she talks to Beethoven

By Adrienne Kennedy
Directed by Charlotte Brathwaite
January 15-25, 2014

JACK produces the first professional production of this bold short work by visionary playwright Adrienne Kennedy, directed by Charlotte Brathwaite (Princess Grace Award) in collaboration with Abigail DeVille (resident artist, Studio Museum in Harlem). She Talks to Beethoven is a 30-minute, non-seated installation/performance that integrates found objects, drawing, silhouette and projection to tell the story of Suzanne Alexander, an African-American woman living in 1961 post-independence Ghana. After the sudden and mysterious disappearance of her husband, she seeks solace in the spirit of the composer Ludwig van Beethoven, whose letters she has been studying.

Featuring Natalie Paulas Suzanne and Paul-Robert Pryce as Beethoven.

Performances:
Previews: Wednesday, January 15 at 8 pm and 8:45 pm
Regular performances:
Thursday – Sunday, January 16 – 19, at 8 pm and 8:45 pm
Wednesday – Friday, January 22 – 24, at 8 pm and 8:45 pm
Saturday, January 25, at 6 pm and 6:45 pm, followed at 8 pm by A Celebration of Adrienne Kennedy featuring readings of all of her "Alexander Plays."

Creative Team:
Director: Charlotte Brathwaite
Scenic Design: Abigail DeVille
Lighting Design: Yi Zhao
Projection Design: Hannah Wasileski
Composer/Sound Design: Guillermo E. Brown
Costumes: Dede M. Ayite
Dramaturg: Kate Attwell
Stage Management: Julie Ann Arbiter, Gabriel DeLeon

About the production:
She Talks to Beethoven, written by pioneering avant-garde playwright Adrienne Kennedy in 1989, offers a layered discourse on politics, revolution and loss. Set in Ghana, Suzanne waits in her room listening to radio broadcasts about her husband who has mysteriously disappeared while she attempts to write about and communicate with composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Her world is infiltrated by snatches of Ghanaian string music, the revolutionary words of Frantz Fanon and strains of Beethoven's Fidelio. Suzanne, recovering from an unspecified illness hovers in displaced time and space fluctuating between Vienna, Austria, in 1803, and Accra, Ghana, in 1961.

For the production at JACK, Brathwaite and her collaborators create a performance installation wherein time and space are manipulated through sound and visuals, producing a vivid dream world that is simultaneously surreal, frightening and dangerous, transforming the intimate to the epic.

BIOS

Adrienne Kennedy (Playwright) Since the first production of her 1964 play, Funnyhouse of a Negro, Adrienne Kennedy's work has had a profound influence on American playwrights. Her plays include The Owl Answers, Ohio State Murders, A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, An Evening With Dead Essex, The Film Club, A Lesson in Dead Language, She Talks to Beethoven, and A Rat's Mass. Ms. Kennedy is a three-time OBIE-award winner and her work was featured in the Signature Theatre’s 1995/1996 season. Among her many honors are the Guggenheim fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, PEN/Laura Pels Award for Master American Dramatist, and Anisfield-Wolf Book's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Charlotte Brathwaite (Director) has performed in New York and in over 12 countries with La MaMa Theater. A freelance director her projects span theater, opera, performance, dance and installation and have been presented in America, Mexico, the Netherlands, Germany, India, Trinidad W.I. and Croatia. Upcoming: Riot Riot 2 by Nora Chipaumire at Crossing The Line; Sun Ra by Sylvan Oswald Joe’s Pub and La MaMa, The Geneva Project with 651 Arts and Paloma Prisoner by Raquel Almazan. BA Amsterdam School for the Arts; MFA Yale School of Drama. Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance, Amherst College. Recipient: Princess Grace Award; Julian Milton Kaufman Prize. www.charlottebrathwaite.com

Natalie Paul (Suzanne Alexander) Recent work includes The Mountaintop at Portland Center Stage, Cry Old Kingdom at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Smash (NBC), Newlyweeds (Phase 4 Films) and the documentary Fatal Assistance, by Raoul Peck. Her original short film, Everything Absolutely, is an official selection of the New Voices in Black Cinema Film Festival, the Rooftop Summer Series, and most recently the 2013 HollyShorts Film Festival. Most recently, Natalie acted in the 2013 Fall Playmaking show at the 52nd Street Project, an organization that pairs children from the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood with theater professionals to create original work. Hails from Brooklyn NY. MFA NYU Grad Acting, BA Yale University.

Paul-Robert Pryce (Beethoven/David Alexander) Hamlet featuring Paul Giamatti (Yale Rep), Julius Caesar (Elm Shakespeare Company), touring production of Romeo & Juliet, Pecong featuring Tony Award winner Lillias White (National Black Theatre of Harlem). Other notable productions include Othello, Angels in America: Perestroika, Cymbeline and Iphigenia Among the Stars. Paul holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama where he was awarded the Eldon Elders Fellowship (2012) and Oliver Thorndike Award for Acting (2013). Paul is a national of Trinidad and Tobago.

