Theatre for a New Audience

The Cast of The Taming of the Shrew visits the Theatre’s Construction Site

ecarena — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:54:36 +0000

Shrew actors Andy Grotelueschen, Kathryn Saffell, and Varin Ayala, with Maggie Siff in the background, meet the Theatre's first home.

On Friday, April 20, just a day before their final weekend of sold-out performances of the New York Magazine Critic’s Pick, The Taming of the Shrew, the cast of the production visited the site of Theatre for a New Audience’s first home in the BAM Cultural District in Downtown Brooklyn.

Donning hard hats, the cast met Anthony Frontino of F.J. Sciame Construction Company. Frontino gave an overview on the current status of the construction project, and explained the specifics of the recently-installed isolation pads and slab, which will provide soundproofing and vibration isolation when the building is complete. The cast was able to explore parts of the construction site including where the stage will be when the building is completed in 2013.

It was a thrilling visit that connected our current artists with the place where they will one day perform.

Announcing the Council of Scholars

ecarena — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:48:40 +0000

Richard McCoy, James Shapiro, and David Scott Kastan discuss a play during a TFANATalks event

Theatre for a New Audience is establishing a Council of Scholars to expand the scope and depth of the Theatre’s humanities programs. The Council will have a fundamental role in advising the Theatre’s artistic and education leadership as it completes its Center for Shakespeare and classic drama as its first home in Downtown Brooklyn’s BAM Cultural District.

Council Members for the 2012-2013 season are James Shapiro (Council Chair), Jonathan Kalb, Richard McCoy, Gail Kern Paster, and Tanya Pollard.

Click here for more information on the Council.

Theatre for a New Audience’s Humanities programming receives support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

An Interview with Paper Mâché Monkey of The Taming of the Shrew

ecarena — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:28:35 +0000

Set model for The Taming of the Shrew, designed by Donyale Werle. For more production photos, click here.

If you saw our production of The Taming of the Shrew this spring, you likely noticed the beauty of the warm, wooden, Wild West-style set, designed by Donyale Werle. The set was realized by Paper Mâché Monkey, a newly founded, New York-based art studio specializing in sustainable design and the green fabrication of hand-made sculptures, art objects, and theatrical scenery and props.

The studio debuted their work in 2011 with the creation all of the handcrafted set dressing and props for Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson on Broadway. Founders Kenneth Grady Barker and Meghan Buchanan answer questions from the Theatre’s Education and Humanities Department. This article also appears in The Taming of the Shrew’s 360⁰ Viewfinder.

Q: You describe Paper Mâché Monkey “as a creative team, [priding] itself on being comprised of multi-disciplined designers and sculptors in their own right.” Is there a line between the arts of set design, sculpture, and set building? If so, where is that line?

A: For many companies, I think there is a much more distinct line than the ones we have created for ourselves at Paper Mâché Monkey. We are each artists and designers in our own right, and we try to take on projects in which we are not only building something, but also contributing a thoughtful aesthetic expertise. I don’t think there is necessarily a line, but really a marriage of sculpture, fabrication, and the art of set design.

Q: Donyale Werle has described her process as collaborative and a “team-based approach.” How would you describe your collaboration with her? Especially with respect to the Shrew set?

A: We have had the opportunity to work on several shows with Donyale, and have really developed an understanding working together. Her designs have a specific direction, but are also open to interpretation. We respect what she has put on the table, and she acknowledges that we are not only builders, but artists that are able and willing to enhance her design. Everyone’s ideas count in this process (and we hire people who have equally great ideas). For us, it’s a very liberating and truly collaborative process.

Q: What does “sustainable” mean to you?

A: We have had a lot of conversations regarding sustainability. As we all know, the theater is an inherently wasteful industry. Shows are built out of entirely new materials, installed, performed on, and dumped in the trash sometimes in a matter of weeks. Though convenient for a show’s quick turn-over in a theater, this practice is not good for the environment. Large amounts of perfectly good materials go to waste constantly, especially in an urban area as big as New York City. Finding and re-purposing those waste materials to create new sets and props is just one step that we can take toward a greener theater. To us, sustainability is thoughtful resourcefulness.

Q: Where did Shrew’s set’s salvaged wood come from? Were there any other materials salvaged for the project?

