THEATER: "Queens Boulevard," a musical inspired by an Indian dance drama
Here's an unusual press release about a new musical opening in Manhattan in November/December: "Queens Boulevard (the musical") is based on a famous Kathakali story (the classical dance drama form from Kerala). I have seen the original story being performed in Kathakali, so am looking
forward to seeing this. Thanks to Geeta Citygirl, founder of SalaamTheater.org, for the alert.
From: Geeta Citygirl <citygirl@salaamtheatre.org>
hi sree,just a heads up about this new off-bway play. inspired by
Kalyanasaugandhikam (The Flower of Good Fortune):
A Kathakali Drama by Kottayam Tampuranand there are 3 "south asians" in the cast.
please share with SAJA folks - thanks!
geeta citygirl
Full press release below. What do you think? Post your comments below.
Meanwhile, Ultrabrown's coverage here.
September 26, 2007
Chris Boneau / Steven Padla (212) 575-3030, spadla@bbbway.com
SIGNATURE THEATRE COMPANY
PRESENTS THE WORLD PREMIERE OF
QUEENS BOULEVARD (the musical)
BY 2007-2008 PLAYWRIGHT-IN-RESIDENCE CHARLES MEE
DIRECTED BY DAVIS McCALLUM
CHOREOGRAPHY BY PETER PUCCI
NOVEMBER 6-DECEMBER 30
OPENING NIGHT IS DECEMBER 3
TICKETS ON SALE OCTOBER 2
Signature Theatre Company (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director;
Erika Mallin, Executive Director) presents the world premiere of QUEENS
BOULEVARD (the musical) by 2007-2008 Playwright-in-Residence Charles
Mee. Directed by Davis McCallum and choreographed by Peter Pucci, QUEENS
BOULEVARD (the musical) begins performances on Tuesday, November 6 at
Signature Theatre Company's Peter Norton Space, located at 555 West 42nd
Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues). Opening Night is Monday,
December 3.
Through The Signature Ticket Initiative, which seeks to make great
theatre accessible to the broadest possible audience, all
regularly-priced single tickets ($65) are available for $20 during the
regular runs of each production for the entire season and continues
through Signature's 20th Anniversary Season (2010-2011). The Signature
Ticket Initiative is made possible by the lead sponsorship of Time
Warner, Inc. Generous support for The Signature Ticket Initiative is
provided by Margot Adams, in memory of Mason Adams.
The cast of QUEENS BOULEVARD (the musical) includes Amir Arison (A Very
Common Procedure, MCC), Satya Bhabha (St. Ann's, The Flea Theatre),
Michi Barall (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Public Theater), Marsha
Stephanie Blake (The Crucible), Bill Buell (Inherit the Wind),
Demosthenes Chrysan (Homebody/Kabul, Trinity Rep), Geeta Citygirl
(founder, artistic director of Salaam Theatre), Emily Donahoe (The Glass
Menagerie, Berkeley Rep), William Jackson Harper (Thicker Than Water,
EST), Jodi Lin (The Joy Luck Club, Pan Asian Rep), Arian Moayed (Masked,
DR2), Debargo Sanyal (Women of Trachis, Target Margin), Jon Norman
Schneider (Durango, Public Theater), and Ruth Zhang (Tiananmen, Musical
Theater Works).
QUEENS BOULEVARD (the musical) features musical supervision and
arrangements by Michael Friedman, music direction by Matt Castle, scenic
design by Mimi Lien, costume design by Christal Weatherly, lighting
design by Marcus Doshi, sound design by Ken Travis and video design by
Joseph Spirito.
On his wedding day, a new husband is determined to find the perfect gift
for his bride. While she waits at home, he searches for the mythical
Flower of Heaven and is thrown into a series of colorful adventures on
the streets of his neighborhood in Queens, New York. Inspired by a
classical Indian dance drama, Queens Boulevard (the musical) celebrates
love, community and life.
BIOGRAPHIES
CHARLES MEE (2007-2008 Playwright-in-Residence) has written Big Love,
True Love, First Love, bobrauschenbergamerica, Hotel Cassiopeia, Orestes
2.0, Trojan Women 2.0, Summertime and Wintertime among other plays - all
of them available on the internet at www.charlesmee.org. His plays have
been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, American Repertory
Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, the Public Theatre, Lincoln Center,
the Humana Festival, Steppenwolf, and many other places in the United
States as well as in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Vienna,
Istanbul. Among other awards, he is the recipient of the Lifetime
Achievement Award in drama from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. His work is made possible by the support of Jeanne Donovan
Fisher and Richard B. Fisher.
