notable rectitude, Angelo.

Then, instead of leaving the city, the Duke disguises himself as a Friar, the better to observe what transpires in his “absence”.

The Duke, and Shakespeare as playwright, offer no reason for this decision, nor is there any explanation offered as to why the Duke remains in disguise, clandestinely directing events with potentially deadly consequences, when Angelo proves not quite to be the moral stalwart he professed

himself to be. The Duke’s motivation is an unsolved and unresolved puzzle that invites speculation. What psychological game is he playing, this “Duke of dark corners”, and in the city of Sigmund Freud, no less?

As far as is known, Shakespeare never visited Vienna. Most likely, setting the play there allowed him to write about London, with its plentiful brothels and public houses, at a time when the succession of James I and bubbling conflicts with the Puritans were creating uncertainty. But the play’s psychological richness and Vienna’s association with Freud enticed director Celia Madeoy to move the action forward a few centuries. With her design team (scenic designer Maria Marrero, costumes Simon Brett and lighting Hyrum Judkins), Madeoy envisions a Vienna in the early 1880s, with visual references to such contemporary throwbacks as the TV series Penny Dreadful and the film versions of Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Downey, Jr. and

Presented by Syracuse University’s Department of Drama in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare. March 27-April 12 in the Loft Theatre at 820 East Genesee Street. General admission seating: $16-$18, available at 315-443-3275 or by visiting http://vpa.syr.edu/drama.

Gustave Dore's "The Inferno Canto 33", served as inspiration for the scenic design for Measure for Measure.

Jude Law. This Measure for Measure is set in a post-industrial, Steampunk world where secret societies flourish and a vibrant underworld contrasts sharply with a suddenly imposed moral rigidity.

“There is a great debate and great rhetoric in the play,” says Madeoy, who notes that Shakespeare uses prose as well as verse in many scenes. “Prose is the language of lawyers, of logic and reason. We have characters twisting words to try to get their way.”

Chief among these is Angelo, the selfproclaimed pillar of moral righteousness who suddenly finds himself overwhelmed by lust for the novitiate Isabella: “What’s this? What’s this? Is this her fault or mine?/The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most, ha?” As Angelo succumbs to his desire, he navigates linguistic corkscrews to find justification for the depraved bargain he tries to impose on Isabella—her brother’s life in return for satisfying his sexual demands.

Although initially Isabella seems overmatched, she rises to the challenge, linguistically and morally, and the scenes with Angelo become power plays between individuals of keen intelligence. Angelo may have the authority, but Isabella, as one critic notes, is a woman “who knows her world and her men” and has the courage to maintain her “personal integrity in a sordid world.”

Madeoy further explains that because it is freer than verse, prose serves comedy very well, and as a problem play Measure for Measure oscillates between very broad, low comedy and deadly serious circumstances. For instance, as Isabella’s brother Claudio awaits an unjust execution, a noted criminal named Barnadine forestalls his own death by simply refusing to be executed at the proscribed time. “I have been drinking hard all night, and I will have more time to prepare me, or they shall beat out my brains with billets. I will not consent to die this day, that’s certain.”

There are two kinds of chaos or lunacy afoot in Vienna and in the play; one is wrought of strict rigidity, and the other of gross disorder. Nothing it seems is in balance. Measure does not meet measure.

The title itself of course comes from the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you again.” This same consideration of justice, Madeoy explains, underlies the play and invites any number of questions: Why do some people live for the sacred and some for the profane?

When should we temper justice with mercy? Who can claim the authority to punish sin?

Profound questions indeed, that every age must measure.

- Joseph Whelan

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What Can You Do

When It Sucks to Be You? W

hat can you do when you’re just out of college (or law school), living in your parents’ apartment, working at a dead-end job, and basically believe that it sucks to be you?

Easy.

Write a musical starring Sesame Street-like puppets that opens offBroadway, moves to Broadway, picks up three Tony Awards, and moves back off-Broadway where it continues to delight audiences.

Fantastical as it may sound, this has been the journey of Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez and their wildly successful Avenue Q. (Marx and Lopez share equal billing for original concept, music, and lyrics for Avenue Q. The book is by Jeff Whitty).