A: The wood in our show came from a number of places. Build It Green and Materials for the Arts are a couple of our “go to” resources for doors, lumber, paint, and fabrics. We have also established a relationship with a company that recycles the wood from used shipping pallets to create new ones for sale. We were able to talk them out of some of their lumber prior to manufacturing. We claimed and re-purposed 14 theatrical flats and several jacks from a movie set that had wrapped up production a couple weeks ago. We received an email that the entire set was all headed for the trash, so we hopped in a truck and went to pick it up. This is often times how it works when a large community knows that you are working in a recycled sustainable way: it is more or less organized scavenging.

Q: Considering the many fire and building codes and safety requirements are involved in building a set, have you found that using recycled or salvaged materials means that the actual building process is more labor intensive? Especially considering that the Shrew set is mostly wood?

A: Building codes, fire codes, and actor safety are some of our utmost concerns. Using re-purposed materials means we are paying much closer attention to the condition of the materials prior to use than if we were buying new lumber. While recycled materials often times are much cheaper than buying new, the time spent processing the materials (sanding wood down and picking out old staples) is significant. The budget, in that regard, is reallocated away from the new material costs to an investment into human labor, which we as a studio feel much more proud to support as an ongoing resource.

Q: What will happen to the set materials after Shrew closes?

A: This is an on-going question. There is a giant network in New York of people looking for materials to reuse and recycle into new things. As a studio, we try to take back what we can to reuse materials into other projects. We list items on group forums and contact others who feel might benefit from our sets. Many of the props are on loan from other theaters, and will go back into their rightful owners who generously let us borrow them. As a whole, we make an effort to find a new home for as many of the materials as we can, in order to save them from being thrown out completely.

——

In addition to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Broadway), Paper Mâché Monkey created the handcrafted set dressing and props for The Merchant of Venice (Broadway), Wonderland (Broadway, Straz Center, FL), Peter & the Starcatcher (New York Theatre Workshop), costume crafts for Measure For Measure (Public’s Free Shakespeare in the Park) and sculptures for YouTube & Google video shoots (Newseum, Washington D.C.). They can be found at www.papermachemonkey.com

Kenneth Grady Barker’s design credits include Birthday Boy (World Premier, Berkshire Theater Festival), K2 (BTF), All Shook up (Barrington Stage Company), Electra in a One Piece (The Good Company), Mine (Slant Theater Project), Call Me Anne (Access Theater), and Dogs (Grid Company). His associate/assistant design credits include Peter and the Starcatcher (New York Theater Workshop), Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Public and Broadway), Broke-ology (Lincoln Center Theater), Dance Dance Revolution (Ohio Theater), and Pippin (Mark Taper Forum), and Williamstown Theater Festival.

Meghan Buchanan has spent a significant time working in the downtown theater scene, creating 5 years worth of props and costumes for Richard Foreman’s Ontological Hysteric Theater. Her shows at the OHT include Zomboid, Wake Up Mr. Sleepy Your Unconscious Mind is Dead, Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland, Astronome: A Night at the Opera, and Idiot Savant (props only.) Meghan has served as Prop Designer/Prop Master for the Actors Studio at Pace University, Williamstown Theater Festival, New York Theater Workshop, The Roundabout Underground, Primary Stages, Classic Stage, as well as the 40th Anniversary Concert production of Hair, and Jollyship the Whizbang at Ars Nova. Meghan designed the set for the NYMF production of Rainbow Around the Sun, and the costumes for the Paper Industry’s Sine Wave Goodbye. She received her BFA in Scenic and Costume Design from the University of Oklahoma.

Reviews are in for The Taming of the Shrew

eernst — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:31:02 +0000

CRITIC’S PICK: The Taming of the Shrew (at the Duke on 42nd Street through April 21)

By SCOTT BROWN

April 6, 2012

With detectably elevated esprit de corps, the cast of director Arin Arbus’s delightful new Shrew (from Theatre for a New Audience) romps around a frontiersville set in hoop skirts and bowlers — but don’t for a minute mistake this for one of those tiresome “concept Shakespeare” productions. The point isn’t oaty accents or silly costumes: It’s to replant one of the Bard’s more troublesome comedies (by modern standards of gender parity) in an edge-of-the-world milieu, where the light S&M interplay of volatile, irrepressible Kate (Mad Men’s Maggie Siff) and head-gaming mock-patriarch Petruchio (Cymbeline’s Andy Groteleuschen) feels more like a subversive goof on convention than the iron-fisted upholding of it that George Bernard Shaw famously denounced. (Arbus also wisely preserves Shakespeare’s “Induction,” which firmly establishes the artificiality and untrustworthiness of the “message” play we’re about to see.)

