Witness to the Ruins

NO BOUNDARIES: A SERIES OF GLOBAL PERFORMANCES US Premiere

WITNESS to the RUINS

BY MAPA TEATRO LABORATORIO DE ARTISTAS CONCEIVED AND DEVISED BY HEIDI AND ROLF ABDERHALDEN

World Performance Project at Yale Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

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Monday, May 4 11:30 am & 6:00 pm Yale College Old Campus

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Choreographed by Emily Coates and Bronwen MacArthur With Nyasha George MED ‘12, Elizabeth Kelley Swift ‘09 and Arun Storrs ‘08 Music composed and performed by Hyon Kye ‘09

MARCH 26 TO 28, 2009 YALE REPERTORY THEATRE

James Bundy, Artistic Director Victoria Nolan, Managing Director and

WORLD PERFORMANCE PROJECT AT YALE

Joseph Roach, Principal Investigator Emily Coates, Artistic Director present the US PREMIERE OF

WITNESS TO THE RUINS

by MAPA TEATRO Laboratorio de Artistas Conceived and Devised by Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden directed by Heidi and rolf Abderhalden Performed by

sound operator lights operator video operator dramaturg VIDEO EDITORS

Heidi Abderhalden Carlos Benavides Rolf Abderhalden andrew kelsey Juana maría Ramírez José Ignacio Rincón adriana urrea Ximena Vargas Carlos Benavides José Ignacio Rincón Ximena Vargas adriana urrea LUCAS MALDONADO SIMÓN RODRíGUEZ ROLANDO VARGAS

cover photo by rolando vargas.

Mapa Teatro

laboratory of artists Colombian artists Heidi, Elizabeth, and Rolf Abderhalden, children of a Swiss immigrant to Colombia, founded Mapa Teatro in 1984 after studying visual arts and theatre in France and Switzerland. The company settled in Bogotá in 1986.

They gained success with their theatrical investigation of Samuel Beckett (De mortibus: Réquiem para Samuel Beckett, 1990); their performance of Heiner Müller’s Horacio (1994), created with the inmates of the Central Prison of Colombia; and a music theatre production, El león y la domadora (The Lion and the Lion-Tamer, 1997). In 1995 and 1996 they collaborated with the Indian company Purisai to create a production based on a text

by Gabriel García Márquez. In August 2000, they inaugurated MAPA, a performing and visual arts space in Bogotá, conceived as a multidisciplinary laboratory of artists working in Colombia.

Since then, they have been performing and touring three productions in South America and Europe: Ricardo III, a contemporary Colombian version of Shakespeare’s tragedy (2000); 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane (2003); and Witness to the Ruins (2005).

About Witness to the Ruins Witness to the Ruins (Testigo de las ruinas) is based on the testimonies of fifteen longtime inhabitants of Santa-Inés El Cartucho, one of the most ancient and emblematic neighborhoods of downtown Bogotá, Colombia. El Cartucho fell victim to the violence of rampant arms and drug dealers in the late 1990s. Plans were made to raze the neighborhood to pave the way for a new public park, displacing thousands of its workingclass residents. From the time of El Cartucho’s demolition to the opening of the park, Mapa Teatro made five artistic actions (video-installations, performances, interactive events) within the community. This performance is a condensation of Mapa’s lengthy process in El Cartucho, an emotional testimony where members of El Cartucho tell their stories.

Witness To The Ruins premiered in Vienna at the Wiener Festwochen in 2005. It then toured to the Prague Theatre Festival, the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin, and the Zürchertheater Spektakel in Zürich. It has also been performed in Bogotá (X Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá, 2006), Geneva (Festival de La Bâtie, 2007), Madrid (Festival Escena Contemporánea, 2008), Mexico City (Festival México en el Centro Histórico, 2008), and São Paulo (Mostra SESC-SP, 2008). This is the US premiere of Witness to the Ruins.

biographies Heidi Abderhalden (director/performer) is a co-founder of Mapa Teatro. Since 1981, she has pursued professional theatre training in Europe at the Theátre de Vide Poche in Lausanne, Switzerland, and in Paris at the Atelier-Théâtre Serge Martín, the International Theatre School Jacques Lecoq, and the Philippe Gualier Theatrical Formation Workshop. She has served as an actress, co-director, and producer with Mapa Teatro since 1985, as well as coordinator for theatrical training seminars and laboratories. Heidi has taught at the National University of Colombia, the University of the Rosary, the National School of Dramatic Art, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Bogotá. As the representative for South America, she attended the International Seminar of Scenic Arts organized by the Attakalari Foundation of India. She has translated Taba Taba by Bernard-Marie Koltès, To the Limit of Life (Al límite de la vida)

by Gao Xing Yang, and History of Love (Historia de amor) by Jean-Luc Lagarce, as well as Shakespeare’s Richard II and Richard III.

