THE ORESTEIA Digital Program

Artists and Community Series Under the Auspices of the Merle Debuskey Studio Program

THE ORESTEIA Adapted from the trilogy by Aeschylus Translated by Ellen McLaughlin Music Composed by Kamala Sankaram Directed by Andrew Watkins New York Premiere Special Virtual Presentation A Swift 2 Hours

Streaming free online June 25 at 7pm through June 29 at 7pm EDT

THE ORESTEIA Adapted from the trilogy by Aeschylus Translated by Ellen McLaughlin Music Composed by Kamala Sankaram Directed by Andrew Watkins

CAST

Obi Abili Agamemnon Corey Allen Chorus B Helen Carey Nurse/Chorus F Kathleen Chalfant Narrator Kelley Curran Clytemnestra Franchelle Stewart Dorn Chorus G Rinde Eckert Chorus A/Watchman

Robin Galloway Chorus D Ismenia Mendes Cassandra/Chorus H Rad Pereira Electra/Chorus E Reynaldo Piniella Orestes Sophia Skiles Chorus C Simone Warren Iphigenia/Chorus I

Joanna Lynne Staub Sound Designer Erin Heilveil Assistant Sound Designer Ralph Stan Lee Stage Manager Kacey Gritters Assistant Stage Manager Anna Michael Video Editor

Theatre for a New Audience’s 2020–21 Season is Dedicated to the Memory of Terrence McNally, American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter.

Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies are the 2020-2021 Season Sponsors.

The Orestia was commissioned and developed for Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, where it also received its World Premiere under the direction of Michael Kahn and was funded by the Roy Cockrum Foundation.

The Oresteia is part of Theatre for a New Audience’s Merle Debuskey Studio Program, which supports process, development and experimentation for theatre artists through residencies, workshops, and ongoing professional development. The Merle Debuskey Studio Program was named by an estate gift from Merle Debuskey, and was launched by a leadership grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with matching funds from the Booth Ferris Foundation and the estate of Charlene Weinstein.

Principal support for Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs is provided by Jerome L. Greene Arts Access Fund in the New York Community Trust, The SHS Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and The Thompson Family Foundation.

Theatre for a New Audience’s season and programs are also made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

THE HISTORY OF THE HOUSE OF ATREUS

BY ELLEN MCLAUGHLIN

The prophetess, Cassandra, calls it the “House of spite,” and the “House where family eat family.” By the start of these plays, the House of Atreus had already been infamous for generations. Starting with Tantalus, who tried to trick the gods by serving up his own son, Pelops, as food at a feast, there seemed no crime–from incest, murder, theft, and cheating, to cannibalism– too dreadful for those blighted family members to commit.

In the third generation, the brothers, Thyestes and Atreus, plotted against each other, committing one horror after another until Atreus’ ultimate outrage, the obscene trick of slaughtering his brother’s children and feeding them to their unwitting father. After spitting out his children’s flesh, Thyestes cursed his brother’s house forever.

Nevertheless, Atreus’ sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, seemed to flourish for a time, marrying the sisters Clytemnestra and Helen, and ruling their respective kingdoms. But then Paris, a foreign prince, seduced Helen and took her back to Troy, initiating the Trojan War. Agamemnon mustered the Greek army in order to sail to Troy, take retribution, and bring his brother’s adulterous wife home. It was at the moment when the fleet was poised to sail that the curse settled on Agamemnon with his own unspeakable crime.

And so, the cycle of blood is spun once more to set the stage at the start of this trilogy.

ABOUT THE COMPANY Ellen McLaughlin (Writer) has worked extensively in regional, international, and New York theater, both as an actor and as a playwright. Acting work includes originating the part of the Angel in Angels in America, playing the role in workshops and regional productions through its original Broadway run. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway, regionally and internationally. Plays and operas include Tongue of a Bird, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, The Persians, Penelope, Ajax in Iraq, Septimus and Clarissa, Blood Moon, and The Oresteia. Producers include The Public Theater, National Actors’ Theater, Classic Stage Co., New York Theatre Workshop, The Guthrie, The Mark Taper Forum, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Actors’ Theater of Louisville, Shakespeare Theatre (DC), and The Almeida Theater in London. She has taught playwriting at Barnard College since 1995. She is the recipient of the Writer’s Award from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund as well as other honors, including the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, The Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, and grants from the NEA. Kamala Sankaram (Composer) writes highly categorization-defying theatrical music that The New York Times has described as “strikingly original.” Recent commissions include the Glimmerglass Festival, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Shakespeare Theatre Company, and Opera on Tap, among others. Awards, grants and residencies include the Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, NY IT Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical, the Civilians, HERE, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center.