Siff and Groteleuschen, both comic grandmasters with real sexual magnetism, are about as perfect a pairing as can be expected in this life: She’s a head-on duelist; he’s a parrying jester. The terms of their strange truce are never made entirely clear — is Kate truly “tamed,” leashed to the will of her mad-in-craft husband? Or does the game go on, perhaps in precincts where we’re not invited? Mystery is chemistry, and Arbus isn’t interested in affixing an easy answer to her production. She’s more interested in the funny-ugly, catastrophic mechanics of the piece. She’s assisted by such comic pros as John Pankow, Saxon Palmer, and John Christopher Jones, whose droopy pantaloon Gremio is a highlight. Another score: The score, a brilliantly assimilated period collage, assembled by puckish history-in-a-blender composer J. Michael Friedman (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson). —New York Magazine

‘The Taming of the Shrew,’ at the Duke on 42nd Street
A Shakespeare Play Set Where the Buffalo Roam

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

April 3, 2012

The Wild West makes a suitable setting for the brawling romance at the center of “The Taming of the Shrew” in theTheater for a New Audience production at the Duke on 42nd Street. Transplanting Shakespeare comedies to the land of gunslingers and tumbleweeds has become something of a commonplace, it’s true, but this lively production, directed by Arin Arbus (who directed the excellent renditions of “Othello” and “Macbeth” for the same company), treads lightly on conceptual gimmickry and features a frisky dustup between Maggie Siff and Andy Grotelueschen as the pecking lovebirds Kate and Petruchio.

On a handsome set of weathered-looking wood, designed by Donyale Werle, the production opens with the framing device, often dropped, in which a soused tinker, Christopher Sly (Matthew Cowles), is duped into believing he’s a rich lord. The comedy proper is performed for his entertainment, with a saloon piano player (Jonathan Mastro) punctuating the proceedings. (Michael Friedman has provided the incidental music and arrangements.)

Shakespeare himself dropped the frame immediately after this prologue, but Ms. Arbus’s production interpolates a few lines from the anonymously published 1594 play “The Taming of a Shrew” that continue the device, allowing us a few more glimpses of Mr. Cowles’s pungently funny turn.

Mr. Grotelueschen is not the matinee idol, exuding gleaming virility, often cast as the wife tamer. With a nimbus of frizzy curls and a matching red beard, he’s a big, burly teddy bear of a man whose portrayal accentuates Petruchio’s ribald wit and lusty appetite for combat, both intellectual and physical.

But his Petruchio is also uncommonly reflective, and the natural ease with which he handles Shakespeare’s verse brings him into an easy intimacy with the audience. We are made to understand that behind Petruchio’s sometimes brutish behavior is a keen mind using both humor and a measure of insight to tease out Kate’s gentle humanity.

This humanity is faintly glimpsed beneath the familiar veneer of spite, even in Kate’s first scene. Ms. Siff, who appeared in the first season of “Mad Men” as the department store heiress with whom Jon Hamm’s character has an affair, storms the stage, braying her lines at top volume.

But the eardrum busting, which gradually subsides as Kate’s vulnerable heart is pried open, is an emotional steam valve. Ms. Siff’s darting, wounded looks make it apparent that Kate’s choleric nature derives pretty clearly from a single source: she feels unloved by a father who dotes on her sister, and the hostile face she shows the world masks a neglected heart starved for affection.

When Petruchio’s antic charm offensive meets Kate’s well-manned defenses, the combustion makes for a lively scene of cutting gibes and scornful retorts that is taken at a galloping clip. Both combatants feed off each other’s ferocious energy, recognizing a match for their stinging wits. Beneath Kate’s antagonism is an intrigued interest in this man who looks and acts like no other in her orbit and greets her most savage taunts with a jovial imperviousness that disarms, and eventually unarms, her.

