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Mark Rothko

 

 

 

Special performances in Santa Fe
presented in association with

RED

by John Logan

November 3-20, 2011
Thurs. & Fri. 8:00 pm
Sat. 2 pm and 8 pm
Sun.  6 pm

Gala Opening: Thurs., November 3
Downtown Employees Night:
Fri., Nov. 4 @ 6PM (doors open at 5PM)

Special Note: Performances on
Friday, November 18 at 8PM and Saturday, November 19 at 2PM and 8PM will be at the
Santa Fe Center for the Performing Arts,
Armory for the Arts

 

"There is only one thing
I fear in life, my friend...
One day the black will swallow the red."


Spend a powerful evening with an iconic American artist, Mark Rothko, whose intense work in color fields was born of equal intensity in his interactions with his peers and the great ideas of Nietzsche, Freud and Jung. Red is an exciting new play that provides rare insight to the mind of a genius in late career as he alternately nurtures, challenges and questions himself in the company of a sharp young apprentice.

The fifties in America, in pop culture, is remembered too easily as the era of Betty Crocker and Ozzie and Harriet. But, in this country's intellectual world this was the Beat era, the decade of "The Wild One," the Marlon Brando-led motorcycle gang. It also was the descriptive label bestowed by a Times critic in 1956 on the New York School of abstract avant garde painters: de Kooning, Motherwell and Mark Rothko. Rothko was a Russian born Jew whose family emigrated to Portland, Oregon in 1913. After a brief stint as an actor, Rothko discovered painting. By the onset of the Depression, he was already establishing himself as a skilled representational artist. But, in response to the startling vision of the European abstract expressionists and surrealists, Rothko found a new "mythomorphic" abstraction. Initially attacked by critics in the US, he defended his work with passion, wit and wide-ranging erudition. He is now recognized as one of the great American painters of the 20th century.

Red won the 2010 Drama League Award for Distinguished Production of a Play. It was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning six, including: Best Play. It received the most wins out of any other production last year. The play also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.

In the wake of very successful London and Broadway runs, many of the nation's leading regional theatres plan their own new productions. FUSION is proud to be in the vanguard, among the first to present this award-winning theatrical tour de force.

Special Note: building on a very successful association begun last month with God of Carnage,
FUSION is pleased to announce special performances of Red in Santa Fe! In association with
Santa Fe Performing Arts, performances on Friday, Nov. 18 and Saturday, Nov. 19 will be at the
Armory for the Arts on Old Pecos Trail.

Red continues through November 20 with Thursday through Friday performances at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sunday evenings at 6 p.m. Tickets are $30 for general admission, $25 for students and seniors. Thursday performances (excluding opening night) feature a $10.00 student rush (with valid I.D.) and $20 actor rush (with professional resume.) The first Saturday matinee, November 5, is a pay-what-you-wish performance. Group discounts are also available. Free parking is plentiful in the lot on the north side of the theatre. The Cell is located at 700 1st St. N.W. (just west of Broadway and south of Lomas.). For tickets, call 505-766-9412 or click here:

Substantial discounts are available when you purchase a




click to view a YouTube production slideshow
photos © Richard K. Hogle


Barry Gaines, Albuquerque Journal:
"During its limited 2010 Broadway run (star Alfred Molina had TV commitments in Los Angeles), John Logan’s Red won six Tonys-one for each week it played-including best play. FUSION Theatre Company is presenting this two-person dramatization of two years in the life of modern artist Mark Rothko in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. 

The Russian-born Rothko was an opinionated and introspective artist best known for his large paintings of (to quote the play) “energetic blocks of color,” “fuzzy rectangles” that “ebb and flow and shift, gently pulsating.” His best works achieve an inner luminosity and tension from his experimentation with color fields and the surface layering of shades and tints. 

Artist and audience commune; so it is in theater. Logan’s play is set in 1958 when Rothko is working on a commission to create a connected series of paintings to be installed at the exclusive Four Seasons restaurant under construction as part of the Seagram Building on ritzy Park Avenue. Rothko hires a young artist, Ken, to run errands and help him with the mundane tasks of canvas construction and preparation.