Rolf Abderhalden (director/performer) is a co-founder of Mapa Teatro. He is a multidisciplinary artist, theatre director, and, since 1986, professor at the National University of Colombia, where he is the manager and director of the Interdisciplinary Master’s Degree in Theatre and Live Arts. As an undergraduate, he studied Art Therapy in Lausanne, Switzerland. He completed his post-graduate work in theatre at the International Theatre School Jacques Lecoq in Paris and studied scenography at the Laboratory of Movement Study at the Paris School for Fine Arts. He also concentrated in Theatrical Direction at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome. He participated in numerous projects at the Experimental Academy of Theatre in France, where he worked with directors Ariane Mnouchkine, Jerzy Grotowski, Anatoli Vassiliev, and Peter Brook. He has won recognition as a visual artist, including the Sixth Biennial Bogotá Arts Award; for his academic work, he was decorated with the National University of Colombia’s University Medal of Merit. The French government awarded him the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, and he was recently awarded a fellowship with Erasmus Mundus. He is a visiting professor at universities in Brussels, Paris, and Seville.

Carlos Benavides (performer/sound operator) is a Colombian musician, composer, and music producer and engineer (Berkeley ’98). He has worked with Mapa Teatro since 2001 on sound design, live sound staging, and composition, as well as with other music, theatre, and performance artists such as Marcellí Antúnez Roca (Spain), Michel Didym (France), and Richard Blair (UK). His own musical project, Verde3, has earned cult status in his native Bogotá.

biographies ANDREW Z. KELSEY (PERFORMER) is a first-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama. Recent credits include Hamlet, Jelly’s Last Jam (Yale School of Drama); Dead Letter Office (HERE Arts Center); and As Much As You Can (Celebration Theatre). Other credits include Good Boys and True (The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center), The Automata Pieta (Magic Theatre), Time on Fire (Magic Theatre/ Royal National Theatre), and The Rose Tattoo (American Conservatory Theater).

Andrew is a frequent volunteer with the 52nd Street Project in New York and has performed in plays with them at Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Public Theater.

He is a graduate of Amherst College.

Juana María Ramírez (performer) is a recycler and gatherer who lived a large part of her life in El Cartucho. She began collaborating with Mapa Teatro during their work on Witness to the Ruins.

José Ignacio Rincón (performer/lights operator) was born in Manizales, Colombia, and studied theatre at the School of Actors’ Training at the Teatro Libre of Bogotá from 1988 to 1991. He continued his studies at Carlos Lopez Bechardo National Conservatory of Music in Buenos Aires. After his work as an actor at Bogotá’s Teatro Libre, he began working with Mapa Teatro in 1994. Since then, he has participated in all of its productions as an actor, lighting technician, and producer.

Adriana Urrea (performer/dramaturg) is a philosopher and doctoral candidate at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, where she studies the contribution of Caribbean thought and literature to Western philosophy. Her theoretical work has been developed in the context of aesthetics, philosophy of art, political philosophy, and their relationship to literary philosophy. She is the Director of the Department of Philosophy at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, a professor in the master’s program of Theatre and Performing Arts at the National University of Colombia, and an advisor for cultural projects. She has worked on several of Mapa Teatro’s artistic projects since its inception.

Ximena Vargas (performer/video operator) is a television and film director specializing in documentary film. She has been a part of Mapa Teatro since 1995. She co-founded Shooting Cameras for Peace (Disparando Cámaras para la Paz), an organization which holds photography and video workshops for at-risk children. After working on television and independent cinematography projects, Ximena now dedicates herself to the artistic projects of Mapa Teatro, as well as the administrative coordination of the Interdisciplinary Master’s Degree in Theatre and Live Arts at the National University of Colombia.

world performance project at yale STAFF Joseph Roach, Principal Investigator Emily Coates, Artistic Director Kathryn Krier, Production Manager Heidi McAnnally-Linz, Associate Producer THE WORLD PERFORMANCE PROJECT (WPP) promotes programs in performance studies across departments at Yale. An interdiscipline that draws from the arts, humanities, and human sciences (theater, drama, dance, visual arts, speech, linguistics, anthropology, sociology), performance studies defines as its objects cultural performances of all kinds, from theatrical presentations to rites of passage, and expands its frontiers anywhere significant performances are likely to take place, from Yorubaland to Disneyland.