Marx and Lopez met at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Writing workshop in New York. Marx, recently out of law school and living in an apartment owned by his parents, was working as an intern. Lopez, just out Yale, had a temp job and lived with his parents. Avenue Q reflects the state of their lives at the time.

“All we knew is that we were writing a show about ourselves and how

much it sucked to be us. Neither of us was making any money or really feeling like an adult yet,” the pair explained in an interview with Gothamist. “But we sort of had it good. Lots of our friends were worse off—at least we got to live in Manhattan and convince ourselves we were being productive while taking classes. Our friends were living in squalor out in Brooklyn or Queens, commuting, working all day long in entry level jobs they hated, wondering how the hell they got there. So we decided to write a show about the situation.”

As transposed to the stage, that situation follows a recent college graduate named Princeton as he moves to a rundown apartment “all the way out on Avenue Q” where he meets an assortment of colorful characters including Kate Monster, Rod the Republican, Trekkie Monster, and Lucy the Slut, who more or less help him find his purpose in life.

Not unlike like his creators, Princeton is searching for answers to the musical question “What do you do with a BA in English?” More than one observer has noted that Avenue Q zeroes in on a generation that has been perhaps influenced a little too much by the sunny attitudes of the

Muppets. Repeatedly told how special they are all through school and given trophies for merely showing up at athletic events, once out of college they find themselves lost. As Princeton sings: “I can’t pay the bills yet / ‘Cause I have no skills yet. / The world is a big scary place.”

“I think the show presents very real and familiar challenges people face, especially young people out in the ‘real world’ for the first time in their lives. Where do you live? What do you do? Who are your friends?” explains the show’s director Brian Cimmet. “Avenue Q resonates strongly with me because I see many of the same conflicts and issues of the world that the show chooses to highlight.”

Through its various incarnations, offBroadway, Broadway, and back off again, Avenue Q has received rave reviews from critics. Most descriptions include some reference to “fresh”, “funny”, “freshly funny”, and/ or “sweetly satirical”, all of which certainly apply. It is laugh out loud entertainment that manages to be quite edgy in no small part due to the puppets who, the writers say, can get away with singing and saying things that might not be as palatable coming from real people.

Presented by Syracuse University’s Department of Drama in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Avenue Q: Music and lyrics, original concept by Robert Lopez; music and lyrics, original concept by Jeff Marx; book by Jeff Whitty. April 24–May 9, in the Storch Theatre at 820 East Genesee Street. Tickets are $16-$18, available at 315-443-3275 or by visiting http://vpa.syr.edu/drama.

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“We did feel that puppets have a certain ‘permission’ to sing that humans don’t necessarily have nowadays,” Marx and Lopez explained. “Because puppets are so cute and friendly, they have a wider latitude to go further than humans could really go without being distasteful. Sometimes thoughts and words that would probably be offensive in a human’s mouth are more acceptable—and even funnier— coming out of a puppet.”

Cimmet, who attended the same BMI Musical Theater Workshop as the show’s creators, recalls hearing an early presentation by Marx and Lopez of the song “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”.

“I couldn’t tell whether I thought it was hysterically funny or a slap in the face that said, ‘Hey, you think these issues don’t pertain to normal everyday you? Surprise! They do!’

The songs are so honest and so accurate and so personally accessible that they make me think — and that’s exactly the kind of art I like.”

D’Abruzzo, an original cast member of Avenue Q and a Sesame Street veteran.

Prior to starting rehearsal, D’Abruzzo coached the cast in a workshop and she will continue to work with them through the rehearsal process.

Cimmet is also collaborating with Heath Hanlin of the Transmedia Department to create animated videos that will serve as transitions between the scenes. Cimmet notes that video is playing an increasingly important role in theatre design in the 21st century, and he is pleased that Avenue Q affords an opportunity for inter-department connectivity within the University.

For the production to succeed, though, there is one challenge Cimmet knows he and the cast cannot fail to meet.

“It’s got to be funny,” he says. “This show is blunt and forward and uses music and comedy to make its points.

There’s no sneaking around it."