The play’s secondary romantic subplot, which takes up about as much stage time as the more celebrated story of the title, features some strong comic playing. John Christopher Jones is an amusingly doddering Gremio, one of the suitors for Bianca, Kate’s sister. Saxon Palmer, as his rival suitor Hortensio, in disguise as a music teacher, harvests more honest laughs than you’d imagine with his absurd comic accent and a mustache that won’t stay put. As Tranio, the servant to Lucentio (Denis Butkus), yet another of Bianca’s would-be husbands, John Keating uses his lanky frame and expressive comic face to expert effect.

Bianca, the cynosure of all this farcical attention, is portrayed by Kathryn Saffell with an air of mild imperiousness. Her warm beauty and her father’s doting attentions have obviously prepared her to expect frequent homage from the male sex. When, in the play’s climactic scene, Bianca ignores the request for her appearance by her new husband, Lucentio, it comes as no surprise; she’s had the upper hand all along and is not about to relinquish it.

This culminating scene will forever be a challenge for both actors and audiences. The speech in which Kate calls on wives dutifully to “place your hands below your husband’s foot” remains hard to reconcile with any rational view of equality between the sexes. Ms. Arbus softens the sting by having Petruchio fall to one knee opposite the kneeling Kate to kiss her proffered hand, suggesting that the love between them is a love between equals.

But the knowing smiles and bursts of laughter with which Ms. Siff seasons her delivery of the monologue also suggest that her submission may be just another in the series of provoking poses exchanged between Kate and Petruchio. The war games may continue.” —The New York Times

The Taming of the Shrew

Because Shakespeare’s early comedy is a play within a play—it’s being performed by a travelling troupe—the layers of deception and double-dealing are magnified. Arin Arbus, the director of this lively, intelligent, and very funny new production by the Theatre for a New Audience, sets the action in a nineteenth-century barroom in the American West (complete with excellent saloon-style piano playing by Jonathan Mastro). Led by strong work from Andy Grotelueschen (as Petruchio) and Maggie Siff (as Katharina), the company members fling themselves into the high-spirited machinations of love, power, and economics. As for selling the play’s “happy ending”—Kate’s submission to her new husband’s will after what can be seen as a period of physical and mental torture—Arbus and her leads have come up with a clever strategy that may not fully jibe with the text but that leads to a satisfying and moving conclusion. — The New Yorker

Review: ‘Shrew’ is a fresh take on age-old battle

By JENNIFER FARRAR

April 3, 2012

NEW YORK (AP) The battle of the sexes is waged anew as “The Taming of the Shrew” by William Shakespeare enjoys a fresh, robust off-Broadway presentation by Theatre for a New Audience at The Duke on 42nd Street.

The well-matched pair Maggie Siff (“Sons of Anarchy” and “Mad Men”) and Andy Grotelueschen (“Cymbeline”) play the famously arguing newlyweds, Kate and Petruchio. Siff and Grotelueschen have the comedic chops and the magnetism to make this a vibrant “Shrew” despite the difficulty of presenting the material to a modern, post-feminism audience.

Despite being written in a time when women truly were, as Petruchio calculatedly proclaims after his wedding, “my chattel,” director Arin Arbus has carefully staged the play with an eye toward Shakespeare’s possible original emancipating intent, while mindful of the rise of feminism.

In this undated theater image released by The Bruce Cohen Group, Ltd., Maggie Siff , left, and Andy Grotelueschen are shown during a performance
of “The Taming of the Shrew,’” currently performing off-Broadway at The Duke on 42nd Street in New York.
(AP Photo, Bruce Cohen Group Ltd, Henry Grossman)

Arbus has also cleverly set the production in the American West, thereby eliminating the expectation of British accents: A troupe of American actors is putting on the play as they travel the frontier in the late 1800s.

Donyale Werle’s colorful, multi-level, rustic wooden set nicely backgrounds the action as the battle of the sexes erupts onstage. From the onset, the men all conspire and use disguises or false identities to achieve their desired goals. The two sisters at the heart of the play can’t resort to disguise, so the older one, Kate, expresses her disgust at being bartered for marriage by using ill-tempered rhetoric and tantrums to fend off any possible suitors.

Siff is both comical and irate as “the shrew.” Far from portraying just a tantrum-prone, ill-tempered woman, Siff adds subtle colorations to her portrayal of Kate, by turns sullen, angry, conniving, bewildered and finally bemused by her new husband’s unusual approach.

