HUNTINGTON COMPLETES PULITZER PRIZE AND
TONY AWARD WINNER AUGUST WILSON’S CENTURY CYCLE WITH MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM –BEGINS MARCH 9
WHAT
The Huntington Theatre Company continues its 30th Anniversary Season with the powerful and moving drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, completing August Wilson’s Century Cycle. Liesl Tommy (Ruined) directs the production that stars Yvette Freeman (NBC’s “ER”) as blues singer Ma Rainey.
WHEN
March 9 – April 8, 2011
Evenings: Tues. – Thurs. at 7:30pm; Fri. – Sat. at 8pm; Select Sun. at 7pm
Matinees: Select Wed., Sat., and Sun. at 2pm
Days and times vary; see complete schedule at end of release.
Press Opening: Wednesday, March 14, 7pm. RSVP online at huntingtontheatre.org/news.
WHERE
BU Theatre, 264 Huntington Avenue, Boston – Avenue of the Arts
TICKETS
Single tickets start at $25. FlexPass subscriptions are also on sale:
· online at huntingtontheatre.org;
· by phone at 617 266 0800, or
· in person at the BU Theatre Box Office, 264 Huntington Ave. and the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA Box Office, 527 Tremont St. in Boston’s South End.
$5 off: seniors
$10 off: subscribers and BU community (faculty/staff/alumni)
$25 “35 Below” tickets for patrons 35 years old and younger (valid ID required)
$15 student and military tickets (valid ID required)
(BOSTON) – The Huntington Theatre Company presents Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson’s first Broadway hit, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, completing the Huntington’s mounting of Wilson’s Century Cycle. Liesl Tommy, director of the Huntington’s acclaimed 2011 production of Ruined, returns. The ensemble stars “ER” cast member Yvette Freeman as the legendary blues singer Ma Rainey and features local rising star Jason Bowen (Ruined, A Civil War Christmas at the Huntington) as Levee and favorites Thomas Derrah (Red) and Will LeBow (The Cherry Orchard).
In the play, a quartet of blues musicians gather in a run-down 1920s Chicago studio waiting for legendary blues singer Ma Rainey to arrive to record new sides of her old favorites. Young, hotheaded trumpeter Levee aspires to a better life for himself and sees the emerging form of the blues as his ticket to fame and fortune. When he clashes with veteran musicians Toledo and Cutler and Ma Rainey spars with her white music producers, generational and racial tensions explode in the powerful and moving drama Newsweek calls, “Extraordinary.”
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the first of ten plays August Wilson wrote that became his Century Cycle, one chronicling the African-American experience of each decade of the 20th century. Wilson wrote Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom before establishing his relationship with the Huntington, but beginning in 1986 with Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the Huntington and Boston audiences enjoyed a special relationship with Wilson who came to consider the Huntington an artistic home. Here, he mounted early productions of seven of his Cycles plays before their New York productions.
“August would spend six weeks here working on each play,” recalls Huntington Managing Director Michael Maso. “At times, I would see the next play come to life in front of me as he started to talk about the characters that were still in his head and what he was discovering about them. Here at the Huntington, we had the privilege of seeing some of these stories come to life in his head before he ever wrote a word down.”
“I have a long and valued relationship with the Huntington. They have contributed enormously to my development as a playwright, and I guard that relationship jealously,” Wilson remarked in 2004.
The Huntington staged Radio Golf, the final play of his Cycle, in 2006, shortly after his untimely death at 62 from liver cancer. In 2009, the Huntington produced Wilson’s second play, Fences. The production, helmed by Kenny Leon (Fences and Stick Fly, both on Broadway) received the 2010 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production (large theatre).
“When I first arrived at the Huntington, one of the questions I was asked most frequently by members of our audience was when would we complete August Wilson’s magnificent Century Cycle,” says Artistic Director Peter DuBois. “This production closes such a meaningful chapter in the Huntington’s history. Ma Rainey’s exemplifies Wilson’s true jazz-poet genius.”
