1995 Next Wa Ve Festival Presents Salome St Aged by Director, Playwright and Fiction Writer Steven Berkoff
For Further Press Information: William Murray or Heidi Feldman at BAM (718) 636-4129
BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC (BAM) 1995 NEXT WA VE FESTIVAL PRESENTS SALOME ST AGED BY DIRECTOR, PLAYWRIGHT AND FICTION WRITER STEVEN BERKOFF
BAM MAJESTIC THEATER OCTOBER 17-21: SIX PERFORMANCES
British director, playwright and fiction writer Steven Berkoff has created a surrealistic staging of Oscar Wilde's tragic play Salome to be presented October 17 - 21 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Majestic Theater, 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, N .Y. as part of the 13th annual 1995 NEXT WA VE Festival, sponsored by Philip Morris Companies Inc.
Written in 1892 in French, the play recounts the biblical story of Salome's obsession with Jokanaan (John the Baptist), which results in the vicious demise of both characters, with Salome's dance of the seven veils as catalyst . According to the story, when Salome's mother divorced her husband and married his brother Herod Antipas, governor of Judaea, the prophet John the Baptist was imprisoned for denouncing the marriage. Salome -- whose dancing pleased her stepfather so much that he promised her "whatever she would ask" -- followed her mother's advice and demanded the head of John the Baptist on a platter.
Salome director Steven Berkoff (who also plays the role of King Herod) uses a bare stage to depict a l 930's cocktail party at which the full horror of the story is presented to a group of white-faced guests . He reveals this classic story of a scorned woman's seductive revenge using a minimalist approach, which through costume and movement satirizes the social elite and explores the decline and corruption of morality . Presented as an homage to Wilde, Berkoff s Salome reflects Wilde's most essential spirit. According to Berkoff, the language of the play
more ... 2 is so intense that it needs to be treated " ... like music and has to be carried like a piece of treasured tapestry .... ". Salome has almost all the qualities of a poem -- the prose is as fluid as verse and is charged with rich images and metaphors. Stressing rather than concealing the elaboration and repetition of the text, Berkofl's staging illuminates the strange musical quality of the play. Speech and movement are slowed down, and the unity of the style draws attention to the choric function of the people who inhabit Herod's palace. The character's lines are delivered as though in a drug induced trance as they strike exaggerated poses of false conviviality and behave like a single, multi-headed organism. The actor's intensified make-up transforms their faces into expressionistic images reminiscent of the Neue Sachlichkeits Schule in Germany of the 1930's. Live piano music by composer Roger Doyle accompanies the piece throughout and provides the final ingredient, formalizing the piece's dream-like texture and reinforcing its theme of love and passion.
Salome had the longest gestation period of all of Wilde's plays. His interest in Salome' s image was stimulated by the vivid descriptions of Gustave Moreau's paintings, Heinrich Heine's nightmarish vision in Alla ho/I , Jules Laforgue's Salome in Mora/ites Legendaires, and Stephane Mallarme's Herodiod e. Soon after 1891, he became obsessed with the idea of writing a dark symbolist counterpart, rivalling Mallarme on one of his own subjects and in his own language.
Wilde's dream of Salome formed and re-formed and when Wilde met Sarah Bernhardt in the summer of 1892, he offered Bernhardt the play. Bernhardt was rehearsing the play for her London season when Lord Chamberlain's office refused to license it, because it depicted a biblical subject. The first production of Salome took place in Paris directed by Lugne-Poe who also played the role of King Herod at the Theatre de l'OEuvre in 1896. Wilde at the time was in prison and never saw Salome staged. Richard Strauss saw the piece in Berlin in 1902 at Max Reinhardts' "Little Theatre" and began to compose his opera based on the play the following summer. The first English staging was a private production by the New Stage Club at the Bijou Theatre in London in May of 1905, five years after Wilde's death in Paris. The following year it was presented at King's Hall by the Literary Theatre Society in a double bill with Wilde's A Florentine Tragedy with designs by Ricketts. George Bernard Shaw and Eleonora Duse were in the audience and the press boycotted the production. Despite Strauss's opera, Salome has been largely neglected by English theater In England, the play was banned until 1931 and was presented for the first time by Terence Gray at the Festival Theatre in Cambridge the same year.
more ... 3 During his undergraduate years at Oxford, Irish-born poet, dramatist and novelist Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) became the leader of an aesthetic movement that advocated Art For Art's Sake . Wilde, convicted of homosexuality, was imprisoned from 1895 to 1897. Upon his release he went to Paris, where he lived in financial ruin and despair until his death. Wilde's works include: Poems (1881 ); two collections of fairy stories, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) , and The House of Pomegranates ( 1891 ); the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray ( 1891 ); and the plays Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) , A Women of No Importance (1893), Salome (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) .