Kate’s outspoken rudeness blocks the prospects for marriage for her attractive, docile and desirable younger sister, Bianca (played as both sweet and petulant by Kathryn Saffell, in her off-Broadway debut), as custom dictates that the elder sister must be married off first. Robert Langdon Lloyd is amiably wily as their wheeler-dealer father, Baptista.

Grotelueschen is a masterful buffoon, and his lusty yet nuanced Petruchio is a work of art. Despite his clownish behavior, Grotelueschen makes it clear that Petruchio feels Kate is a woman worth conquering, but to ultimately enjoy as an equal partner.

The large and assured cast includes John Keating, lending his unique twist to the part of servant Tranio, while Denis Butkus is youthfully confident as Lucentio, a lately arrived suitor for Bianca’s hand. Lucentio schemes mightily to obtain Bianca from his game adversaries, elderly Gremio (John Christopher Jones) and the nervous Hortensio (Saxon Palmer.) John Pankow is memorably grumpy as Petruchio’s servant, Grumio, and veteran actress Olwen Fouere lends dignity to a couple of small roles and a rowdy song about being a stood-up bride.

By the time Petruchio has “tamed” Kate, treating her much like a prisoner of war with starvation and sleeplessness, she has come to realize that he’s a clever man worth being her partner in life. Her final lengthy speech, a public tribute to the superiority of her husband, is often criticized for being degrading to her formerly fierce, independent personality.

But as noted in the program and as presented with touches of irony by Siff, the speech can also be regarded as a sign of public respect by Kate toward her husband, a continuation of the hard-fought (literally), mutual admiration the pair have achieved.

The cast is decked out in a bevy of colorfully patterned and textured costumes by Anita Yavich. Michael Friedman’s multifarious musical accompaniment is conveyed with enthusiasm by pianist Jonathan Mastro. In the end, both Kate and Petruchio appear to be well-pleased with their match, fulfilling Petruchio’s early prophecy, “And where two raging fires meet together/They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.”— The Associated Press

The Taming of the Shrew

By DAVID FINKLE

April 2, 2012

Arin Arbus certainly has a way with William Shakespeare, as she’s previously proven with her first-rate productions of Othello, Macbeth andMeasure for Measure. Now she gives us a downright rib-tickling The Taming of the Shrew, now being presented by Theatre for a New Audience at The Duke on 42nd Street.

Faced with a sometimes problematic work for modern audiences, Arbus has wisely cast a troupe of genuinely amusing comic actors — and having guessed them up in Anita Yavich’s wild Wild-West costumes on Donyale Werle’s all-wooden saloon set — presents them almost as if they’re clowns emerging from a circus car.

For this go-round, Petruchio (Andy Grotelueschen) comes to now-Westernized Padua looking to “wive it weathily” and fixes his intentions on Katharina Minola (Maggie Siff), whose reputation for being a bundle of ignited dynamite precedes her and whose disinclination to marry means much-pursued younger and sweeter sister Bianca (Kathryn Saffell) has to wait her turn for who-knows-how-long. While various shenanigans are set in motion by secondary figures, Petruchio goes about putting things right.

Last seen playing both hero and villain in the Fiasco company’s Cymbeline, the superb Grotelueschen is much more effective here and gives evidence he’s a homegrown Shakespearean with a big future. A decidedly substantial-looking fellow — bearded with a bald spot in his hair that blows about like tumbleweed — Grotelueschen takes command by dint of his complete affability. He speaks the poetry so naturally, it seems as if he’s expressed himself this way from birth.

Giving this Petruchio almost as good–or as bad–as she gets, Siff has the kind of piercing eyes that make men cower at the sight of her. Equally importantly, she’s convincing as a woman who saves time by throwing the hems of her clothes over her shoulder and climbing ladders to get where she wants to be.

If anything decelerates Siff’s performance, it’s that she allows herself to be tamed earlier than is the usual instance (a situation which may be traceable to dialogue-trimming). On the other hand, when she finally admits she’s “ashamed that women are so simple,” she does it with a tone that says she realizes feigning submission is the path to domination, or equality.

Moreover, supporting players Saxon Palmer, John Christopher Jones, John Pankow, Peter Maloney, Robert Langdon Lloyd, Denis Butkus, and John Keating each find one moment to stand out, while Mattew Cowles does quite well as drunken tinker Christopher Sly, whom the troupe of traveling thespians – Shrew is really a play within a play — convince that he’s a lord watching a performance staged for his pleasure.

