LTPOE Release - American Repertory Theater

For Immediate Release: March 24, 2015
Contact: Kati Mitchell 617.495.2668
kati_mitchell@harvard.edu
American Repertory Theater
Presents
The World Premiere of
THE LAST TWO PEOPLE ON EARTH
An Apocalyptic Vaudeville
With Mandy Patinkin and Taylor Mac
Direction and Choreography by Susan Stroman
May 12-31, 2015
Cambridge, Mass — The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University, under the
leadership of Artistic Director Diane Paulus, presents Tony Award winner Mandy Patinkin and
acclaimed actor/performance artist Taylor Mac in the new musical THE LAST TWO PEOPLE ON
EARTH: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville, with direction and choreography by Tony Award winner
Susan Stroman, with music direction by Paul Ford. Performances run from May 12-31 at the Loeb
Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge. An Apocalyptic Vaudeville is presented in
association with Staci Levine Groundswell Theatricals.
Performance dates are:
May 12-16, 19-23, 26-30 at 7:30PM
May 16, 17, 20, 23, 24, 27, 30, 31 at 2:00PM
ASL Interpreted performances: May 19 @ 7:30PM and May 24 @ 2:00PM
Audio Described performances: May 20 @ 7:30PM and May 23 @ 2:00PM
Tickets from $25. Box Office: 617.547.8300 or visit us on line at americanrepertorytheater.org
It’s the end of the world, as we know it. A flood of biblical proportions leaves us with only two
people on Earth who discover their common language is song and dance. Together they
chronicle the rise and fall and hopeful rise again of humankind through music that runs the
gamut from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim, and R.E.M. to Queen.
Set design is by Beowulf Boritt, costume design by William Ivey Long, lighting design by Ken
Billington, and sound design by Daniel J. Gerhard.
Mandy Patinkin won a 1980 Tony Award for his Broadway debut as Che in Andrew Lloyd
Webber's Evita, and was nominated in 1984 for his starring role as George in the Pulitzer Prizewinning musical, Sunday in the Park with George. In 1991 he returned to Broadway in the Tony
Award-winning musical The Secret Garden and in 1997 played a sold-out engagement of his
one-man show, Mandy Patinkin in Concert, with all profits benefiting five charitable
organizations. Mandy’s other solo concerts, Dress Casual, Celebrating Sondheim and
Mamaloshen have been presented both on Broadway and off. In 2009 he celebrated the 20th
Anniversary of performing his solo concerts with a two-week run of all of his concerts in rep at
New York’s Public Theater, the very space he began his concert career. He continued the
celebration with a critically acclaimed two-week run of Mandy Patinkin in Concert at London’s
West End at the Duke of York’s Theatre. Mandy’s other stage credits include: the world premiere
of Compulsion (Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep, and The Public Theater), Paradise Found (London’s
Menier Chocolate Factory), The Tempest (Classic Stage Company), Enemy of the People
(Williamstown Theater Festival), The Wild Party, Falsettos, The Winter's Tale, The Knife, Leave It to
Beaver is Dead, Rebel Women, Hamlet, Trelawney of the ‘Wells,’ The Shadow Box, The Split,
Savages, and Henry IV, Part I. Feature film credits include: Everybody’s Hero, The Choking Man,
Pinero, The Adventures of Elmo In Grouchland, Lulu on the Bridge, Men with Guns, The Princess
Bride, Yentl (1984 Golden Globe nomination), The Music of Chance, Daniel, Ragtime,
Impromptu, The Doctor, Alien Nation, Dick Tracy, The House on Carroll Street, True Colors, Maxie,
and Squanto: Indian Warrior. Mandy won a 1995 Emmy Award for his performance in the CBS
series “Chicago Hope”, and recently starred in the CBS series “Criminal Minds” as FBI profiler
Jason Gideon and in the Showtime Original Series “Dead Like Me” as the reaper Rube Sofer. He
currently stars in the Emmy Award-winning Showtime Original Series “Homeland” as CIA agent
Saul Berenson, for which he received an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award this year as
Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. In 1989, Mandy began his concert career at Joseph
Papp's Public Theater. This coincided with the release of his first solo album entitled “Mandy
Patinkin.” Since then he has toured extensively, appearing to sold-out audiences across the
United States, Canada, London, and Australia, performing songs from writers including Stephen
Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Randy Newman, Adam Guettel and Harry
Chapin, among others. In 1990 he released his second solo album entitled “Mandy Patinkin In
Concert: Dress Casual” on CBS Records. His 1994 recording, “Experiment,” on the Nonesuch
label, features songs from nine decades of popular music from Irving Berlin to Alan Menken. Also
recorded on the Nonesuch label are “Oscar & Steve,” “Leonard Bernstein's New York,” “Kidults,”
and “Mandy Patinkin Sings Sondheim.” In 1998 he debuted his most personal project,
“Mamaloshen,” a collection of traditional, classic and contemporary songs sung entirely in
Yiddish. The recording of “Mamaloshen” won the Deutschen Schallplattenpreis (Germany’s
equivalent of the Grammy Award). In October 2007, Mandy debuted a new concert with dear
friend Patti LuPone and they continue touring their show An Evening with Patti LuPone and
Mandy Patinkin throughout the US, Australia, New Zealand, and most recently during a 9-week
Broadway run at the Barrymore Theatre. Mandy continues to collaborate with An Evening with
Mandy Patinkin & Nathan Gunn.