Director Jacqueline Reid fashions a striking scene of the two men priming a canvas in powerful balletic pantomime. The men talk about art and artists and audience. At first Ken mostly listens, but he soon challenges his guru. The script is excellent, filled with historical information about modern American art and artists, as well as philosophical and emotional insights into this artist’s tortured process of creating his paintings. 

The play avoids sounding pretentious when both characters admit the sentimentality of some of their arguments. And through its humor. By play’s end, Rothko has made an important decision about the Four Seasons, Ken is ready to go out into the contemporary art world and “make something new,” and the audience is energized. 

FUSION set designer Richard Hogle has captured the chaos of an artist’s studio – the table covered with pigments and turpentine, brushes and buckets; the stained floor; and Rothko-esque mural panels towering in the background. Brent Stevens uses his classical music knowledge to design the sound that always compliments the action. 

Paul Blott is a raspy-voiced Rothko who convincingly treats his paintings as children to be nurtured and protected. On opening night I wished for more variety in Blott’s delivery, more insight into the inner torment of his character who tells us, “There’s tragedy in every brush stroke.” Dimension should come with more performances. Charles Gamble’s work with Tricklock did not prepare me for his polished performance as Ken. Gamble’s character changes over the play’s two years. Ken’s explosive response to his mentor is powerful. We believe that he saw red. So should you."


Ben Brantley, New York Times:
"As much as any stage work I can think of, Red captures the dynamic relationship between an artist and his creations. (Only the Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine musical “Sunday in the Park With George” comes to mind as being similarly successful.) It’s one thing to say — or to have a character say — that an artist regards his paintings as his children. But it’s another to be able to look at that artist looking at his paintings...."


John Lahr, The New Yorker:
"Rothko is already well inside the painting; the success of Logan’s smart, eloquent entertainment is to bring us in there with him....A successful popular storyteller—Logan’s credits include the screenplays of Sweeney Todd, The Aviator, and Gladiator—he cleverly keeps his play focussed on the radiant mythology of the paintings, not the murky psychology of the man."


Michael Billington, The Guardian (London):
"Plays about painters are fraught with difficulty. Either the hero preaches about art without practising it, or the Bohemian lifestyle supersedes the work. But John Logan's play about Mark Rothko overcomes these obstacles with finesse: partly because, for Rothko, ideas were inseparable from art, and partly because of the tensions within the paintings themselves which Rothko once described as 'dramas'."



"Red" Cast



Paul Blott

PAUL BLOTT* Originally from Los Angeles where he performed a variety of Shakespearean roles at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, Paul is a veteran of New Mexico theatre having appeared in many productions in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Most recently at FUSION, he starred in God of Carnage. Previously, he appeared with FUSION in leading roles in Alfred Hitchock's 39 Steps, August: Osage County, First Love, The Mandrake, Sarah Ruhl's eurydice and in Death of a Salesman. He also starred in the Jury Award-winning "Gun Metal Blue Bar" and "Laying Off" in The Seven: That One Thing as well as a number of other of our Seven productions. He also performed in "Laying Off" at the Samuel French OOB in NYC. Previously, he was “Big Daddy” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Paul’s film work includes Lightening Jack, Lazarus Man, Last Stand at Saber River, Bordertown, Wildfire, Beer for My Horses, Run for Her Life and the new USA series In Plain Sight, and The Resident with Hilary Swank. When not acting Paul and his wife Susie run their own herb business, Aroma Fresca.


Charles Gamble
CHARLES GAMBLE* is thrilled to be working with the stunning and precise team at FUSION.  In New Mexico, Charles has performed with the Tricklock Company, Theater Grottesco, The Santa Fe Opera, Shakespeare Santa Fe, Moving People Dance, Theaterwork, the National Dance Institute, and NO HOLDS BARD, an improvised Shakespeare troupe.  Outside New Mexico, Charles has developed original work and toured with Angel Exit Theater in Dublin, Ireland, and acted with Shakespeare Santa Cruz and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.  Screen credits include the noir western Heat Lightning and In Plain Sight.  Charles trained in physical theater at L’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and at Shakespeare and Co. in Lenox, Massachusetts.  In addition to being a teaching artist for the Santa Fe Opera, Charles is on the theater faculty at the New Mexico School for the Arts, a charter school based in Santa Fe that offers conservatory arts training for high school students throughout New Mexico.

* Member Actors' Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States
• Equity Membership Candiddate


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John Logan