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
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
asa 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