WPP presents performances, workshops, and lectures by artists and scholars working in dance, theater, music, performance art, and cultural performance, as it assists and collaborates with departments and programs throughout the university seeking to enhance their curriculum through live performance.

Affiliated with the Yale College Theater Studies Program and the Whitney Humanities Center, WPP is supported through funding provided by the Distinguished Achievement Award granted to Joseph Roach, Sterling Professor of Theater, by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

For more information about the World Performance Project please visit

www.yale.edu/wpp

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

yale repertory theatre staff James Bundy, Artistic Director Victoria Nolan, Managing Director Jennifer Kiger, Associate Artistic Director ARTISTIC Resident Artists Paula Vogel, Playwright-in-Residence Liz Diamond, Evan Yionoulis, Resident Directors Catherine Sheehy, Resident Dramaturg Ming Cho Lee, Set Design Advisor Michael Yeargan, Resident Set Designer Jane Greenwood, Costume Design Advisor Jess Goldstein, Resident Costume Designer Jennifer Tipton, Lighting Design Advisor Stephen Strawbridge, Resident Lighting Designer David Budries, Sound Design Advisor Walton Wilson, Voice and Speech Advisor Rick Sordelet, Fight Advisor Mary Hunter, Stage Management Advisor Associate Artists 52nd Street Project, Kama Ginkas, Mark Lamos, MTYZ Theatre/Moscow New Generations Theatre, Bill Rauch, Sarah Ruhl, Henrietta Yanovskaya Artistic Administration Amy Boratko, Literary Manager Michael Walkup, Artistic Coordinator Brian Valencia, Kristina Williams Literary Associates Tara Rubin, CSA, Laura Schutzel, CSA, Casting Directors Eric Woodall, Merri Sugarman, Casting Associates Paige Blansfield, Rebecca Carfagna, Dale Brown, Casting Assistants Ruth M. Feldman, Director of Education and Accessibility Services Pamela C. Jordan, Librarian Teresa Mensz, Library Services Assistant Josie Brown, Senior Administrative Assistant to the Artistic Director and Associate Artistic Director Kathleen Driscoll, Senior Administrative Assistant for the Directing, Dramaturgy & Dramatic Criticism, Playwriting, and Stage Management Departments Mary Volk, Senior Administrative Assistant for the Design and Sound Design Departments

ADMINISTRATION Frances Black, Kay Perdue, Associate Managing Directors Whitney Estrin, Assistant Managing Director Tara Kayton, Management Assistant Claire Shindler, Senior Administrative Assistant to the Managing Director Suzanne Appel, Company Manager Development and Alumni Affairs Deborah S. Berman, Director of Development and Alumni Affairs Debbie Ellinghaus, Senior Associate Director of Development and Alumni Affairs Ann M.K. McLaughlin, Senior Associate Director of Development, Yale Repertory Theatre Luis Abril, Associate Director, Development Susan C. Clark, Development Associate Art Priromprintr, Development Assistant Belene Day, Interim Senior Administrative Assistant to Development and Marketing and Communications Departments Finance and Information Technology Katherine D. BurgueĂąo, Director of Finance and Human Resources Sheila Daykin, Associate Director of Finance Cristal Coleman, Magaly Costa, Maria Frey, Business Office Specialists Ashlie Russell, Business Office Assistant Randall Rode, Information Technology Director Daryl Brereton, Associate Information Technology Director Mara Hazzard, Tessitura Systems Administrator Toni Ann Simiola, Senior Administrative Assistant to Business Office, Information Technology, Operations, and Tessitura Marketing, Communications, and Audience Services Anne Trites, Director of Marketing and Communications Steven Padla, Senior Associate Director of Communications Daniel Cress, Associate Director of Marketing Sergi Torres, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications Rachel Smith, Marketing and Audience Services Manager Sarah Stevens-Morling, Interim Online Communications Manager Martha O. Jurczak, Marketing Assistant