Known for her work with emerging technologies, her recent genre-defying hit Looking at You (with collaborators Rob Handel and Kristin Marting) featured live data mining of the audience and a chorus of 25 singing tablet computers.

Sankaram, Handel, and Marting also created all decicions will be made by consensus, a short absurdist opera performed live over Zoom and featured on NBC and the BBC3. With librettist Jerre Dye and Opera on Tap, she created The Parksville Murders, the world’s first virtual reality opera (Samsung VR, Jaunt VR, Kennedy Center Reach Festival, “Best Virtual Reality Video” NY Independent Film Festival, Future of Storytelling, Salem Horror Festival and the Topanga Film Festival.)

Andrew Watkins (Director) Credits include: Uncle Vanya, The Yellow Wallpaper, Miss Julie, Hedda Gabler, Dostoevsky’s A Gentle Spirit, The Buck, True West, The Dumb Waiter, Before You Go, among others. Associate/assistant credits include: Broadway: Franky and Johnny at the Claire de Lune (Dir. Arin Arbus), Network (dir. Ivo van Hove); Theatre for a New Audience: The Winter’s Tale, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Father and A Doll’s House; Watkins was a participant in TFANA’s 2016-17 Actor/Director project; Internationaal Theater Amsterdam/Ruhrtriennale Festival: The Things That Pass; The Guthrie: The Lion in Winter and Our Country’s Good (Dir. Max Stafford Clark, Observer); Directing observer at the Schaubühne Berlin. Education: Fordham University Lincoln Center, BA Theatre Directing; Royal Conservatoire of Scotland; London Dramatic Academy. andrewwatkinstheatre.com.

Obi Abili (Agamemnon) trained at RADA and has performed leading stage roles in the UK at the Royal National Theatre, the Old Vic, The Young Vic, The Globe, The Donmar, The Royal Court, The Bush, The Hammersmith Lyric, The Manchester Lowry, The Glasgow Citizens, Oxford Playhouse, Edinburgh International Festival and the West End. Plays include Angels in America (Headlong, dir. Daniel Kramer), The Brothers Size (Young Vic, British Premier, dir. Tarrell McCraney), Six Degrees of Separation (dir. David Grindley), Titus Andronicus (dir. Lucy Bailey), Fabulation (dir. Indhu Rubasingham), Dido (dir. James Macdonald) and Antigone (dir. Ivo Van Hove). He relocated to the U.S. in 2017 and in the last three years has performed leading roles at the Kennedy Center, BAM, the Irish Rep and Cherry Lane/Lortel Theatre. Theatre in the U.S.: Antigone with Ivo van Hove and Juliette Binoche, Emperor Jones with the Irish Rep, and Fear with Cherry Lane Theatre. He has also appeared in numerous TV shows and films. He loves pie.

Corey Allen (Chorus B) is a NYC-based actor/writer/storyteller originally from San Diego, California. He holds an MFA in Acting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a BA in Drama from UC Irvine and is on the Acting Faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. Allen has appeared on regional stages from the Shakespeare Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Pioneer Theatre Company, Great River Shakespeare Festival, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and many more. Film credits includes Halston, Lost & Found and Proximity and he’s been seen on television’s “Happy!,” “Mindhunter” and “Manh(a)ttan” among others.

Helen Carey (Nurse/Chorus F) Broadway credits: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Pygmalion, Hedda Gabler, London Assurance (for which she received a Tony nomination and Theatre World Award). Regional credits: Arena Stage: Long Day’s Journey into Night, Other Desert Cities, Noises Off. The Shakespeare Theatre Company: Major Barbara (Helen Hayes Award), The Persians, Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth. The Guthrie Theater: Death of a Salesman, The Cherry Orchard. The Stratford Festival Theatre, Canada: Arms and the Man, The School for Scandal. The Abbey Theatre, Dublin: All My Sons (Irish Times/ESB nomination). Film credits: Julie & Julia, The Next Three Days, 21, Little Children. TV credits: “The Good Wife,” “Brotherhood,” “American Embassy,” “Law & Order.”

