THE WOOSTER GROUP
NEW YORK CITY PLAYERS
EARLY PLAYS
based on the GLENCAIRN PLAYS
by EUGENE O’NEILL
Adapted and Directed by Richard
Maxwell
Produced by The Wooster Group
Presented by St. Ann’s Warehouse
Feb 15 – EXTENDED THROUGH MARCH 11, 2012
Tickets start at $22
85 minutes - No intermission
The Wooster Group has invited Richard Maxwell of New York
City Players to direct Eugene O’Neill’s early “Glencairn” plays—Bound East
for Cardiff (1914), The
Long Voyage Home (1917) and The Moon of the Caribbees (1918).
Early Plays takes O'Neill’s tales of
sailors on and off the ocean as a base to explore themes of longing and
eternity. Dark episodes showing the underside of turn-of-the-century maritime
life—brawls, dances and carousing—are staged with a quotidian grace allowing
these simple stories to resonate emotionally.
In the plays, O’Neill captures the voices of sailors from
disparate nations, all shipmates on the British tramp steamer Glencairn. Early Plays explores this language --
both in its starkness and its potential for musicality -- in a series of scenes
that are interspersed with original songs composed by Maxwell.
Richard Maxwell was pinpointed by Elizabeth LeCompte,
director of The Wooster Group, to give these plays an inspired "re-mix,"
realizing O’Neill’s beautifully romantic text in a sparse, modern, yet still
mythic place.
The EARLY PLAYS company includes Wooster Group members and associates Enver Chakartash, Ari Fliakos, Teresa Hartmann, Bozkurt Karasu, Bobby McElver, Kaneza Schaal, Andrew Schneider, and Kate Valk and New York City Players Lakpa Bhutia, Keith Connolly, Alex Delinois, Nicholas Elliott, Jim Fletcher, Kevin Hurley, and Brian Mendes.
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