NEW YORK, October 19, 2006—Next month, The New School for Drama will present playwright Keith Reddin’s award-winning Black Snow, a dramatization of the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. The play will be directed by Glynis Rigsby, founder of the Black Cat Group, and performed by third-year acting MFA students at Drama. Black Snow runs November 16–18 at The New School for Drama Theater, 151 Bank Street. Performances are 8:00 p.m. Thursday through Saturday with a 3:00 p.m. Saturday matinee. Tickets are $10 (general admission) and can be purchased at the door or by calling Ticket Central at 212.279.4200 or visiting www.ticketcentral.com or the Ticket Central box office at 416 West 42nd Street.
“This is our second year of full-scale productions, which we developed to give our students the chance to work with professional theater artists,” said Robert LuPone, director of The New School for Drama. “These productions are exposing them to new techniques. In this case, our students are experimenting with the Chekhov technique-which for some of them has been a real breakthrough.”
Winner of the 1993 Joseph Jefferson award for Best Play, Black Snow follows the story of Sergei Maxudov, a writer whose dream of being a famous novelist turns into a nightmare. Excited that his novel is to be presented as a play at the Theater of Moscow, Maxudov discovers to his horror that he and his work are under the control of the eccentric theater management and realizes the hypocrisy and frustration that go into producing a true artistic piece. Reddin’s dramatization takes the original text to new dimensions by showing on stage both the story of Maxudov and the play within the play.
To prepare for the production, students participated in a series of Michael Chekhov acting workshops led by noted master teacher Ragnar Freidank. In the week-long experience, participants explored how their physical bodies and imaginations can become entranceways to a character’s psychology, and how their discoveries can evoke a character’s emotional life.
Keith Reddin is a playwright and director. Last year, he directed his play Life During Wartime at The New School for Drama as part of its first season of full-scale productions. Reddin is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Yale University School of Drama. His plays include: Life And Limb, The Innocents’ Crusade, Rum and Coke, Big Time, and Maybe. Film credits include a film adaptation of his play Big Time for American Playhouse. Awards include the Charles MacArthur Fellowship (1983), the San Diego Critics Circle Award for Best New Play (1989 & 1990), and a Drama League Award (1990).
Glynis Rigsby, director, is a freelance theater director and founding director of the Black Cat Group. A 2001 graduate of the Yale University School of Drama, she has worked closely with playwrights and translators to develop compelling productions of established texts and new works. From 1995 to 1998, she served on the artistic staff of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. She directed the world premiere of Stanley Rutherford’s The Chinese Art of Placement for the Phoenix Theater and is currently working on an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, a project based on Daniel Schacter’s The Seven Sins of Memory, and a workshop of Gordon Cox’s The Spidercrone’s Bargain.
Black Snow, based on the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, is written by Keith Reddin and directed by Glynis Rigsby with set design by Robin Vest, costume design by Jenny Mannis, lighting design by Scott Bolman, sound design by Jane Shaw, and stage management by Chris Clark.*
*Member Actors Equity Association
Cast includes New School Drama students: Zo‘ Anastassiou, Isabel Garcia Arenelund, Darcie Champagne, Brett Collier, Colin Fisher, Joe Fuselli, Stacie Greenwell, Mark S. Howard, Andy Kepka, Megan Kilian, Robin LeMon, Ivan Magrin-Chagnolleau, Aynsley Moorhouse, Emily Murray, Megan Mioduski, Joel Repman, Brian Schlanger, Tawny Sorenson, Hadi Tabbal, and JC Vasquez.
At The New School for Drama, the instinct to create is revered. Through its interrelated, three-year MFA program in acting, directing, and playwriting, the school is forging the next generation of performing artists. A faculty of working professionals brings to the fore students’ unique and original voices, and helps them establish a rooted sense of who they are as individuals and as artists. The New School’s history in the dramatic arts began in the 1940s, when the Dramatic Workshop, led by founder Erwin Piscator and a faculty including Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, fostered artistic voices as distinctive as Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando. Since 1994, the university has offered an MFA degree in the performing arts. For more information, visit www.drama.newschool.edu.