Kelley Curran (Clytemnestra) will be seen in Jullian Fellowes’ “The Gilded Age” for HBO which will premiere early 2022. She was most recently seen on the stage Off-Broadway opposite Glenn Close in Mother of the Maid at The Public Theater. Prior to that she was Clytemnestra in Ellen McLaughlin’s world premiere of The Oresteia at The Shakespeare Theatre Company. Kelley has also appeared on Broadway in Present Laughter with Kevin Kline, and at The Signature Theatre, Classic Stage Company, Theatre For a New Audience, and LAByrinth Theatre Company, among others. She made her network television debut on NBC’s “The Blacklist,” and recently appeared on the CBS drama “God Friended Me.” In 2019 she made her feature film debut in The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot. Kelley won The Callaway Award, Emery Battis Award, NTC Emerging Professional Award, and in 2016 was nominated for a Drama League Award alongside Lupita Nyong’o, Michelle Williams, and Lin Manuel-Miranda. She has also been nominated for both a Princess Grace and Helen Hayes Award.

Franchelle Stewart Dorn (Chorus G) Regional: STC, Arena, ACT, Yale Rep, Long Wharf, Great Lakes, Cleveland Playhouse, Arizona State Theatre, Chautauqua, Guthrie, OSF, Zach Theatre, Austin Shakes, State Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, CATF. Off-Broadway: Red Bull, Signature. Television: NBC: “Another World,” “Law & Order” ABC: “All My Children” PBS: “Literary Visions,” “Working Women,” “Citizens at Last.” Awards: 3 Helen Hayes, 4 Austin Critics Table. More than 400 voice-overs and on camera. Training: MFA Yale School of Drama Currently: Professor, UT Austin.

Rinde Eckert (Chorus A/Watchman) is a writer, composer, singer, actor, and director. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition, an Obie Award (And God Created Great Whales), a Grammy Award (Lonely Motel), an Alpert Award for Drama (2009), and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (2012). He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2007 for his Orpheus X. Robin Galloway (Chorus D) is a NY-based actor. Theatre: MTC/The Acting Co., NYTW, The New Group, Roundabout, New Ohio, HERE, Ars Nova, Playwrights Realm, Dixon Place, Trinity Rep, Chautauqua Theater Co., Portland Stage, W.H.A.T., Gloucester Stage, CFRT. TV/Film: “Saving Grace”, “Law & Order”, Talk to Me in Silence, Mousy Brown, Losing Control. Education: M.F.A. Brown University. robingalloway.org.

Ismenia Mendes (Cassandra/Chorus H) Credits include Mac Beth (RedBull); Marys Seacole (LCT3); The Liar (CSC); Troilus and Cressida, Much Ado About Nothing (The Public), Grand Concourse (Playwrights Horizons), The Wayside Motor Inn (Signature Theatre). TV/Film: Recurring on “Little Voice”, “Orange Is the New Black”, and “High Maintenance” (HBO). She was a 2018 recipient of RedBull Theater’s Matador Award for Excellence in Classical Theater.

Training: Juilliard.

Rad Pereira (Electra/Chorus E) is a cultural worker of Pindorama (Brasil), based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn). Their creative practice ranges from social sculpture, to popular theatrical and TV/film performance, to participatory liberatory artmaking and healing that weaves together an Afro-futurist longing for transformative justice and queer (re)Indigenization of culture. Rad has contributed to stories at HBO, CBS, MTV, National Black Theatre, MITU350, The Public Theater, La Mama, etc., Shakespeare Theatre in D.C., Pittsburgh Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, ART Boston, The Bushwick Starr, Target Margin, Ars Nova, New Ohio, Clubbed Thumb, Sesame Street, Theatre 167, Watermill Center and more.

Reynaldo Piniella (Orestes) was last seen at TFANA as Henry Antrobus in The Skin of Our Teeth. Off-Broadway credits include The Death of the Last Black Man…, Venus (Signature), Lockdown (Rattlestick), The Space Between the Letters (The Public/UTR), Terminus (NYTW Next Door) Best of Theatreworks (Working Theater). TCG Fox Fellow with the Classical Theatre of Harlem. reynaldopiniella.com Sophia Skiles (Chorus C) is a theater actor, teacher and facilitator for racial justice in the arts. She is ecstatic to return to Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptation of The Oresteia. An experienced educator, Sophia is the incoming Head of Acting for the Brown/Trinity MFA program. BS, Performance Studies (Northwestern University); MFA, Acting (Columbia University); and alum of artEquity Facilitator training.