DAVIS McCALLUM (Director) New York credits include: Quiara Hudes'
Elliot: A Soldier's Fugue (P73 at The Culture Project; Pulitzer Prize
Finalist), The Turn of the Screw, Jane Eyre (The Acting Company),
Unbound: The Journals of Fanny Kemble, The Belle's Stratagem, West Moon
Street (Prospect Theater Company), and Noah Haidle's The Dakota Project
and Women & Criminals (HERE). Regional: The Belle's Stratagem (Oregon
Shakespeare Festival); Romeo & Juliet (Playmakers Rep, Chapel Hill);
Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House (Cleveland Playhouse); his own adaptation
of Cyrano de Bergerac (Georgia Shakespeare); Twelfth Night (American
Shakespeare Center); As You Like It (Shakespeare Theater/ACA); Mee's Big
Love, Haidle's A Long History of Neglect, Ruhl's Melancholy Play
(McCarter Theater/Princeton University); four summers at New York Stage
& Film. International: the British premieres of Ruhl's Eurydice and Doug
Wright's Watbanaland (MacOwan Theatre), and the world premiere of Peter
Morris's Marge (Edinburgh Fringe). He was the Killian Directing Fellow
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2003) and a Drama League Directing
Fellow (2001), and recently received an NEA/TCG Career Development
Fellowship for Directors (2007). He was a member of the Lincoln Center
Directors Lab (2001), the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab (2003), and the
Jack O'Brien Directors Lab at the Old Globe (2007). He trained at LAMDA
and studied at Princeton and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
PETER PUCCI (Choreographer) Off B'way: People Be Heard, After Ashley,
The Agony and The Agony, The Late Henry Moss, True Love, Eyes for
Consuela; Regional: Yale Rep: Safe in Hell, The Cherry Orchard, Miss
Julie, The Black Monk; Westport Playhouse: A Marriage Minuet; The Magic
Theater: The Late Henry Moss; Great Lakes Theater Festival: Romeo and
Juliet; North Shore Music Theatre: Letters from 'Nam; Baltimore Center
Stage/Berkeley Repertory Theatre: Fall; The Shakespeare Theatre: The
Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night; The McCarter Theater:
Mrs.Packard, Hamlet, Fool for Love, The Cherry Orchard, The Importance
of Being Earnest, The Learned Ladies; Hartford Stage: Summer and Smoke,
Eight by Tenn, Macbeth, Camino Real; National Tour: The Civil War;
TheatreWorks USA: Romeo and Juliet; Baltimore Opera: Samson and Delilah;
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: Renard Dance Commissions: Pucci
Plus Dancers; Ballet Hispanico; Joffrey Ballet; Colorado Ballet; Ballet
Arizona; Ballet Pacifica; Pittsburgh Ballet; Pilobolus Dance Theatre;
Artist in Residence, Manhattanville College
SIGNATURE THEATRE COMPANY (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director;
Erika Mallin, Executive Director) Signature Theatre Company, founded in
1991 by James Houghton, exists to honor and celebrate the playwright.
Signature makes an extended commitment to a playwright's body of work,
and during this journey, the writer is engaged in every aspect of the
creative process. For the past 16 years, the Company has devoted an
entire season to the work of a single playwright, including
re-examinations of past writings as well as New York and world
premieres. By championing in-depth explorations of a living playwright's
body of work, the Company delivers an intimate and immersive journey
into the playwright's singular vision. Signature has presented entire
seasons of the work of Edward Albee, Lee Blessing, Horton Foote,
Adrienne Kennedy, Maria Irene Fornes, John Guare, Bill Irwin, Romulus
Linney, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Paula Vogel, August Wilson, and
Lanford Wilson. Signature remains deeply committed to these season-long
residencies, and during the company's tenth and fifteenth anniversaries,
Signature introduced an additional residency, the Legacy Program. The
Legacy Program invites past playwrights-in-residence back to Signature
through two series: the Signature Series, which presents "signature," or
more well-known works; and the Premiere Series, which presents New York
and world premieres.
