Condola Rashad [SOPHIE], Cherise Boothe
[JOSEPHINE], & Quincy Tyler Bernstine
[SALIMA].
Saidah Arrika Ekulona [MAMA NADI]
& Condola Rashad [SOPHIE].
Saidah Arrika Ekulona [MAMA NADI].
Condola Rashad [SOPHIE], Kevin Mambo [COMMANDER
OSEMBENGA], & William Jackson Harper [SIMON].
Condola Rashad [SOPHIE] & Saidah Arrika
Ekulona [MAMA NADI].
Saidah Arrika Ekulona [MAMA NADI]
& Cherise Boothe [JOSEPHINE].
Condola Rashad [SOPHIE] & Quincy Tyler Bernstine [SALIMA].
Saidah Arrika Ekulona [MAMA NADI] & Russel G. Jones [CHRISTIAN].
-----------------------------------------------
says others.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"RUINED, set in a nightclub and brothel in a mining town in Congo, was in part inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children.” The central character, forcefully played by Saidah Arrika Ekulona, is Mama Nadi, the brothel’s proprietor, who tries, as Brecht’s dogged antiheroine did, to keep afloat by favoring neither side in the conflict that threatens to devour the country." - Charles Isherwood March 18, 2009
THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
"A brash, searing, heart-of-darkness story – periodically shot through with moments of fearsome comedy and the redemptive spirit that suggests the sheer persistence of the life force – RUINED with its volcanic direction by Kate Whoriskey, is a 21st century African variation on Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, that quintessential tale of the savage nature of life during a war that seems to have no end.
"The cast conjures formidable magic with sublime and show-stopping performances that bristle with wit and energy.” - Hedy Weiss
VARIETY
“POWERFUL! Lynn Nottage takes on one of playwriting's toughest challenges – the dramatization of distant, gruesome political realities – in her elegant and eloquent new work, RUINED.
"In director Kate Whoriskey's vibrant production premiering at Chicago's Goodman on its way to an Off-Broadway slot with Manhattan Theater Club, Nottage values deeply honest characterizations over histrionic expressions of outrage, to emotionally wrenching effect. RUINED is a genuinely original work that is constantly capable of surprising us.
In the charismatic cast we find performances with charm and radiance.” - Steven Oxman
------------------------------------------------
WATCHING
KATE WHORISKEY
All eyes are on the inventive young director with a penchant for the classics and a flair for dynamic visuals.
"Critics have largely been thrilled with her astute, playful and visually compelling renderings of modern classics, and artistic directors around the country have come a-courting. In March, La Jolla Playhouse artistic director Des McAnuff appointed Whoriskey to a new position as the California theatre's associate director, giving her an artistic home and a producing role...
"In some ways Whoriskey can be as enigmatic as her stage pictures. Though she is attracted to dense and difficult modern material, her approach to directing is more intuitive than cerebral. Her stagings are invariably full of fresh, incisive imagery and metaphors, but she doesn't have preconceived ideas or opinions about making theatre and doesn't think she has a single style or technique.
"Whoriskey, who was raised in Massachusetts, says she acquired much of her directing sensibility from Kuhlke when she studied with him as an undergraduate at NYU's Experimental Theatre Wing. Kuhlke taught her to apply dance-theatre principles of space, shape and time to dramatic action. Whoriskey also learned to create narratives using visually dynamic, moving stage compositions. "I became fascinated with that. For four years I would just watch Kevin create these moments and scenes in awe, working with angles and forms and shapes. That was a lot of my education—looking at shapes and pictures...
"Characters trapped in Ibsen's rigid world moved at right angles and one character, Aline Solness, made repeated entrances flying in a box that emphasized her gloomy detachment. For the final scene, Whoriskey and lighting designer Michael Chybowski used rear projections to conjure the vast looming tower (normally unseen) which the hero ascends and disappears from. The dimensions of the space seemed to transform in time and motion, as Solness (Christopher McCann) appeared to shrink and vanish. It was an unforgettable image, evoking the title character's psychological chasm and putting the play's Freudian crises into indelible pictures...
"Her work appeals to theatres in part because it's rare to find a director who integrates space and design so completely with language and gesture. Because of this uncanny unity and the precision of her imagery, those trying to describe her work often end up talking about painting—or Robert Wilson. In Vogue, James Oseland called Whoriskey's "controlled, concise stage wizardry...an uncanny meld of emptiness and rapture—a Contructivist painting with heart." Of The Master Builder Fuchs wrote: "This is no by-the-numbers Wilson production; rather the sculpted staging forms a rigid container around a molten core, a kind of—in the generic sense—abstract expressionism...