Simone Warren (Iphigenia/Chorus I) is thrilled to return back to the role of Iphigenia! Regional: Shakespeare Theatre: The Oresteia (Iphigenia), Helen Hayes Award nominee; Signature Theatre: Billy Elliot (Keeley Gibson); Olney Theatre: Annie (Tessie). Film: Simi (Simi). Training: Paula Brown Performing Arts Studio (Dance); Polly Parr Corretjer Voice Studio. Protégé of Linda Townsend Management.

We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions: ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION AMERICAN GUILD OF MUSICAL ARTISTS AMERICAN GUILD OF VARIETY ARTISTS SAG-AFTRA through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the Artists to appear on this program.

TFANA TALKS

Join us on Zoom on June 26 at 4pm and June 27 at 2pm EDT for a live TFANA Talk and Q&A with artists and scholars.

Learn more and RSVP at tfana.org.

SATURDAY, JUNE 26 AT 4PM Emily Greenwood (Moderator) is the John M. Musser Professor of Classics at Yale University. Her research focuses on ancient Greek literature and history as well as modern adaptations of the classics of ancient Greece and Rome. She is fascinated by the ethics of literary and historical interpretation and always returns to the questions: by whom and for whom were the classics written, by whom and for whom have they been interpreted, and in view of which histories?

Her books include Afro-Greeks: Dialogues Between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century (2010), joint winner of the 2011 Runciman Award, and Thucydides and the Shaping of History (2006).

Her current book project, Black Classicisms and the Expansion of the Western Classical Tradition, explores the critical difference that local and transnational black traditions of interpreting Greek and Roman classics make to existing conceptions of the Western classical tradition. In July she will take up a professorship at Princeton University.

Ellen McLaughlin (Writer) has worked extensively in regional, international, and New York theater, both as an actor and as a playwright. Acting work includes originating the part of the Angel in Angels in America, playing the role in workshops and regional productions through its original Broadway run. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway, regionally and internationally. Plays and operas include Tongue of a Bird, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, The Persians, Penelope, Ajax in Iraq, Septimus and Clarissa, Blood Moon, and The Oresteia. Producers include The Public Theater, National Actors’ Theater, Classic Stage Co., New York Theatre Workshop, The Guthrie, The Mark Taper Forum, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Actors’ Theater of Louisville, Shakespeare Theatre (DC), and The Almeida Theater in London. She has taught playwriting at Barnard College since 1995. She is the recipient of the Writer’s Award from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund as well as other honors, including the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, The Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, and grants from the NEA. Andrew Watkins (Director) Credits include: Uncle Vanya, The Yellow Wallpaper, Miss Julie, Hedda Gabler, Dostoevsky’s A Gentle Spirit, The Buck, True West, The Dumb Waiter, Before You Go, among others. Associate/assistant credits include: Broadway: Franky and Johnny at the Claire de Lune (Dir. Arin Arbus), Network (dir. Ivo van Hove); Theatre for a New Audience: The Winter’s Tale, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Father and A Doll’s House; Watkins was a participant in TFANA’s 2016-17 Actor/Director project; Internationaal Theater Amsterdam/Ruhrtriennale Festival: The Things That Pass; The Guthrie: The Lion in Winter and Our Country’s Good (Dir. Max Stafford Clark, Observer); Directing observer at the Schaubühne Berlin. Education: Fordham University Lincoln Center, BA Theatre Directing; Royal Conservatoire of Scotland; London Dramatic Academy. andrewwatkinstheatre.com.

TFANA TALKS

Join us on Zoom on June 26 at 4pm and June 27 at 2pm EDT for a live TFANA Talk and Q&A with artists and scholars.

Learn more and RSVP at tfana.org.

SUNDAY, JUNE 27 AT 2PM Bianca Vivion Brooks (Panelist) is a writer, artist, and producer based in Harlem, New York. Born in Los Angeles and later raised between Atlanta and Oakland, Brooks was marked from an early age as an imaginative storyteller and formidable thinker. Ar 14, she began as a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered and at 18 went on to become the youngest opinion writer to The New York Tumes. At 24, she’s producting the talk show Generational Anxiety for PBS’ All Arts Channel.

Drew Lichtenberg (Moderator) Dramaturg, 2019 Shakespeare Theatre Company production of The Oresteia.

