Battle of Black and Dogs April 16 to May 8
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BATTLE OF BLACK AND DOGS APRIL 16 TO MAY 8 Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras Give Joy Forever Give the one gift that will always bring warm smiles and love. Give a Peter Indorf gift. P ETER INDORF J EWELERS 1022 Chapel St 203-245-5700 www.peterindorf.com heirloom sip, savor and celebrate reservations ■ 203 503 3919 1157 chapel street | new haven ct | 06511 or visit opentable.com studyhotels.com/heirloom 1 Welcome to Battle of Black and Dogs, the final production of SPEND LESS, GET OUT MORE! Yale Rep’s 2009–2010 season! From the breathtaking heights of Ibsen’s The Master Builder, 6-Play and 4-Play Subscriptions available—starting to the war-torn Liberia of Danai Gurira’s astonishing Eclipsed; from the soaring melodies that shot through Andy Warhol’s at less than $30 per ticket. Factory in POP!, to Mandy Patinkin’s passionate performance JOHN GROO BY PHOTO in Compulsion and the inspired shenanigans of The Servant of Two Masters, this has been a remarkable celebration and rich exploration of humanity’s flaws, foibles, tragedies, and YALE REP 2010–11 SEASON triumphs. Whether you’ve joined us all season long, or if this is WORLD PREMIERE MUSICAL AUGUST WILSON’S your first visit to Yale Rep, thank you for sharing the journey with us. WE HAVE ALWAYS THE PIANO LESSON The work of French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès is produced regularly across DIRECTED BY LIESL TOMMY Europe, but has had little exposure here in the U.S. I am delighted at this opportunity LIVED IN THE CASTLE January 28 to February 19, 2011 to introduce New Haven audiences to this remarkable writer, who left behind about BOOK AND LYRICS BY ADAM BOCK a dozen plays when he died at the age of 41 in 1989. I am thrilled also to welcome MUSIC AND LYRICS BY TODD ALMOND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S back Robert Woodruff, one of America’s most daring and distinguished directors. As BASED ON THE NOVEL BY SHIRLEY JACKSON you may know, he made an electrifying Yale Rep debut last season with Notes from DIRECTED BY ANNE KAUFFMAN ROMEO AND JULIET Underground, which will be presented at California’s La Jolla Playhouse next season. September 17 to October 9, 2010 DIRECTED BY SHANA COOPER March 11 to April 2, 2011 Robert will be back at Yale Rep next year to direct the U.S. premiere of Autumn Sonata EDWARD ALBEE’S by Ingmar Bergman. Our 2010–2011 season will also include two world premieres: U.S. PREMIERE the musical We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Adam Bock and Todd Almond, A DELICATE BALANCE based on Shirley Jackson’s novel, and Bossa Nova, a poignant and powerful new DIRECTED BY JAMES BUNDY AUTUMN SONATA play by Kirsten Greenidge; two Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpieces: Edward Albee’s A October 22 to November 13, 2010 BY INGMAR BERGMAN Delicate Balance and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson; and the greatest love story of PENDING AUTHOR’S APPROVAL DIRECTED BY ROBERT WOODRUFF all time: Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. WORLD PREMIERE April 15 to May 7, 2011 Please join us! Subscriptions—starting at less than $30 per ticket—are now available BOSSA NOVA (ordering details are on the page opposite this note). You can choose the plays you’d BY KIRSTEN GREENIDGE YALEREP.ORG like to see with our new 4-play package, or you can join us for the entire season and DIRECTED BY EVAN YIONOULIS enjoy all six productions. November 26 to December 18, 2010 203.432.1234 In the meantime, visit us online at yalerep.org and facebook.com/yalerep for the latest updates about next season, including casting and creative team news—and help us spread the word to your family and friends. And of course, I look forward to receiving and responding to your emails about Battle of Black and Dogs (my email address is [email protected]). Thank you again for being here today. I look forward to seeing you again in September for another season of thrilling and surprising theatre at Yale Rep! Sincerely, James Bundy Artistic Director THE CAST OF THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS, PHOTO BY RICHARD TERMINE, 2010. PLAYS, DATES, AND ARTISTS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. 