"McAnuff values her insights into texts above all: "Unlike a lot of younger directors, she's very interested in the text. She's very specific with actors on language, and it makes her visual work textually connected and well informed. It's not just flights of fancy." In their first conversation about Billy the Kid, for instance, Whoriskey suggested hanging slabs of beef around the stage, an image that particularly impressed McAnuff. "Because the war in Lincoln County is about cattle, this is a very resonant image. She was thinking more of Georgia O'Keefe and other abstractions, but it had real content." - Tom Sellar
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CRUMBS FROM
THE TABLE
OF JOY
May 5-June 11, 2006
THE HEAD THEATER
the CAST Ernestine Crump AMINA S. ROBINSON; Ermina Crump EDWINA FINDLEY; Lily Ann Green KELLY TAFFE; Godfrey Crump LELAND GANTT; Gerte Crump PATRICIA AGEHEIM. the ARTISTIC TEAM director DAVID SCHWEIZER; set designer JAMES NOONE; costumes DAVID BURDICK; lighting ALEXANDER NICHOLS; sound MARK BENNETT; dialect coach GILLIAN LANE-PLESCIA; production dramaturg LIANA THOMPSON; casting director JUDY DENNIS; stage manager MIKE SCHLEIFER; assistant director ADRIAN WATTENMAKER; assistant stage manager DEBRA ACQUAVELLA.
The Crump family is in trouble.
Godfrey - widowed and adrift - has found solace in a mysterious, possibly duplicitous preacher named Father Divine. His daughters, Ernestine and Ermina, have immersed themselves in glamorous illusions of Hollywood to escape the confusion of adolescence and the dangers of race relations in 1950s Brooklyn. But everything changes when free-spirited Aunt Lily shows up. Suddenly, Godfrey has remarried - a white woman. Ermina discovers boys. And Ernestine? She's torn between bebop and the Communist Party. -Steve Lichtenstein
-----------------------------------------
production photos.
LeLand Gantt [GODFREY], Amina S. Robinson
[ERNESTINE], & Edwina Findley [ERMNINA].
Edwina Findley [ERMINA], Kelly Taffe [LILY ANN],
& Amina S. Robinson [ERNESTINE].
LeLand Gantt [GODFREY] & Kelly Taffe [LILY ANN].
Amina S. Robinson [ERNESTINE], Patricia Ageheim
[GERTE], & LeLand Gantt [GODFREY].
Patricia Ageheim [GERTE], LeLand Gantt [GODFREY],
Amina S. Robinson [ERNESTINE], Edwina Findley
[ERMINA], & Kelly Taffe [LILY ANN].
Patricia Ageheim [GERTE].
-----------------------------------------
says Ms. Nottage.
"A volatile and rich period..."
“A volatile and rich period
"This rather ordinary African-American family—living in a basement apartment, living with this very strict and religious father and bon vivant aunt—is further complicated when the father disappears for three days and returns with a German bride. Back then it was unthinkable. You can imagine how an African-American family in the 1950s feels when they find themselves integrated. You can imagine how they would cope with something like that. The play is an allegory about the civil rights movement, about the women’s rights movement. It certainly foreshadows integration. It was written as an allegory for me to try to understand integration and the complications of integration and segregation and the complications of Communism and the complications of religion in one’s life.
"I began writing Crumbs from the Table of Joy as an exercise to see if I could write a play for a multi-generational theater audience—that had resonance for teenagers, but for an older audience as well. At the time I was interested in the period of the 1950s. It was a moment in American history in which I felt so much change. It was the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. Music was going through this explosion. You had be-bop, rock ‘n’ roll—so much that was going on. Such a volatile and rich period. Yet everything I had seen was in black and white. And I wanted to make it colorful. So I started writing Crumbs from the Table of Joy to try to understand that era.
"I learned that it is like the period we live in now. It is complicated. People’s lives were their lives, regardless of what was going on. I think that is what I was trying to capture—that all these things were going on outside the Crump family household. They still had to figure the same things, to figure out how to stay a happy family. And Crumbs from the Table of Joy is about a displaced Southern family smack in the center of New York City, in the 1950s, trying to cope with those changes. Coping with integration, trying to cope with big-city ideals with a small-town sensibility."
“On a panel I led about multiculturalism and theater, I once asked the question, ‘When are we going to write plays that are inclusive?’ We have to write plays that will reflect the culture we live in. I grew up in a multicultural neighborhood. I write plays that reflect my reality and that are honest to who I am.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
FABULATION
OR, THE RE-EDUCATION OF
UNDINE
Undine Barnes-Calles is watching her high life derail.
