Off-Broadway's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club has revealed casting and creative teams for two of its upcoming productions: the New York premiere of Witold Gombrowicz’s The Marriage, and the world premiere of Hanna Eady and Edward Mast's The Mulberry Tree.
The Marriage will run September 26-October 6, while The Mulberry Tree will run October 10-20, with an official opening October 14. The latter production has undergone a few casting changes after its previously announced world premiere was postponed earlier this year.
The nine-member ensemble cast for The Marriage includes Bill Bowers, Celeste Ciulla, Gardiner Comfort, Annie Hägg, Conor Andrew Hall, Anna Podolak, Alex Scoloveno, Jackson Scott, and Oluwaseun “Kayodè” Soyemi.
La MaMa director-in-residence Zishan Ugurlu will stage the production. The creative team also includes set and lighting designer Michał Dracz, costume designer Krystian Szymczak, sound designer Sam Sellers, dramaturg Alexandra Chasin, dramaturg Shari Perkins, and production stage manager Dakota Silvey. Tomek Smolarski and Małgorzata Potocka serve as producers.
The Marriage follows Henry, a young soldier who returns home from war to find his world in disarray. In a dream-like sequence, the boundaries between reality and illusion begin to blur.
“Gombrowicz’s writing combines philosophical depth with the wittiest sense of humor,” Ugurlu said in a statement. “He is provocative, instructive, and grotesque. In The Marriage, Gombrowicz explores how language brings things into being, how utterance makes ideas material, and he asks who has the power to dictate reality and truth. In our production of the 1946 play, which has never before had a professional production in New York, ‘indecent acts’ and ‘deformations’ are explored in our hero’s dreamland. They reveal themselves through upside-down flags, Hoots fingers and Hooters Girls, a bloody insurrection and declarations when our hero, Henry, returns home from war but finds that nothing is as he remembered. Even as he grapples with questions of identity and the authentic self, Gombrowicz imbues Henry’s dream with fun and games, with poetry, terror, and struggle. The author is a tightrope walker—a provocateur—whose words are as valid today as they were almost 80 years ago.”
The company of The Mulberry Tree includes Ramzi Khalif (The Kite Runner), Rachel Botchan (King of the Jews), Laith Zuaiter (Ramy), Najla Said (Palestine), Khalifa Natour (Grey Rock), and Haythem Noor (The Kite Runner). Casting is by Stephanie Klapper.
Alexandra Aron will direct the production. The creative team also includes set designer Izmir Ikbal, costume designer Dina El-Aziz, composer Habib Hanna, sound designer Amanda Baughman, projection designer Tal Yarden, production stage manager Eileen Haggerty, and assistant stage manager Amanda Reynoso. The play is produced for Loose Change Productions by John Breen, with special thanks to the Sari-Sari Women of ColorArts Coup.
The Mulberry Tree explores the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 from the perspective of a Palestinian boy. The boy and his beloved neighbor, a rabbi, struggle to maintain their friendship in a village filled with conflict, until it becomes impossible.
“Despite the current circumstances, there was a time not too long ago in Palestine when Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in peace and harmony," Said shared in a statement. “My father, the late scholar Edward Said, was born in that place during that time. This play, grounded in history and truth, tells the story of two families whose deep, long-standing friendship is tested by the forces of politics and nationalism. As artists, I believe our role is to envision and create possibilities for the future, and often that requires a closer examination of both our humanity and our shared past. This play offers us the opportunity to do just that."
As previously reported, La MaMa's full season also includes banned theatre troupe Belarus Free Theater (BFT)'s KS6: Small Forward, Richard Foreman's Suppose Beautiful Madeline Harvey, H.M. Koutoukas' Medea of the Laundromat, and more.
Visit LaMaMa.org for more information.