Indeed, Arbus gets additional laughs by having the cast members josh dated acting styles and, more pointedly with the touchy subject matter, distancing from present-day attitudes Shakespeare’s message about women putting a hand under their man’s foot. She’s a sly one, for sure. —Theatremania

‘Shrew’ mastered by a powerful Kate

by ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

April 2, 2012

Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” has such a bad rep that this new production’s program is full of scholarly quotes that basically say, hey, it’s really not as chauvinistic as everybody thinks it is!

The problem’s obvious: The plot revolves around a headstrong woman, Katharina, being broken down into submission by her new husband, Petruchio — who initially married her for the dowry. This is the original romantic comedy, where the woman is humbled by the jerk and falls for him.

Yet this Theatre for a New Audience production, directed by Arin Arbus, makes a convincing argument for the delicious shrewdness of “Shrew.” And that’s because Maggie Siff and Andy Grotelueschen (late of the company’s “Cymbeline”) make a convincing argument for Kate and Petruchio as a pairing of equals.

This “Shrew” manages to find the funny in Shakespeare’s tricky romantic comedy with a nuanced Kate from Maggie Siff and Andy Grotelueschen as her domineering husband, Petruchio.

Siff, who played the department-store heiress of “Mad Men” (she’s currently on “Sons of Anarchy”), finds nuances even at the beginning, when Kate’s a mere barbed-tongue “fiend of hell.” Hurt briefly shadows her face when their father showers her younger sister Bianca (Kathryn Saffell) with love — and then it’s back to throwing chairs.

Petruchio sees through Kate’s shtick right away. He just needs to make her understand that they’re potential partners in crime, not adversaries. So he gives her a taste of her own medicine, making her realize that she can fight back at the world with wit and smarts, not unrestrained aggro.

The rest of Arbus’ production isn’t on the same perceptive high level.

For some reason, she’s placed the action in a 19th-century American frontier town. You’d expect entertaining petticoat dysfunction, or at least a battle of cowboys versus harridans, but the locale is completely underused. At least Donyale Werle created a nice wooden set, full of nooks and crannies — at one point Siff throws her skirt over her shoulder to climb a ladder.

The supporting cast is serviceable, though the very funny Saxon Palmer gets high marks as Bianca’s suitor Hortensio, endowed with a rake’s pencil-thin mustache.

But really, the show’s all about the central mismatched pair, and how much we find ourselves rooting for them. Hollywood could learn a lot from how this romance is handled. — The New York Post

Review Quotes

“Crackles with contemporary verve… popping and alive … with a happy ending a hard-line supporter of women’s rights might even appreciate.” — The L Magazine

“With one daring leap, Theatre for a New Audience’s The Taming of the Shrew takes us back to the American frontier of the late 19th century, and gives Shakespeare’s knockabout farce a fresh pioneer spirit. There’s no doubt that the entire ensemble feels at ease with Shakespeare’s language. Equally important is their boundless enthusiasm.” — CurtainUp

“Rollicking! Enterprising director, Arin Arbus, and her cast have great fun.” — Backstage.com

“With the success of both this adaption and his recent wonderful Macbeth, Theatre for a New Audience has a real treasure in their hands with Arbus. One that I hope stays around for quite a few more dozen Shakespearean journeys.” — The Artswire

CLICK HERE to listen to director Arin Arbus and composer Michael Friedman discuss their collaboration on The Taming of the Shrew on WNYC radio. Features discussion about the play, and a live performance of music from the show by John Pankow, Olwen Fouéré, John Christopher Jones, Peter Maloney and Jonathan Mastro (piano).

The Taming of the Shrew on WNYC

ecarena — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:49:26 +0000

Click here to listen to director Arin Arbus and composer Michael Friedman discuss their collaboration on The Taming of the Shrew on WNYC’s Soundcheck with John Schaefer. The show features a discussion about the play, and a live performance of music from the production by John Pankow, Olwen Fouéré, John Christopher Jones, Peter Maloney and Jonathan Mastro (piano).