Taylor Mac is a theater artist, which means, a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, cabaret
performer, performance artist, and sometime director and producer. He created The Lily’s
Revenge at the A.R.T. in 2012 and performed the title character. Time Out New York has called
Taylor, “One of the most exciting theater artists of our time” (named the best cabaret performer
in New York, in 2012, and a future theater legend). American Theater Magazine says, “Mac is
one of this country’s most heroic and disarmingly funny playwrights. The New Yorker says, of
Mac’s acting in Brecht’s Good Person of Szechwan, “One of contemporary theater’s more
unforgettable performances.” The New York Times says of Mac in general, “Fabulousness can
come in many forms, and Taylor Mac seems intent on assuming every one of them. Taylor’s fulllength plays include The Fre, Hir, The Walk Across America For Mother Earth and The Lily’s
Revenge (both published by Playscripts), The Young Ladies Of (published by New York Theatre
Review), The Be(A)st of Taylor Mac, Red Tide Blooming (published by New York Theater
Experience), Okay, Maurizio Pollini, and his first play The Hot Month. Taylor’s concerts of original
songs and covers include: A 24-Hour History of Popular Music (24 decades of songs that can be
performed as individual decade concerts or over the course of 24 days all together),
Comparison is Violence or The Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim Songbook, Cardiac Arrest or Venus
on a Half-Clam, and The Face of Liberalism. Current/recent performances include: the title
character in Brecht’s Good Person of Szechwan at the Public Theater (Foundry Theater
Production), and Puck/Egeus in Classic Stage Company’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Taylor
has performed at New York’s Lincoln Center and Public Theater, The Sydney Opera House, The
San Francisco MOMA and Opera House, Stockholm’s Sodra Teatern, The Spoleto Festival, The
Bumbershoot Festival, The Time Based Arts Festival, Dublin’s Project Arts Center, London’s Soho
Theater, and literally hundreds of other theaters, museums, music halls, cabarets, and festivals
around the globe. Awards, grants, and fellowships include: an Obie, a McKnight National
Commissioning Award, two Sundance Theater Lab Residencies, a New York Foundation for the
Arts Grant, three MAP Grants, a Creative Capital Grant, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant
for playwriting, The James Hammerstein Award for playwriting, three Brighton Best of Festival
Awards, a Dallas Theater Critics Forum Award for Best Touring Show, a Chicago Jeff Award
Nomination, three GLAAD Media Award Nominations, an Edinburgh Festival Herald Angel
Award, two New York State Council of The Arts Grants, an Edward Albee Foundation Residency,
The Franklin Furnace Grant, a Peter S. Reed Grant, The Ensemble Studio Theatre's New Voices
Fellowship in playwriting, a Mabou Mines Suite (with collaborator Elizabeth Swados), and the one
he is most honored by, an Ethyl Eichelberger Award. Taylor is a proud alumnus of the HERE Arts
Center resident artists program and is currently a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect and
a member of New Dramatists.
Susan Stroman (Direction/Choreography) A five-time Tony Award-winning director and
choreographer, her work has been honored with Olivier, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, Lucille Lortel,
and a record five Astaire Awards. She directed and choreographed The Producers, winner of a
record-making 12 Tony Awards including Best Direction and Best Choreography. She directed
and choreographed the critically acclaimed musical The Scottsboro Boys, receiving Tony Award
nominations for both direction and choreography. The show has continued to garner acclaim
with her recent productions at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, American Conservatory Theater,
the Ahmanson Theatre, and the Young Vic in London. She co-created, directed and
choreographed the Tony Award-winning musical Contact for Lincoln Center Theater, which was
honored with a 2003 Emmy Award for “Live at Lincoln Center.” Other Broadway credits include
Bullets Over Broadway, Big Fish, Crazy for You, Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Young Frankenstein, The
Frogs, The Music Man, Thou Shalt Not, Steel Pier, Big, Picnic. Off-Broadway credits include
Happiness for Lincoln Center Theater, Flora the Red Menace, And the World Goes ‘Round. For
ten years she choreographed Madison Square Garden’s annual spectacular A Christmas Carol,
directed by Mike Ockrent. At New York City Opera she choreographed A Little Night Music, 110
in the Shade, and Don Giovanni. For New York City Ballet, she created Double Feature, a fulllength ballet featuring the music of Irving Berlin and Walter Donaldson, and For the Love of Duke,
featuring the music of Duke Ellington. Her other ballet credits include But Not For Me for the
Martha Graham Company and Take Five…More or Less for Pacific Northwest Ballet. Her
choreography received an Emmy Award nomination for the HBO presentation “Liza – Live from
Radio City Music Hall,” starring Liza Minnelli. Other TV credits include coconceiver/choreographer for PBS’s “Sondheim – a Celebration at Carnegie Hall,” “An Evening
with the Boston Pops – A Tribute to Leonard Bernstein” and the “2009 Kennedy Center Honors”.
She received the American Choreography Award for her work in Columbia Pictures feature film
Center Stage. She directed and choreographed The Producers: The Movie Musical, nominated
for 4 Golden Globes. She is the recipient of the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement
in the American Theater.
The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University is a leading force in the American
theater, producing groundbreaking work in Cambridge and beyond. The A.R.T. was founded in
1980 by Robert Brustein, who served as Artistic Director until 2002, when Robert Woodruff
succeeded him. Diane Paulus began her tenure as Artistic Director in 2008. Under her leadership,
the A.R.T. seeks to expand the boundaries of theater by programming events that immerse
audiences in transformative theatrical experiences.
Throughout its history, the A.R.T. has been honored with many distinguished awards, including
the Tony Award for Best New Play for All the Way (2014); consecutive Tony Awards for Best
Revival of a Musical for Pippin (2013) and The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (2012), both of which
Paulus directed; a Pulitzer Prize; a Jujamcyn Prize for outstanding contribution to the
development of creative talent; the Tony Award for Best Regional Theater; and numerous Elliot
Norton and IRNE Awards.
As the professional theater on the campus of Harvard University, the A.R.T. catalyzes discourse,
interdisciplinary collaboration, and creative exchange among a wide range of academic
departments, institutions, students, and faculty members, acting as a conduit between its
community of artists and the university. A.R.T. artists also teach undergraduate courses in
directing, dramatic literature, acting, voice, design, and dramaturgy. The A.R.T. Institute for
Advanced Theater Training, which is run in partnership with the Moscow Art Theater School,
offers graduate-level training in acting, dramaturgy, and voice.
Dedicated to making great theater accessible, the A.R.T. actively engages more than 5,000
community members and local students annually in project-based partnerships, workshops,
conversations with artists, and other enrichment activities both at the theater and across the
Greater Boston area. The A.R.T.’s club theater, OBERON, has become an incubator for local and
emerging artists and has attracted national attention for its innovative programming and
business models.
The A.R.T. stages Father Comes Home From The Wars and the world premiere of Matthew
Aucoin’s opera, Crossing, as centerpieces of its Civil War Project, a multi-year initiative to
investigate and commemorate the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. It is part of The
National Civil War Project, a multi-year, multi-city collaboration among four universities and five
performing arts organizations. Inspired by choreographer Liz Lerman, this collaboration led to the
commissioning of original theatrical works as well as creation of new arts-integrated academic
programs. The National Civil War partnerships include: Alliance Theatre and Emory College
Center for Creativity & Arts at Emory University in Atlanta, GA; the American Repertory Theater
and Harvard University in Cambridge, MA; Arena Stage and the George Washington University in
Washington, D.C.; and CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore, MD and The Clarice Smith Performing Arts
Center at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD.
Through all of these initiatives, the A.R.T. is dedicated to producing world-class performances in
which the audience is central to the theatrical experience.
For further information call 617-547-8300 or visit AmericanRepertoryTheater.org