Abigail DeVille (Installation design) DeVille’s work is comprised of archaeological constructs imbued with cultural and historical cues, referencing canonical sculptures from recent art history, contemporary social issues, and the movement of solar bodies. DeVille received her MFA from Yale University 2011 and her BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2007. Most recently, she has exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Future Generation Art Prize, 55th Venice Biennale, Studio Museum Harlem, the Pinchuk Art Centre, the ICA Philadelphia, and the New Museum.

Dede M. Ayite (Costume Designer) is a costume and set designer with an M.F.A in Design from the Yale School of Drama and B.A. in Theatre and Behavioral Neuroscience from Lehigh University. She has done set and costumes for both theatre and film. Her past design credits include Kurt Metzger (Comedy Central), Look Upon Our Lowliness (TMTC), Fox Shortcoms (FOX Network), COPPER Project (Improve Everywhere /BBC America), Last Laugh (soloNOVA Festival), Mary Stuart directed by Robert O’Hara (NYU), Hollow Roots (The Public UTRF), Holding it Down (Harlem Stage), Vassa (Lee Strasburg Inst.), Illmatic (Urban Stages), The Piano Lesson (Yale Repertory Theatre), Smile Orange (Trinidad), The Seagull, Every Other Hamlet In the Universe (Yale School Of Drama), Passing, Orestes (Yale Cabaret), American Schemes (Summer Stage, NYC), Frozen, The Fantasticks and No Exit (Lehigh University).

Guillermo E. Brown (Sound design) (aka PEGASUS WARNING) vocalist, composer, percussionist, producer, improviser, songwriter‘s work includes the albums Soul at the Hands of the Machine, The Beat Kids’ Open Rhythm System, Sound Magazine, Black Dreams 1.0, …Is Arturo Klauft, Handeheld, Shuffle Mode and Woof Ticket EP. His one-man theater piece, Robeson In Space, premiered at Luna Stage. His work includes the sound installation “Crack Unicorns” at The Studio Museum in Harlem, performance pieces Postcolonial Bacchanale, SYRUP, supergroup BiLLLL$, and collaborative trio Thiefs. A graduate of Wesleyan University (BA) and Bard College (MFA), he was Adjunct Professor at New York University’s Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music and Gallatin School and Artist-In-Residence at Pacific Northwest College of Art. He is featured on over 45 recordings, appearing live or recorded with David S. Ware, William Parker, Matthew Shipp, Rob Reddy, Roy Campbell, Spring Heel Jack, Anti-Pop Consortium, Anthony Braxton, DJ Spooky, El-P, Carl Hancock Rux, Vernon Reid, DJ Logic, Latasha Diggs, Dave Burrell, George Lewis, Mendi+Keith Obadike, Victor Gama, David Gunn, Arto Lindsay, Gordon Voidwell, Tecla, Jahcoozi, Robot Koch, Das Racist, Jamie Lidell, Saul Williams, CANT, Mocky, & Twin Shadow.

Hannah Wasileski (Projection Design) is a visual artist and projection designer from Berlin whose recent work includes La Prose du Transsiberien (Yale Beinecke), ReAnimator Requiem (Abrons Arts Center), Sarah Ruhl’s Dear Elizabeth (Yale Rep & Berkeley Rep), Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, A Streetcar Named Desire (Yale Drama), The Strange Tales of Liaozhai, My Life in a Nutshell and Sonnambula, (HERE Arts Center). Her video installation work has been exhibited internationally in London, Brighton and Glasgow. Hannah holds an MFA in design from Yale.

Yi Zhao (Lighting designer). Fourth collaboration with Charlotte Brathwaite. Past projects: JACK: Beckett Solos; New York: Black Wizard Blue Wizard (Incubator), After People Like You (CSC), The Hotel Colors (Bushwick Starr), Mary Becoming (Art Pond). Regional: Much Ado About Nothing (Princeton/McCarter), The Garden (Philadelphia FringeArts), La Prose du Transsibérien (Yale/Beinecke Library), In A Year With 13 Moons (Yale Rep), The Bakkhai (Bard), The Glass Menagerie (Theatreworks, Colorado), A Doctor in Spite of Himself (Yale Rep). Upcoming projects: Labyrinth (Beth Morrison Projects), Republic (Hoi Polloi), Blown Youth (Barnard), L’Histoire du Soldat (Carnegie Hall), La Cenerentola (Curtis Institute, Philadelphia). MFA: Yale School of Drama. www.yi-zhao.com

Kate Atwell (Dramaturg) is a South African theatre maker whose work crosses the boundaries of a number of disciplines - directing, performing, writing, devising. She graduated from The University of Bristol's theatre program in the UK. After that, she worked in London before moving to the USA to complete her MFA at the Yale School of Drama. Kate currently works at The Foundry Theatre in NYC.

Photo by Hao Bai