German Season
2007-8: Our German Season |
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There is no hard and fast rule for how LG Pig picks a country to focus on each season. For our second go-round we decided to let Fate decide for us. Two hot new projects fell out of the sky onto us, both of them of the German persuasion:
The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, has been stunningly & hilariously adapted by director Katja Hill into a savage vehicle for six women. Fassbinder wrote the whole piece on a trans-Atlantic flight from Germany to L.A. (promptly turning around when he got there to return to Germany to produce it). It is Ms. Hill's inspiration to have six different costume designers, one for each character. Pray for us.
My Lovely Suicides by Jody McAuliffe is a dream play adaptation of her surreal novella. This lyric play follows the tumultuous life and fevered writings of Heinrich von Kleist, 19th century bad boy author/playwright with suicidal tendencies. Staged as a piece of physical theatre by Dana Marks, fresh from a stint with SITI Company of NY.
To round things out we also include:
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennesse Williams. The most German of all Williams' work. Not really, but heavily influenced by German Expressionism (and our friend from last season, Anton Chekhov). This production lifts its core cast from last year's hit, Abigail's Party (Party Girl! Productions), and sets them in a New Orleans infected by a deadly disease. We won't say just what that disease is... but its a fun AND scary one.
Europe Central by John Justice and Michael A. Smith, adapted from the National-Book-Award-winning novel by William T. Vollmann. Dmitry Shoshtakovitch, Anna Akhmatova, Kathe Kollwitz, Stalin, and Hitler are a few of the walking ghosts that haunt this epic meditation on just what drives the human spirit during impossible times.
Rouge et Noir will be the title of our yearly fundraiser bash. Expect more site-specific scenes from vintage Noir and hard-bitten songs from the jaded and the delusional.
Please sign up for e-mailed missives from the front lines. We look forward to seeing you on the German frontier in 2007-08.
I Remain,
Jay O'Berski
Artistic Director
Productions that have already passed (including all the shows from our 2006-7 Russian Season), along with photos, reviews, videos, and who knows what, are in our archive section.