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
The cast includes:
Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Dussie Mae): Gem of the Ocean (Hartford Stage), The Piano Lesson (Yale Rep);
Corey Allen (Sylvester): A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Great River Shakespeare Festival), The Fall of Heaven (The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis);
Jason Bowen (Levee): Ruined, Prelude to a Kiss, and A Civil War Christmas (Huntington Theatre Company), The Merry Wives of Windsor and Twelfth Night (Actors’ Shakespeare Project),
Thomas Derrah (Sturdyvant): Red (SpeakEasy Stage Company), End Game (American Repertory Theater);
Yvette Freeman (Ma Rainey): NBC’s “ER” for all fifteen seasons (Nurse Haleh Adams); Dinah Was (Long Beach International Theatre), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (first national tour);
Will LeBow (Irvin): Bus Stop, The Cherry Orchard, and Sonia Flew (Huntington Theatre Company), Full Circle and The Merchant of Venice (American Repertory Theater);
Timothy J. Smith (Policeman): Candide and Prelude to a Kiss (Huntington Theatre Company), Nine (SpeakEasy Stage Company);
G. Valmont Thomas (Cutler): Radio Golf (Syracuse Stage), She Loves Me (Angus Bowmer Theatre);
Glenn Turner (Slow Drag): A Chorus Line (Broadway), Langston in Harlem (Urban Stages); and
Charles Weldon (Toledo): To Kill a Mockingbird (Denver Center Theatre Company), The Picture Box (The Negro Ensemble Company).
August Wilson (playwright) authored Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Fences, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II, and Radio Golf. These works explore the heritage and experience of African-Americans decade-by-decade over the course of the 20th century. Mr. Wilson’s plays have been produced at regional theatres across the country and all over the world, as well as on Broadway. In 2003, Mr. Wilson made his professional stage debut in his one-man show, How I Learned What I Learned. Mr. Wilson’s works garnered many awards, including Pulitzer Prizes for Fences (1987) and for The Piano Lesson (1990); a Tony Award for Fences; Great Britain’s Olivier Award for Jitney; as well as eight New York Drama Critics Circle Awards for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, Jitney, and Radio Golf. The cast recording of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom received a 1985 Grammy Award. Mr. Wilson received a 1995 Emmy Award nomination for his screenplay adaptation of The Piano Lesson. His early works included the one-act plays The Janitor, Recycle, The Coldest Day of the Year, Malcolm X, The Homecoming, and the musical satire Black Bart and the Sacred Hills. Mr. Wilson received many fellowships and awards, including Rockefeller and Guggenheim Fellowships in Playwriting, the Whiting Writers Award, 2003 Heinz Award, a 1999 National Humanities Medal awarded by the President of the United States, and received numerous honorary degrees from colleges and universities, as well as the only high school diploma ever issued by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. He was an alumnus of New Dramatists, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a 1995 inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and on October 16, 2005, Broadway named the theatre located at 245 West 52nd Street The August Wilson Theatre. Additionally, Mr. Wilson was posthumously inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2007. Mr. Wilson was born and raised in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and lived in Seattle, Washington at the time of his death.
Liesl Tommy (director) previously directed Ruined for the Huntington Theatre Company/Berkeley Repertory Theatre/ La Jolla Playhouse. Other credits include Peggy Pickett Sees the Face of God by Roland Schimmelpfennig (world premiere, Luminato Festival/Volcano Theatre); Ruined by Lynn Nottage (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Eclipsed by Danai Gurira (world premiere, Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, McCarter Theatre); Angela’s Mixtape by Eisa Davis (world premiere, Synchronicity Performance Group, New Georges); The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson (world premiere, The Public Theater/NYSF, Sundance Theatre Institute, Dallas Theater Center); A History of Light by Eisa Davis (world premiere, Contemporary American Theatre Festival); Yankee Tavern and Stick Fly (CATF); A Christmas Carol (Trinity Repertory Company); In the Continuum (Playmakers Repertory Company); Flight (City Theatre); A Stone’s Throw by Lynn Nottage (world premiere, Women’s Project); and Bus and Family Ties (Cristian Panaite Play Company) for the Romania Kiss Me! Festival. Ms. Tommy was awarded the NEA/TCG Directors Grant and the New York Theatre Workshop Casting/Directing Fellowship and is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. She has also been a guest director and teacher at The Juilliard School, Trinity Rep/Brown University’s MFA Directing and Acting Program, and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is a graduate of Newton North High School and a native of Cape Town, South Africa.
PRODUCTION ARTISTS
Scenic design and costume design by Clint Ramos (Ruined, A Raisin in the Sun); lighting design by Marcus Doshi (La Voix Humaine, 21st Century Liederabend); sound design and music direction by Broken Chord Collective (Ruined, The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow).