ANGEL REAPERS
Download Press Release (Adobe PDF)
For immediate release, please
Press contact: Richard
Kornberg & Associates, (212) 944-9444
Richard Kornberg / Billy
Zavelson / Danielle McGarry
Richard@KornbergPR.com /
Billy@KornbergPR.com / Danielle@KornbergPR.com
PHOTOS: www.kornbergpr.com
(username: kornbergpr // password: press)
THE JOYCE THEATER
FOUNDATION
PRESENTS
ANGEL REAPERS
A NEW WORK BY
MARTHA CLARKE & ALFRED UHRY
TEXT BY ALFRED
UHRY
DIRECTED &
CHOREOGRAPHED BY MARTHA CLARKE
THE JOYCE THEATER
NOVEMBER 29
– DECEMBER 11
The Joyce Theater
Foundation is pleased to present the
NYC premiere of Angel Reapers, a new dance/theater piece with
text by Alfred Uhry and direction and choreography by Martha Clarke for a two-week limited run from November 29 – December 11. Tickets are $10-$59 ($10 - $44 for
Joyce Members) and are available through JoyceCharge at www.Joyce.org or by calling 212-242-0800. Please note: ticket
prices are subject to change. The Joyce Theater is located at 175
Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, in Chelsea.
Angel Reapers,
a collaboration between Pulitzer, Tony,
and Academy Award winning writer Alfred Uhry and MacArthur “Genius”
Award recipient director/choreographer Martha Clarke, is a
multidisciplinary work suggested by the life of Ann Lee (1736-1784), founder of
the Shaker movement. Mother Ann,
as she became known, was a visionary, mystic and powerful spiritual
leader. Preaching celibacy, she
demonstrated that through shaking and trembling movements, sin could be purged
from the body. These gesticulating, dancing motions gave the Shaker sect its
name. Angel Reapers is not
biographical in the usual sense; the staging is more loosely constructed,
slipping in and out of reality and embracing Ann’s visions and those of her
followers. The plot is woven
throughout with movement, song and dance to bring to life this extraordinary 18th century woman and the singular world she created. It examines the contradiction between the prim prudery of
Shaker tenets and the wild, sexual nature they suppressed.
In Angel Reapers, the dichotomy between the prudish teachings
and the hot-as-fire passion of the Shaker community is explored in this unique collaboration between two contrasting artists – one whose work is
typically rooted in narrative structure, and one who tells stories through movement
and image-making.
Angel Reapers, a new dance/theater piece by Martha Clarke and Alfred Uhry, will run for two weeks at The Joyce Theater (November
29 – December 11) as follows: Tuesday – Wednesday at 7:30pm;
Thursday – Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 2pm & 8pm; Sunday at 2pm. Tickets range in price from $10-$49
($26 - $37 for Joyce Members) and are available through JoyceCharge at
www.Joyce.org or by calling 212-242-0800. Please note: Tickets prices are subject change. Dance Chat, a free
post-performance discussion, will take place on Wednesday, November 30. This free discussion is open to all
patrons attending that evening’s performance. The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, in Chelsea.
# # #
Martha Clarke
(Director/Choreographer) A founding
member of Pilobolus Dance Theatre and Crowsnest, Martha Clarke has
choreographed for Nederlans Dans Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Rambert
Dance Company, and The Martha Graham Company, among others. As a director
Ms. Clarke’s many original productions include “Garden of Earthly Delights”;
“Vienna: Lusthaus”; “Miracolo d’amore”; “Endangered Species”; “An Uncertain
Hour”; “The Hunger Artist”; and “Vers La Flame.” She directed the premiere of Christopher Hampton’s “Alice’s
Adventures Underground” at the Royal National Theatre in London. In opera, Ms. Clarke has directed “The
Magic Flute” for the Glimmerglass Opera and the Canadian Opera Company; “Cosi
Fan Tutte” for Glimmerglass; Tan Dun’s “Marco Polo” for the Munich Biennale,
the Hong Kong Festival, and the New York City Opera; and Gluck’s “Orfeo and
Eurydice” for the English National Opera and New York City Opera. She directed
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for the American Repertory Theatre and a new
music/theatre work, “Belle Epoque,” based on the life of Toulouse-Lautrec at
Lincoln Center Theatre. “Kaos,” an evening of Pirandello’s short stories
presented at New York Theatre Workshop, was granted the first Tony Randall
Foundation Award in 2006. Ms. Clarke is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius”
Award in addition to fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation. She
has received the Drama Desk Award, two Obie Awards and the LA Critics Award.