3 APRIL 16 TO MAY 8, 2010 YALE REPERTORY THEATRE James Bundy, Artistic Director Victoria Nolan, Managing Director PRESENTS BATTLE OF BLACK AND DOGS By BERNARD-MARIE KOLTÈS Directed by ROBERT WOODRUFF Translator and Composer MICHAËL ATTIAS © 2008 Hospitality 3 All rights reserved Scenic Designer RICCARDO HERNANDEZ Costume Designers TOM McALISTER ILONA SOMOGYI Lighting Designer STEPHEN STRAWBRIDGE Sound Designer CHAD RAINES read, rest, reflect Production Dramaturg AMY BORATKO prepare yourself for an Fight Director RICK SORDELET unparalleled experience in service, style and comfort Vocal Coach WALTON WILSON Casting Directors TARA RUBIN book your stay at The Study LAURA SCHUTZEL in the heart of Yale’s vibrant Arts Campus Stage Manager JENNA WOODS This translation was originally commissioned by In Parentheses and Dangerous Ground Productions for the Koltès Festival New York 2003, with the support of Étant donnés, The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts. SEASON MEDIA SPONSOR 1157 chapel street new haven ct 06511 203 503 3900 5 CAST (IN ORDER OF SPEAKING) ANDREW ROBINSON Horn ALBERT JONES Alboury TRACY MIDDENDORF Léone TOMMY SCHRIDER Cal SETTING CONSTRUCTION SITE RUN BY A FOREIGN COMPANY IN A WEST AFRICAN COUNTRY, ANYWHERE FROM SENEGAL TO NIGERIA 6 7 TAPPING HIS ROOTS: FINDING BERNARD-MARIE KOLTÈS’S SOURCE AND SOURCES popular culture with the fine arts. He Abandoning his journalistic studies in the structure of your thoughts.” An early adored the American cinema and its Strausbourg, twenty-year-old Koltès set version of Battle was broadcast on French actors: Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver out to travel the world in 1968, the year radio, but the first major production of the and Raging Bull, Marilyn Monroe in that revolution engulfed Europe and play wasn’t until 1983 after Koltès began The Misfits, James Dean in East of Eden America. Amidst this backdrop of political working with director Patrice Chéreau, and Rebel Without a Cause, and Marlon upheaval and personal liberation, Koltès who became one of the writer’s most Brando in Apocalypse Now. He was saw his first play: Seneca’s Medea. Maria significant collaborators. attracted to the physicality of boxing and Casares’s performance in the title role To Bernard-Marie Koltès, a person’s of kung-fu movies; one of his favorite inspired him to write for the theatre; his After Chéreau’s production of Battle in biography was more complicated than films was The Last Dragon. Rap or Bob admiration of her skill ran so deep that Nanterre, Koltès became increasingly just a mere listing of facts, dates, Marley’s reggae rhythms might play he vowed that she would star in his plays. well-known in European theatre circles. and places. He had a complicated in his apartment one day, Chopin or (She did perform in his play Quay West, in However, throughout the 1980s, as relationship with his own origins and Bach the next. Though he felt a kinship a part written for her.) His first theatrical he wrote all of his major plays, he was even his own language and constantly to French playwrights like Marivaux works were adaptations of novels and secretly battling AIDS. He kept his reimagined his own roots. In 1983, the and Racine, he devoured the writings poems, including Gorky’s My Childhood, personal life extremely private, not year that Battle of Black and Dogs had its of Faulkner, Melville, Conrad, and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, wanting his sexuality to define him as a first major production in France, Koltès Steinbeck and sometimes wished he, and Song of Songs. By the late 1970s, he playwright. He never wanted any of his wrote to a friend about an impending too, could write in English. wrote his first original dramatic pieces: works to be defined by one element, African voyage: “I’m leaving for Senegal The Night Just Before the Forests, which whether it be his homosexuality or his (to go back to see the place where my Born in 1948, he grew up in Metz, a he called a soliloquy play; and an early politics; he hated the labels “gay theatre” roots should be, to discover once again barracks town in eastern France near draft of Sallinger. A decade later, in 1978, and “political theatre.” Even after his that they are not there, and then come the German border. In the 1950s, his Battle of Black and Dogs began to take death, in 1989 at the age of 41, his small back here once more to take the time to hometown became the site of religious shape during Koltès’s trip to Western canon of work continues to defy labels reinvent for myself their being there).” and political strife: violence between Africa. There he visited friends who were and geographical boundaries. The French longtime French citizens and recent Arab working on a construction site in Nigeria, claim his work, but a theatre in Atlanta Koltès rejected every label that was immigrants escalated as colonial wars and the landscape and characters of hosts an annual Koltès symposium that attached to him, and he sought out burned through Africa. Koltès’s father, a Battle emerged. features tours showcasing the “Koltèsian” places where he would be the outsider professional soldier, fought in many of character of the American metropolis. And or the other. He felt more at home in these wars and spent most of the decade Koltès completed Battle of Black and a statue of him stands outside the Mini Paris’s suburbs, filled with African in Algeria, away from his family.