This formerly saditty PR maven suddenly finds herself embarrassingly downwardly mobile: pregnant, divorced, broke—and with no choice but to face her roots and head home to her family in the projects to regroup. This wry, energetic comedy from the author of Crumbs from the Table of Joy and Intimate Apparel won the 2005 OBIE Award for Best New Play. - Faedra Chatard Carpenter
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Jan 28, 2009
THE HEAD THEATER
the CAST Father JEROME PRESTON BATES; Undine NATALIE VENETIA BELCON; Mother CRYSTAL ANNE DICKENSON; Accountant RICHARD GALLAGHER; Flow FRANK HARTS; Grandma LIZAN MITCHELL; Guy/Herve ROBERT MONTANO; Stephie MARIA-CHRISTINA OLIVERAS. the ARTISTIC TEAM director
JACKSON GAY; set designer ADRIAN W. JONES; costumes JESSICA FORD; lighting PAUL WHITAKER; composer GREG WILDER; production dramaturg FAEDRA CHATARD CARPENTER; choreographer NICCO ANNAN; voice/text GARY LOGAN; casting director JANET FOSTER; stage manager LAURA SMITH; assistant stage manager MIKE SCHLEIFER.
production photos.
Crystal Anne Dickenson [MOTHER] & Maria-Christina
Oliveras [STEPHIE].
Natalie Venetia Belcon [UNDINE] & Robert Montano [HERVE].
Lizan Mitchell, Natalie Venetia Belcon [UNDINE],
Jerome Preston Bates, & Maria-Christina Oliveras [STEPHIE].
Natalie Venetia Belcon [UNDINE] & Crystal Anne
Dickenson [MOTHER].
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
London's TRICYCLE THEATER
It's got a lovely view of the next building. I counted the number of bricks …. 6473.
---- Grandma
the CAST Undine JENNY JULES; Mother CLARE PERKINS;
Father CHRIS TUMMINGS; Stephie CHARLOTTE LUCAS; Granny ALIBE PARSONS; Flow OBI ABILI; Herve KARL COLLINS; Richard HOWARD WARD; Allison LORRAINE BURROUGHS. the ARTISTIC
TEAM director INDHU RUBASINGHAM; set design ROBERT
JONES; lighting JON DRIS
COLL; music PAUL ENGLISHBY; sound COLIN PINK.
production photos.
Clare Perkins [MOTHER]
& Jenny Jules [UDINE}.
Jenny Jules[UDINE].
Jenny Jules [UDINE]
& Karl Collins [Herve].
says others.
CURTAIN UP
"Played very tongue in cheek, Fabulation reminded me of those magazine photo cartoons which tell romantic tales with photographic stills and large bubbles of amazement, astonishment and dismay. Playing non stop for one hour fifty minutes, as Undine, Jenny Jules puts in a magnificent, marathon performance full of exaggerated wit and high drama. Fabulation is pastiche but just below the surface laughter are some very serious points about family and values, ambition and scruples.
"The British audience, unlike that in New York, greatly enjoyed the intercession of the Yoruba priest Babalawo (Lucian Msamati), obviously something that Londoners can relate to and find very humorous. I really liked the scenes set in the Drug Users Anonymous support group where Undine's protests that she is not and never has been an addict are met with gasps of sanctimonious horror for the extent of her denial. The ex-addicts have just been applauding their individual anniversaries of "being clean". Undine is however telling the truth. She has been placed on one year's group drug counselling after taking pity on her wheel chair bound grandmother and trying to secure a crack cocaine deal for the old lady who has covered her crack habit injections by pretending to be diabetic.
"I don't think that Lynn Nottage expects us to believe all the inventive improbabilities of Fabulation like the way in which a successful business woman supposedly lost all financial control to Hervé (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) the smooth operator with a great line in tango based seduction. Or the dreadful series of coincidences and catastrophes that contribute to Undine's descent economically and socially. But Undine does become a more attractive person. She starts the play as an unreasonable boss and ends it pregnant and almost fulfilled. But the story is apocryphal, a cautionary tale not to let success make you get decency out of perspective. " Lizzie Loveridge
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Playwrights Horizons' Peter Jay Sharp Theater
June 13, 2004
the CAST Undine CHARLAYNE WOODARD; Mother SAIDAH ARRIKA EKULONA; Father KEITH RANDOLPH SMITH; Stephie MELLE POWERS; Grandma MYRA LUCRETIA TAYLOR; Flow DANIEL BREAKER; Hervé ROBERT MONTANO; Accountant STEPHEN KUNKEN. the ARTISTIC
TEAM director KATE WHORISKEY; set design WALT SPANGLER; lighting DAVID WEINER; sound KEN TRAVIS; costume KAYE VOYCE; choreography GREGORY MITCHELL.
production photos.
Daniel Breaker [FLOW], Charlayne Woodard
[UNDINE], Keith Randolph Smith [FATHER],
& Saidah Arrika Ekulona [MOTHER].
Charlayne Woodard [UNDINE] & Robert
Montano [Hervé].
Saidah Arrika Ekulona [MOTHER] & Charlayne
Woodard [UNDINE].
