Theatre for a New Audience

Siff Moves from Shrew to Beatrice
In TFNA's 2013 Season Opener

Theatre for a New Audience in New York City has announced its 2013 season, the last before the venerable organization moves to its new digs adjacent to BAM in Brooklyn.

The season leads off with Maggie Siff reuniting with director Arin Arbus for another Shakespearean take on the battle of the sexes: Much Ado About Nothing. Siff, of TV's Sons of Anarchy and Mad Men, played Kate in the Arin Arbus–directed Taming of the Shrew at the Theatre for a New Audience this past spring. Much Ado will play The Duke on 42nd Street Feb. 2 through April 13.

Theatre for a New Audience turns the rest of the season over to more modern classics and a couple of premieres. Making its New York premiere will be a production from London's Young Vic of Kafka's Monkey, based on A Report to an Academy by Franz Kafka, adapted by Colin Teevan. Directed by Walter Meierjohann and starring Kathryn Hunter, Kafka's Monkey will run April 3–17 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Immediately following this run at the Baryshnikov Arts Center will be a return engagement of Fragments. using texts by Samuel Beckett and directed by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne. The production is scheduled to run from April 21 to May 5.

The season ends with a collaboration between playwright Wallace Shawn and director André Gregory, co-stars in the film My Dinner with André, at The Public Theater. Shawn's The Designated Mourner will run from June 21 to Aug. 25, and his Grasses of a Thousand Colors will make its American Premiere on Oct. 8.

"Shakespeare, Kafka, Beckett, and Shawn all use language in pointed and inimitable ways that make us think critically about who we are and how we live,” said Jeffrey Horowitz in a press release. He is founder and artistic director for Theatre for a New Audience. “Though the works couldn't be more different, what connects them is that each author explores with humor, irony, and insight what it is that makes us human. The human animal is obviously the underlying subject of every major writer, but there is something particularly incisive about the visions of these writers which speak to one another in sharply illuminating ways.”

A five-play subscription package is $236, a four-play subscription is $196, and a three-play subscription is $147; each is a 37 percent savings off the full ticket price.  Subscriptions may be ordered from Theatre for a New Audience at www.tfana.org. Single tickets will be available in the fall.

August 1, 2012

If you have Shakespearean news to share, e-mail editorial@shakespeareances.com