- Joseph Whelan

He adds, “And presenting these common (and often private and solitary) challenges in the joyous context of children’s television-style education makes it accessible, funny, familiar, and comforting.”

Q Gade According to Avenue Q creators Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez, an early attempt to write a musical for puppets yielded songs for a never-produced Muppet movie they called Kermit, Prince of Denmark. As they explained in an interview published in Gothamist: It was about Kermit the Frog walking through the airport, on his way to join the other Muppets in Denver, Colorado, for a planned skiing trip, when he accidentally boards the wrong plane headed to Denmark. Once in Denmark, he’s mistaken for Hamlet (also a green frog Muppet), who has gone missing. It’s a typical story of mistaken identity, chaos, mayhem, and so forth, and nobody dies at the end.

Kermit gets everyone to cooperate and communicate, and makes friends with everyone... as Muppets often do.

We sent the songs and a short treatment off to Brian Henson, who runs the Jim Henson Company. He said he wasn’t interested, and that was that.

To help the student cast members acquire the necessary puppetry skills, Cimmet is aided by Stephanie

"...Sometimes thoughts and words that would probably be offensive in a human’s mouth are more acceptable—and even funnier— coming out of a puppet.”

SPONSORED BY:

SU DRAMA |

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SYRACUSE STAGE GALA

JUNE 19 | 2015 FEATURING

TIME GRAMMY AWARD-WINNER

BLUES MUSICIAN

Three-time Grammy awardwinning singer, songwriter, guitarist and contemporary blues artist, Keb’ Mo’ will perform at Syracuse Stage’s Annual Gala.

Over the past two decades Keb has cultivated a reputation as a modern master of American roots music through the understated excellence of his live and studio performances. His songs have been recorded by B.B. King, Buddy Guy, the Dixie Chicks, Joe Cocker and Robert Palmer,

and his playing inspired leading instrument maker Gibson Brands to issue the Keb’ Mo’ Signature Bluesmaster acoustic guitar. He’s collaborated with a host of other artists including Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, jazz diva Cassandra Wilson, Buddy Guy, Amy Grant, Solomon Burke and Little Milton.

Keb also performs the theme song for the smash sit-com Mike & Molly and was music director for TV’s Memphis Beat.

Gala Evening including cocktails, silent auction, dinner and concert $200/$300 per person, $125 under 40. Schine Student Center/ Goldstein Auditorium.

Concert tickets only on sale March 1 at www.SyracuseStage.org or call Syracuse Stage Box Office 315.443.3275. Call development office at: 443-2709 for more info.

Bank of America:

Children's Tour: FALL 2015

NEW KID

BY DENNIS FOON DIRECTED BY LAUREN UNBEKANT Nick just immigrated to America from a country called Homeland and is struggling with a new language and a new way of life. The kids at his new school make fun of him because of his customs and strange language. The twist is … in New Kid the Americans speak a kind of gibberish which neither Nick nor the audience understand.

New Kid promotes tolerance, compassion and addresses racism, prejudice, peer pressure and conflict resolution.

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INFORMATION: Kate Laissle Phone: 315.442.7755 Email: kmlaissl@syr.edu

JUAN CARLOS VELEZ-SANCHEZ, JOHNNY MCKEOWN AND EMILY RICE IN THE 2012 PRODUCTION OF NEW KID.

EVENTS MARCH - JUNE 2015 SYRACUSE STAGE Sizwe Banzi is Dead

By Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona Directed by John Kani Co-produced with the Market Theatre and McCarter Theatre Center February 25 - March 15

Other Desert Cities

By Jon Robin Baitz Directed by Timothy Bond Co-produced with Portland Center Stage April 8 - April 26 PROLOGUE

During the run of each show, join us for free, intimate, pre-show talks led by a member of the cast. One hour prior to curtain, three performances per show.

ACTOR TALKBACK SERIES

A lively discussion with the actors following the 7 p.m. Sunday night performance.

Sizwe Banzi is Dead Sunday, March 8 Other Desert Cities Sunday, April 19 HAPPY HOUR SERIES

Warm up before the show with half-price drinks, signature cocktails, and complimentary appetizers from fine local restaurants. Located in the Sutton Pavilion at Syracuse Stage, Happy Hours start at 6 p.m. with performances at 7:30 p.m.