In 2007, she received an NEA grant to re-envision “Garden of Earthly
Delights” under a program dedicated to the remounting of American masterworks.
It opened at the American Dance Festival and received an extended commercial
run in New York. For “Garden” she
received the Joe A. Calloway award for choreography in 2009, and in 2010 the
Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award. This spring she will premier a
new full-evening work at La Scala Opera in Milan, Italy.
Alfred Uhry (Playwright) is distinguished as the only
American playwright to have won a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award and two Tony
Awards. A graduate of Brown University, Uhry began his professional career as a
lyric writer under contract to the late Frank Loesser. In that capacity, he
made his Broadway debut in 1968 with Here's Where I Belong. His first
major success came when he collaborated with Robert Waldman on a musical adaptation
of Eudora Welty's The Robber Bridegroom, which opened at the Mark Taper
Forum in 1976 and went on to Broadway, winning Mr. Uhry his first Tony
nomination. He followed that with five re-created musicals at the Goodspeed
Opera House. His first play, Driving Miss Daisy opened at Playwrights
Horizons Theatre in New York in 1987. It moved subsequently to the John
Houseman Theatre where it ran for three years and won the Pulitzer Prize in
1988. The film version, starring Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy, won the
Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1990. The film also won the Best
Picture Award. His next play, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, was
commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. It opened
on Broadway the next year where it ran for over 500 performances and won Uhry
the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama League Award and the 1997 Tony Award
for Best Play. His book for the musical, Parade, directed by Harold
Prince with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, won the Tony Award in 1999.
A revised production at the Donmar Theatre in London won Mr. Uhry an Olivier
Award Nomination and went on to Los Angeles where it opened to rave reviews in
October, 2009. His play, Without Walls, starring Laurence Fishburne,
opened at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in June of 2006. His next play, Edgardo
Mine, played the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in 2006 and the book
for Lovemusik, a musical about Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya ran on
Broadway in 2007. It was directed by Harold Prince. For this, Mr. Uhry won
another Drama Desk nomination. He is currently finishing a play commissioned by
the Manhattan Theatre Club.
About The Joyce Theater Foundation
The Joyce Theater
Foundation, a non-profit
organization, has proudly served the dance community and its audiences for
three decades. The founders, Cora Cahan and Eliot Feld, acquired and renovated
the Elgin Theater in Chelsea, which opened as The Joyce Theater in 1982. The
Joyce Theater is named in honor of Joyce Mertz, beloved daughter of LuEsther T.
Mertz. It was LuEsther’s clear, undaunted vision and abundant generosity that
made it imaginable and ultimately possible to build the theater. One of the
only theaters built by dancers for dance, The Joyce Theater has provided an intimate
and elegant home for more than 320 domestic and international companies. The
Joyce has also commissioned more than 130 new dances since 1992. In 1996,
The Joyce created Joyce SoHo, a dance center providing highly subsidized
rehearsal and performance space to hundreds of dance artists, as well as
special residency opportunities for selected choreographers to support the
creation of new work. In 2009, The Joyce opened Dance Art New York (DANY)
Studios to provide affordable studios for rehearsals, auditions, classes, and
workshops for independent choreographers, non-profit dance companies, and the
dance/theater communities. New York City public school students and
teachers annually benefit from The Joyce’s Dance Education Program, and adult
audiences get closer to dance through informative Dance Talks, Joyce Pre-Show
gatherings, and post-performance Dance Chat discussions. The Joyce Theater
now features an annual season of approximately 48 weeks with over 340
performances for audiences in excess of 135,000.
# # #
Leadership support for The
Joyce Theater’s 2011–2012 season has been received from the LuEsther T.
Mertz Charitable Trust.
Lead support for accessible
and inclusive programming provided by MetLife Foundation.
This presentation is funded
in part by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the
Arts. NDP is supported by lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable
Foundation, with additional funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the
Community Connections Fund of the MetLife Foundation, and the Boeing Company
Charitable Trust.
Additional support for this
engagement was provided with public funds from the National Endowment for the
Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building
strong, creative communities in New York State’s 62 counties; and the New York
City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; and
with private funds from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund to
encourage the performances of out-of-town companies at The Joyce Theater.
Major support for The Joyce has been provided by Alphawood Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, First Republic Bank, The Hearst Foundations, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the Fund for the City of New York, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and The Shubert Foundation.