Construction Update: Three Stories of Structure on the Rise

ecarena — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:06:02 +0000

Dorothy Ryan
Managing Director

Now that our first home has been under construction for nearly a year, many of our friends and future neighbors have remarked that they now see our building’s progress above the construction fence. Theatre for a New Audience’s first home is now starting to take shape in three dimensions.

While the acoustic isolation slab on the front two-thirds of the building was being prepared during the winter months, our construction team started to erect the steel and decking on the rear portion of the building (which will eventually serve as our stage door, loading area, mechanical and electrical rooms, rehearsal studio, backstage area and dressing rooms).

Now that the isolation slab is complete, we are seeing the structure rise on the front and middle portions of the building – a combination of masonry and steel. On the first floor, our future trap room has been enclosed, and interior walls are going up. We anticipate “topping off” (when the last beam is placed at the top of the structure) this coming summer.

Geoff Lynch of H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture and the Theatre's Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz examine a mock-up of the Theatre's curtain wall.

We are also preparing for the manufacture of our dramatic curtainwall, a signature feature of the building’s architecture. Representatives from Josef Gartner GmbH, the firm that will manufacture the curtainwall, visited the site in February to review a mock-up of portions of its structure with the design and construction team. Details of the structure and materials were finalized so that the curtainwall can be manufactured in time for its installation next winter.

In keeping with our goals of sustainable design and construction, we are employing recycled construction materials whenever possible. Nearly 80% of our structural steel is composed of recycled steel content. Our concrete masonry units use fly ash (a byproduct of coal combustion) to replace 30% of the cement material. Using fly ash in concrete diverts it from the wastestream, reduces the energy required for extraction of virgin materials, and allays pollution by keeping fly ash out of the atmosphere. Our materials are also regionally produced whenever possible: 83% of our masonry materials are extracted and manufactured within 500 miles of the construction site. Much of our structural steel is manufactured less than 50 miles away.

Our construction manager, F.J. Sciame Construction Co., is employing sustainable practices in its construction waste management. After they are hauled away from our site, wood, metal, paper, asphalt, concrete, sheetrock, plastic and residual waste are all sorted. During the first ten months of construction, 28.6 tons of waste were hauled away – notably, more than 84% of that waste has been diverted from landfills and has been delivered to various end-market users, so that their lifecycle can continue with future generations of recycled materials and reduced environmental impact.

Reviews are in for The Broken Heart

ecarena — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:18:38 +0000

“Astately staging of this rarely seen play. By the conclusion, several of the principal characters have met dire ends. It is not surprising that the blood flowing from their veins is not the gaudy lipstick red you usually see onstage, but ink black.

That’s an inspired touch.” New York Times

“Love collides with gory revenge in John Ford’s rarely produced tragedy, which is getting a welcome production from Theatre for a New Audience. In Selina Cartmell’s astonishingly lucid and ravishingly beautiful production, the piece simply rivets audiences’ attention.” Theatermania

“Theatre for a New Audience and director Selina Cartmell deserve accolades not just for reviving Ford’s little-known The Broken Heart, but also for giving it the kind of revelatory production that proves it’s an overlooked classic. The ensemble is uniformly fine, Cartmell is obviously a classical director to watch.” Village Voice

“This stylish rendition of this rarely performed play captures all of its chills and black humor. The action is clear and swiftly paced, and the large ensemble does well by both the play’s poetic language and its intense physical demands.” New York Post

“There’s a lot to admire in Selina Cartwell’s ghostly production … [with] several truly superb actors.” New York Magazine

“A sophisticated, insightful, classy production. The timelessness of Ford’s characters’ emotions enables director Selina Cartmell to make the work completely accessible to a modern audience.” Associated Press

“A peerless production from Theatre for a New Audience. Hallelujah for the ever-inventive director, Selina Cartmell, who has taken a difficult poetic play and made it accessible to all. There’s hardly a false note in this stylish, chic presentation that happily also succeeds in conveying a definite emotional punch. A production no serious theatergoer should miss.” Backstage

“The Broken Heart has all the hair-raising pleasures of the genre — grisly blood-lettings, whispered accusations of incest, creeping madness, starvation, and a whiff of necrophilia. This to-the-hilt (sometimes literally) drama is matched by to-the-hilt stagecraft in this magnificent production under Selina Carmell’s direction.” Philadelphia Inquirer

The Broken Heart Opening Night

ecarena — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:22:15 +0000

The Broken Heart opened February 12, followed by a party supported by The Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative. Above left, The Broken Heart actor Bianca Amato and director Selina Cartmell; right, director Julie Taymor and The Broken Heart assistant director Danya Taymor. To read about Selina Cartmell’s mentorship with Julie Taymor through the Rolex program, click here.