Other Desert Cities Thursday, April 16 OPEN CAPTIONING

Other Desert Cities

Sizwe Banzi is Dead Wednesday, March 4 at 2 p.m.

Sunday, March15 at 2 p.m.

Sunday, April 12 at 1 p.m.

Saturday, April 18 at 2 p.m.

Thursday, April 23 at 6:30 p.m.

Other Desert Cities Wednesday, April 15 at 2 p.m.

Sunday, April 26 at 2 p.m.

OPENING NIGHT PARTY

Join us for a post-show party with live music and complimentary food following each opening night performance. All performances at 8 p.m.

Sizwe Banzi February 27: TBA Other Desert Cities April 10: Bill Horace WEDNESDAY@1 LECTURES

Pre-show lecture at 1 p.m. in the Sutton Pavilion before the 2 p.m. matinee performance.

Sizwe Banzi is Dead Wednesday, March 4 Speaker: Grant Farred "Once more, Sizwe Banzi: Relevance of Apartheid theatre in a Post-Apartheid Era" Other Desert Cities Wednesday, April 15 Speaker: Harriet Brown *Speakers and topics subject to change

Measure for Measure

By William Shakespeare Directed by Celia Madeoy March 27-April 12, 2015

Avenue Q Music and lyrics, original concept by Robert Lopez Music and lyrics, original concept by Jeff Marx Book by Jeff Whitty Directed by Brian Cimmet Choreography by Andrea Leigh-Smith April 24-May 9, 2015

Sizwe Banzi is Dead Thursday, March 5

Sizwe Banzi is Dead

Sunday, March 1 at 1 p.m.

Saturday, March 7 at 2 p.m.

Thursday, March 12 at 6:30 p.m.

SU DRAMA

AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE INTERPRETED

Sizwe Banzi is Dead Saturday, March 7 at 3 p.m.

Other Desert Cities Saturday, April 18 at 3 p.m.

AUDIO DESCRIPTION

Sizwe Banzi is Dead Saturday, March 14 at 3 p.m.

Other Desert Cities Saturday, April 25 at 3 p.m.

SYRACUSE STAGE GALA FEATURING LEGENDARY BLUES GUITARIST

6/19 2015 HONORARY CHAIR Louis G. Marcoccia CO-CHAIRS Bob Pomfrey & Jackie Goldberg GALA HONOREE Bea Gonzalez will receive the 4th annual Louis G. Marcoccia award for exemplary service to Syracuse Stage as a current board trustee and former Stage board chair.

6 PM | COCKTAILS & SILENT AUCTION 7:30 PM | DINNER 9:00 PM | CONCERT GALA EVENING INCLUDING COCKTAILS, SILENT AUCTION, DINNER AND CONCERT $200/$300 PER PERSON, $125 UNDER 40.

SCHINE STUDENT CENTER/ GOLDSTEIN AUDITORIUM. CONCERT TICKETS ONLY ON SALE MARCH 1 SYRACUSESTAGE.ORG OR CALL SYRACUSE STAGE BOX OFFICE 315.443.3275.

is published by Syracuse Stage and Syracuse University Drama throughout the season for their subscribers and alumni. Editor: Joseph Whelan (jmwhelan@syr.edu). Designer: Brenna Merritt.

Timothy Bond, Producing Artistic Director Jeffrey Woodward, Managing Director Ralph Zito, Chair of SU Drama SYRACUSE STAGE/ SU DRAMA |

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Nonprofit Organization US POSTAGE PAID Syracuse Stage Syracuse, NY

820 East Genesee Street Syracuse, NY 13210-1508 www.SyracuseStage.org

SYRACUSE STAGE: SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD FEBRUARY 25 - MARCH 15 OTHER DESERT CITIES APRIL 8 - APRIL 26

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY DRAMA: MEASURE FOR MEASURE MARCH 27 - APRIL 12 AVENUE Q APRIL 24 - MAY 9

JOHN KANI AND WINSTON NTSHONA IN THE ORIGINAL PRODUCTION OF SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD.

CA. 1972