Maggie Elliott, Graphic Artist Scott McKowen, Punch & Judy Inc., Graphic Designers David Cooper, Photographer Joan Marcus, Production Photographer Janna J. Ellis, Associate Director of Audience Services and Tessitura Specialist Tracy Baldini, Assistant Audience Services Director Audrey Rogers, Manager, Group Sales Nancy Genga, London Moses, Audience Services Assistants Sam Bolen, Courtney Engle, Ruth Kim, Leah Knowles, Sue Malone, Justin Meadows, Andrew Riveria, Raphael Shapiro, Carrie Toole, Anya Van Wagtendonk, Box Office Assistants Operations William J. Reynolds, Director of Facility Operations Rich Abrams, Operations Associate Jacob Thompson, Security Officer Ed Jooss, Audience Safety Officer Fred Grier, Michael Blatchley, Customer Service and Safety Officers Ben Holder, Ron Maybrey, Custodial Supervisors Lucille Bochert, Vermont Ford, Warren Lyde, Vondeen Ricks, Mark Roy, Custodians

PRODUCTION Bronislaw J. Sammler, Production Supervisor James Mountcastle, Production Stage Manager Jonathan Reed, Senior Associate Production Supervisor Marla J. Silberstein, Senior Administrative Assistant to the Production Department Costumes Tom McAlister, Costume Shop Manager Robin Hirsch, Associate Costume Shop Manager Mary Zihal, Senior Draper Clarissa Wylie Youngberg, Draper Deborah Bloch, First Hand Linda Kelley-Dodd, Costume Project Coordinator Barbara Bodine, Company Hairdresser Linda Wingerter, Costume Stock Manager Electrics Donald W. Titus, Lighting Supervisor Jason Wells, Linda Young, Head Electricians Adrian Rooney, Assistant to the Lighting Supervisor

Painting Ru-Jun Wang, Resident Scenic Charge Angie Meninger, Scenic Artist Nora Hyland, Assistant Scenic Artist Steward Savage, Assistant to the Painting Supervisor Properties Brian Cookson, Properties Master David P. Schrader, Properties Craftsperson Jennifer McClure, Properties Assistant Rachel Reynolds, Properties Stock Manager Scenery Don Harvey, Neil Mulligan, Technical Directors Alan Hendrickson, Electro Mechanical Laboratory Supervisor Eric Sparks, Shop Foreman Matt Gaffney, Sharon Reinhart, Ryan Gardner, Master Carpenters Lisa McDaniel, Shop Carpenter Bona Lee, Assistant to the Technical Director Sound Brian MacQueen, Sound Supervisor Paul Bozzi, Staff Sound Engineer Nicholas Pope, Junghoon Pi, Assistants to the Sound Supervisor Projections Erik Trester, Head Projection Technician Stage Operations Janet Cunningham, Stage Carpenter Kate Begley Baker, Properties Runner Jeanne Wu, Sound Operator Elizabeth Bolster, Wardrobe Supervisor

FOR THIS PRODUCTION Joel Furmanek, Associate Production Supervisor Luis Abril, House Manager Tara Kayton, Management Assistant Joe Barna, Summer Jack, Amy Jonas, Larry Lehew, Lee Micklin, Sarah Pearline, Adrian Rooney, Ben St. Louis, Production Crew

WORLD PREMIERE

DOSTOEVSKY’S

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND

Adapted by BILL CAMP and ROBERT WOODRUFF Based on a translation by RICHARD PEVEAR and

LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY Directed by ROBERT WOODRUFF Featuring BILL CAMP

MARCH 20 TO APRIL 11 YALE REPERTORY THEATRE, 1120 CHAPEL STREET

yalerep.org 203.432.1234 T E LE TYPE O R D ER S 203 .4 3 2 .1 5 2 1 APRIL 4 AT 2PM

APRIL 11 AT 2PM

CONTAINS NUDITY, SEXUAL SITUATIONS, VIOLENCE, AND STRONG LANGUAGE.

PHOTO BY DAVID COOPER.

“COME JOIN US—THESE THREE PLAYWRIGHTS PACK A THEATRICAL PUNCH.” —PAULA VOGEL, CHAIR, PLAYWRITING DEPARTMENT

3 NEW PLAYS. 3 FRESH VOICES. DRAMA.YALE.EDU

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