Photos courtesy of www.blacktiemagazine.com

Associate Artistic Director Arin Arbus Directs at the Houston Grand Opera

ecarena — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:58:49 +0000

Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

In 2009, after directing the Theatre’s acclaimed production of Othello, The New York Times called Arin Arbus “the most gifted new director to emerge this season.” She went on to direct the theatre’s productions of Measure for Measure and Macbeth, and is currently in rehearsals for The Taming of the Shrew. But this winter found Arbus in a new setting – directing her first opera production, Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, at Houston Grand Opera in Houston, Texas.

The production, which ran February 3-February 11, was very well received. Houston Press wrote, “Houston Grand Opera, under sensitive maestro Rory Macdonald and in a particularly affecting and handsome production conceived by director Arin Arbus, shows its mastery of Britten with this most affecting interpretation.”

For insight into Arbus’ take on the play and her Opera premiere, click here to read Outsmart Magazine’s compelling interview. As well, links to videos and a podcast on the production are available on the HGO’s website by clicking here.

What grows in Brooklyn? A tree and a new theater

ecarena — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:42:24 +0000

In this artist rendering released by Theatre for a New Audience, a drawing of the Theatre for a New Audience's 299-seat stage planned in the Brooklyn borough of New York, is shown. When opened in 2013, the $48-million theater will be the first new stage designed expressly for Shakespeare and classic drama since 1965 and it will be the first permanent home for the itinerant company. (AP Photo/Theatre for a New Audience)

Associated Press

January 31, 2012
by MARK KENNEDY

NEW YORK (AP) – In a season where little grows in the Northeast, something in Brooklyn is doing just that, foot by foot.

The metal guts of what will be a sleek three-tiered glass box surrounding the Theatre for a New Audience’s 299-seat stage have gone up in a former parking lot as part of the city’s ambitious plan to create a new $650 million cultural district.

“It’s going to be a destination,” said Jeffrey Horowitz, the founding artistic director of the company, during a recent tour of the work site in the Fort Greene section of the borough.

When opened in 2013, the $48-million theater will represent a milestone for Theatre for a New Audience and the city: It will be the first new stage designed expressly for Shakespeare and classic drama since 1965, and it will be the first permanent home for the itinerant company.

“We need a place to gather our activities, to set down roots in a community,” said Horowitz, who founded the theater company in 1979. “Would you go to a doctor or a lawyer whose office kept changing?”

The construction site is one of several at city theaters this winter, including the building of Signature Theatre Company’s new $66 million Frank Gehry-designed home on 42nd Street, a $57 million renovation of New York City Center and a $41 million theater being built on the roof of the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater.

In addition to a 299-seat theater, the 27,500-square-foot Theatre for a New Audience’s home will house a 50-seat rehearsal space and a lobby cafe. It will overlook a new public garden plaza and sit along a walking path between BAM’s Opera House and Harvey Theater.

Continue reading on The Huffington Post website.

Theatre for a New Audience

The Cast of The Taming of the Shrew visits the Theatre’s Construction Site

Announcing the Council of Scholars

An Interview with Paper Mâché Monkey of The Taming of the Shrew

Reviews are in for The Taming of the Shrew

CRITIC’S PICK: The Taming of the Shrew (at the Duke on 42nd Street through April 21)

‘The Taming of the Shrew,’ at the Duke on 42nd Street A Shakespeare Play Set Where the Buffalo Roam

The Taming of the Shrew

Review: ‘Shrew’ is a fresh take on age-old battle

The Taming of the Shrew

‘Shrew’ mastered by a powerful Kate

The Taming of the Shrew on WNYC

Construction Update: Three Stories of Structure on the Rise

Reviews are in for The Broken Heart

The Broken Heart Opening Night

Associate Artistic Director Arin Arbus Directs at the Houston Grand Opera

What grows in Brooklyn? A tree and a new theater

Associated Press

‘The Taming of the Shrew,’ at the Duke on 42nd Street
A Shakespeare Play Set Where the Buffalo Roam