Born in Stepney, London, Steven Berkoff studied drama and mime in London and in Paris. He subsequently entered a series of repertory companies and in 1968 formed The London Theatre Group . Their first professional production was In the Penal Colony, adapted from Kafka's short story. East, BerkofPs first original stage play, was presented by The London Theatre Group at the Edinburgh Festival in 1975. Other original works include West, Decadence, Greek, Kvetch, Acapulco, Hany's Christmas, Lunch, Sink the Belgrano, and Massage, which have been widely performed internationally. His most recent plays include St11rm1111d Drang and Brighton Beach Sc11mbags. Among the many adaptations Berkoff has created for the stage, he directed and toured the following: Kafka's The Trial and Metammphosis, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, and The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. He has directed productions of Hamlet, Macbeth, Salome and Coriola1111s,the first three of which have toured extensively. He has also published many short stories and has appeared in numerous television and film productions.
Oscar Wilde's Salome directed by Steven Berkoff will be presented on October 17 at 7:00pm, October 18-21 at 8 :00pm and October 21 at 2 00pm at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's (BAM) Majestic Theater, located on 651 Fulton Street , Brooklyn . Tickets are $50, $35, and $25 and may be purchased after September 11, 1995 at the BAM Box office located at 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn or by calling TicketMaster at (212) 307-4100. For subscriptions, general information and reservations on the BAMBUS , call (718) 636-4100.
Since 1958. Philip Morris Companies Inc . has supported a broad spectmm of cultural programs that reflects the corporation 's commitment to innovation and creativity . Philip Morris ' support of the arts focuses on contemporary and multi-cultural visual and performing arts. and is cimong the most comprehensive corporate cultural programs in the world. The leading corporate sponsorship for the NEXT WA VE Festival since 1985. Philip Morris is also
more ... 4 the Founding Sponsor of the NEXT WA VE Forward Fund.
The presentation of Salome is supported by the British Council. Special support for Salome provided by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and New York Magazine
The Brooklyn Academy of Music gratefully acknowle dges the generous support from donors of the following special funds which have been established for The Campaign for BAM:
NEXT WA VE Forwar d Fund Philip Morris/Founding Sponsor "Supporting the Spirit oflnnovation"
The Bohen Foundation
Michael Bancroft Goth Endowed Annual Performance Fund
The Charles and Valerie Diker Dance Endowment Fund
1995 NEXT WA VE Festival Supporters: New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. National Endowment for the Arts. The Ford Foundation. The Fan Fo:x and Leslie R. Samuels Foun dation, Inc., The Harkness Foundations for Dance. The Boben Foundation, Robert W. Wilson , The Howard Gilman Found ation , Morgan Guaranty Tmst Company of New York . The Chase Manhattan Bank. New York State Council on the Arts, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation , British Airways . Lufthansa . Swatch , New York Magazine , Eu ropean American Bank . Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Germany , Chemica l Bank, Bowne of New York, PAPER Magazine , Natural Heritage Trust. Mercedes-Ben z. Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, The William and Mary Greve Foundation. Inc .. Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation, Meet The Com poser, · Capezio/Ballet Makers Dance Foundation Inc .. Dance Ink . BAM Producers Council. BAM Associates and Fri ends ofBAM .
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has made a three-year grant to support artistic collaborations at BAM.
International presentations are supported by The Rockefeller Foundation.
Special support for BAM's Visual Arts Initiative: Artists In Action has been prov ided by The Pew Charita ble Trusts, The Henry Luce Foundation . Inc. , National Endowment for the Arts . The Greenwall Foundatio n, and The Cowles Charitable Trust.
BAM's Producers Council and Associates provide annual priYate patronage for BAM 's NEXT WA VE Festival and also sponsor e:xhibitions and special events for the Festival throughout the year.
The BAM Facility is o,,ned by the City of New York and its operation is made possible, in part , with public funds provided through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs with support from the Brook lyn Delega tion of the New York City Council and Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden .
08/03/95
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