Fresh from receiving six 2009 Ovation Award nominations (including two for Best Production of a Play and one for Best Overall Season), the multiple award-winning Fountain Theatre celebrates 20 years of excellence with an exciting 2010/2011 season of premieres.
"Our 20th Anniversary Season is a celebration of who we are as a theater," explains Fountain co-artistic director Stephen Sachs. "We continue our commitment to three masters for whose work we're well known: Wilson, Williams, and Fugard. Yet, two of their plays we're producing are new works to our audiences. In addition, we'll premiere two new plays by important playwrights emerging on the American theater landscape. With a mixture of premieres of new plays, a fresh look at a celebrated masterpiece, a world premiere Flamenco dance/drama - plus dance concerts at both the Fountain and the Ford Amphitheatre - the new 20th Anniversary Season has it all."
The 2010/11 season line-up includes the United States premiere of Athol Fugard's newest play, The Train Driver; the West Coast premiere of Tennessee Williams' final full-length play, A House Not Meant to Stand; the West Coast premiere of The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza; the Los Angeles premiere of Opus by Michael Hollinger; a fresh look at August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; and the world premiere of the Flamenco dance/drama DJ: Don Juan in LA.
First up, opening February 6, is The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza. Working closely with the playwright to develop a brand new, completely reworked version of the script that premiered last year at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, Ben Bradley directs the West Coast premiere. Part history, part mystery and part ghost story, Bayeza's jazz/gospel/folk integration of past, present, fact and legend turns the story of the 1955 murder of 14-year old Emmett Till, whose shocking death helped spark the infant civil rights movement, into a soaring work of music, poetic language and riveting theatricality. February 6 - March 6 (previews Jan. 30-Feb. 5).
In Spring, 2010, Simon Levy will direct the Los Angeles premiere of Michael Hollinger's Opus, the universally acclaimed new play that was the recipient of the 2006 Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Citation from the American Theatre Critics Association. A former classical musician-turned-playwright, Hollinger has penned a smart, funny and compelling exploration of artistic passion in this story about the musical ambitions and personal dynamics of a 'highly strung' string quartet.
Master playwright Athol Fugard hands the reins for what he calls "the most important play I've ever written" to Stephen Sachs (director of Fugard's Road to Mecca, Exits and Entrances, Victory, and Coming Home), who will direct the United States premiere of The Train Driver in Summer, 2010. Adolphus Ward (LA Weekly, LADCC, NAACP Awards for Gem of the Ocean) costars in the story of a tormented train driver who is compelled to visit a makeshift graveyard in the middle of nowhere, determined to find the unmarked grave of the woman he unintentionally killed. It's a haunting, mesmerizing and deeply personal journey into the human soul.
On July 23 and 24, The Fountain Theatre returns to the Ford Amphitheatre to present Sonidos Gitanos/Gypsy Flamenco with Maria Bermudez and the Chicana Gypsy Project. This explosive ensemble from Jerez de la Frontera (Spain's "City of Flamenco") returns to the U.S. with star dancer/artistic director Maria Bermudez and special guests. The Los Angeles Times wrote, "There is blistering and then there is hot! Flamenco dancer Maria Bermudez and her company of musicians and dancers nearly torch the stage with their high combustible yet tradition-bound program. Sonidos Gitanos... white-hot passion!"
Fall, 2010 brings A House Not Meant to Stand, a 'new' play by Fountain favorite Tennessee Williams. Described by the playwright as a "Southern gothic spook sonata," his final full-length work had received only one production prior to his death in 1983, remaining unpublished until 2008. Simon Levy (Summer and Smoke, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore) brings the West Coast premiere of Williams' dark, expressionistic comedy about the disintegration of a blazingly dysfunctional family on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to the Fountain stage.