Since 2005, Signature has been committed to presenting world-class
theatre at an affordable price through The Signature Ticket Initiative,
which will offer subsidized $20 tickets through the Company's twentieth
anniversary season in 2011. The seventeenth through twentieth seasons
will include the work of Charles Mee, The Negro Ensemble Company,
Suzan-Lori Parks, and Tony Kushner, as well plays by Edward Albee and
other past playwrights-in-residence as part of Signature's Legacy
Program. Signature, its productions and its resident writershave been
recognized with a Pulitzer Prize, 20 Lucille Lortel Awards, seven OBIE
Awards, eight Drama Desk Awards, 10 Drama League Awards, and six AUDELCO
Awards among many other distinctions. The National Theatre Conference
recognized the company as the 2003 Outstanding National Theatre of the
Year.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE AND TICKETS
The performance schedule for QUEENS BOULEVARD (the musical) is Tuesday
at 7PM, Wednesday through Friday at 8PM, Saturday at 2PM and 8PM, and
Sunday at 2PM and 7PM. Tickets are available beginning October 2 at 12
noon by phone (212) 244-PLAY (7529), online at www.signaturetheatre.org,
and in person at the Box Office (555 West 42nd Street).
ALSO THIS SEASON AT SIGNATURE THEATRE COMPANY
PARADISE PARK by Charles Mee (World Premiere)
February 12-April 6, 2008, Opens March 2, 2008
Directed by Daniel Fish
Welcome to Paradise Park, an amusement park that opens up into all of
America and beyond. Meet the inhabitants of this bizarre carnival of
life, including a ventriloquist, his dummy, and a teenage girl on the
run. From Futureworld to Londonland, the Grand Canyon to Fred's
Polynesian Dive Shop, step right up to this wild ride of fruit cake
tosses, underwater ballets, square dances, and star gazing, too.
EDWARD ALBEE'S OCCUPANT
by 1993-94 Playwright-in-Residence Edward Albee
May 6-June 29, 2008, Opens May 29, 2008
Signature caps off its 2007-2008 season with a Legacy Production as part
of its Signature Series, in which former Playwrights-in-Residence return
to revisit their landmark works. Originally produced at Signature in
2002, in a limited engagement, Edward Albee's Occupant is a portrait of
acclaimed sculptor Louise Nevelson-a quest to capture a charismatic and
complex artist and persona. What is the relationship between creator and
creation? Who was Louise Nevelson? Only she knew.
UPCOMING SEASONS Signature's 2008-2009 Season will be an examination of
a body of work from The Negro Ensemble Company's collective of writers,
whose contributions have helped shape America's theatrical heritage.
Ruben Santiago-Hudson will be the Associate Artist for the season.
Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks (Venus, Topdog/Underdog), who
turns American history on its head with her bold and lyrical riffs on
race, literature and politics, will be Signature's
Playwright-in-Residence for the 2009-2010 Season.
Signature's 20th Anniversary season (2010-2011) will conclude with
Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner (Angels in America; Caroline, or
Change), one of the most celebrated and renowned contemporary writers of
his generation.
# # # #
Signature productions and programs are supported, in part, by public
funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
This event is made possible with public funds from the New York State
Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
Special thanks for The Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust for
supporting the development of new American plays at Signature Theatre
Company.
Contact:
Chris Boneau / Steven Padla (212) 575-3030, spadla@bbbway.com






I saw this play over the weekend, and had a lovely time. Although a few of the monologues here and there started to feel repetitive and drawn-out, these moments were far outnumbered by the lively dance numbers, fun music, wonderfully comedic scenes, and imaginative staging. One of the standout actors in the show was a young south asian man named Debargo Sanyal, who played several different roles,
including a hilarious advice-spouting paan wallah (complete with colorful push-cart). Overall, I am very glad I saw this production.
Posted by: Sanjana | November 26, 2007 at 06:18 PM
c'est avec un immense plaisir que je vous ecris cètte message que j'esper sera prise en consideratione monsieur; pamettez moi de vous informer de mes coordonnès; je m'apple el aouni ahmed metre-en-scane a une associatione de theatre et de dançe dont elle porte le nome de chograni j'ai deja jouè un europe en france donc,nous souhaitons moi et mon groupe de participer au fistival de dançe contemporainne qui se deroulera en voutre paye nous esperons avoire une reponse favorable de votre part evec nos meilleurs salutatione merçi...group el youm .
Posted by: el aouni ahmed | April 19, 2008 at 01:40 PM
an arab in paris starring gene kelly without pants speaks french above to earn freedom fries along with his araburger. attaboy!
Posted by: the hoi polloi | April 19, 2008 at 03:07 PM