Ellen McLaughlin (Writer) has worked extensively in regional, international, and New York theater, both as an actor and as a playwright. Acting work includes originating the part of the Angel in Angels in America, playing the role in workshops and regional productions through its original Broadway run. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway, regionally and internationally. Plays and operas include Tongue of a Bird, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, The Persians, Penelope, Ajax in Iraq, Septimus and Clarissa, Blood Moon, and The Oresteia. Producers include The Public Theater, National Actors’ Theater, Classic Stage Co., New York Theatre Workshop, The Guthrie, The Mark Taper Forum, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Actors’ Theater of Louisville, Shakespeare Theatre (DC), and The Almeida Theater in London. She has taught playwriting at Barnard College since 1995. She is the recipient of the Writer’s Award from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund as well as other honors, including the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, The Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting, and grants from the NEA. Andrew Watkins (Director) Credits include: Uncle Vanya, The Yellow Wallpaper, Miss Julie, Hedda Gabler, Dostoevsky’s A Gentle Spirit, The Buck, True West, The Dumb Waiter, Before You Go, among others. Associate/assistant credits include: Broadway: Franky and Johnny at the Claire de Lune (Dir. Arin Arbus), Network (dir. Ivo van Hove); Theatre for a New Audience: The Winter’s Tale, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Father and A Doll’s House; Watkins was a participant in TFANA’s 2016-17 Actor/Director project; Internationaal Theater Amsterdam/Ruhrtriennale Festival: The Things That Pass; The Guthrie: The Lion in Winter and Our Country’s Good (Dir. Max Stafford Clark, Observer); Directing observer at the Schaubühne Berlin. Education: Fordham University Lincoln Center, BA Theatre Directing; Royal Conservatoire of Scotland; London Dramatic Academy. andrewwatkinstheatre.com.

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Robert E. Buckholz Board Chair Kathleen C. Walsh Vice Chair Jeffrey Horowitz President Dorothy Ryan Vice President & Secretary

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Robert E. Buckholz Constance Christensen Jeffrey Horowitz Seymour H. Lesser Larry M. Loeb, Esq.

MEMBERS

Audrey Heffernan Meyer Philip R. Rotner Kathleen C. Walsh Josh Weisberg

F. Murray Abraham* Arin Arbus* Allan Beller John Berendt* Sally Brody Bianca Vivion Brooks* Ben Campbell Robert Caro*

Sharon Dunn* Riccardo Hernandez* Kathryn Hunter* Dana Ivey* Tom Kirdahy* Harry J. Lennix* Catherine Maciariello* Marc Polonsky

EMERITUS

IN MEMORIAM

Francine Ballan Dr. Charlotte Frank Theodore C. Rogers Jane Wells *denotes members of the Artistic Council

Robert Arnow Dr. Robert Ascheim Cicely Berry, CBE, Honorary Doctorate of Literature Zoe Ada Caldwell, OBE Henry Christensen III

Dorothy Ryan Joseph Samulski* Daryl D. Smith Susan Stockel Michael Stranahan John Douglas Thompson* John Turturro* Frederick Wiseman*

Merle Debuskey Sir Peter Hall, CBE John Heilpern John Krajci Gloria Messenger Marcia T. Thompson

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

STAFF

Jeffrey Horowitz Founding Artistic Director Dorothy Ryan Managing Director Jennifer Lam Director of Marketing & Communications James Lynes Director of Institutional Advancement Nidia Medina Director of the Studio & Associate Producer Mary Sormeley Finance Director Jordan Asinofsky Facilities Director Kathleen Dorman Interim Education Director Barbara Toy Associate Director of Development Sara Billeaux Institutional Support Manager Torrence Browne Marketing Manager Steven Gaultney Theatre Manager Michael Page Interim General Manager Zachary Longstreet Production Manager Tatianna Casas Quiñonez Executive Assistant to the Artistic & Managing Directors & Manager of Humanities & Studio Programs Allison Byrum Box Office Manager Peter Cook Artistic Associate Rashawn Caldwell Associate Facilities Manager Philip Calabro Education Associate Arin Arbus Resident Director Jonathan Kalb Resident Dramaturg & Resident Artist Blake Zidell & Associates Press Representative Michael Kaiser Strategic Planning Consultant Council of Scholars Ayanna Thompson, Chair Jonathan Kalb Richard McCoy Tanya Pollard Alisa Solomon

@THEATREFORANEWA WWW.TFANA.ORG

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