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NEW YORK THEATRE WORKSHOP

TO PRESENT

BACH AT LEIPZIG

BY ITAMAR MOSES

DIRECTED BY PAM MACKINNON

MADCAP COMEDY OF PLOTS, SCHEMES AND FUGUES

BEGINNING PERFORMANCES FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28

AND OPENING MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14

 

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 28, 2005 - New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW), one of New York's leading non-profit theatre companies, will present the New York premiere of a production by playwright Itamar Moses. New York Theatre Workshop Artistic Director James C. Nicola and Managing Director Lynn Moffat have announced that Bach at Leipzig, directed by Pam MacKinnon, will begin performances Friday, October 28 at 8:00pm, at New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th Street, between Second Avenue and Bowery. Opening night is scheduled for Monday, November 14 at 7:00pm.

Leipzig, Germany, 1722: seven rival organists jump at the chance to fill the most sought-after musical post in Europe: Kapellmeister at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Inspired by actual events, playwright Itamar Moses (in his New York debut) has crafted a hilarious roundelay of schemes and mayhem as each musician deliciously connives, blackmails, bribes, and double-crosses to win the position. When Bach at Leipzig premiered at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater last season, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said, “Imagine the Marx Brothers and Tom Stoppard collaborating on a play.”

To coincide with the NYTW production, Faber & Faber will publish a trade edition of Bach at Leipzig, with a preface by Tom Stoppard. The edition will be available for sale on October 25.

Bach at Leipzig will feature a cast of accomplished performers including Jeffrey Carlson (The Goat and Taboo on Broadway) as Steindorff, Richard Easton (The Rivals and Henry IV at Lincoln Center Theater, Tony Award for Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love) as Kaufmann, Michael Emerson (Hedda Gabler with Kate Burton, Oscar Wilde in Gross Indecency) as Schott, Boyd Gaines (Twelve Angry Men, Tony Awards for Contact, She Loves Me and The Heidi Chronicles) as Fasch, Reg Rogers (Lortel and Obie Awards for Richard Greenberg’s The Dazzle) as Lenck and Andrew Weems (Broadway’s Green Bird and London Assurance) as Graupner.

James Nicola, NYTW's artistic director says, "The sheer dazzle of theatrical invention in Bach at Leipzig convinced us beyond a doubt that Itamar Moses was one of the most audacious writers we’d ever met. We are very proud to welcome him into the company ofwriters like Doug Wright, whose wickedly exuberant play Quills caught our attention ten years ago."

Playwright Itamar Moses is the author of several plays, including Outrage, Celebrity Row, and The Four of Us. His work has been produced and workshopped at Hangar Theatre, Florida Stage, Wilma Theater, Portland Center Stage, American Conservatory Theater, McCarter Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Underwood Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, New York Stage and Film, La MaMa, and elsewhere.  He is currently at work on commissions for Playwrights Horizons, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Wilma Theater, and Manhattan Theatre Club. Itamar holds an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from NYU, has taught playwriting at Yale and NYU, and is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. He was born in 1977 in Berkeley, CA. He now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Pam MacKinnon has directed workshops of Bach at Leipzig at New York Stage and Film as well as New York Theatre Workshop. She also recently directed a workshop of Itamar Moses' The Four of Us (ACT-San Francisco). She has worked extensively with Edward Albee, having directed the world premiere of Peter and Jerry: Homelife and The Zoo Story (Hartford Stage), the regional and European premieres of The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? (Alley Theatre and Vienna's English Theatre), and The Play About the Baby (Goodman Theatre and Philadelphia Theater Company). She is an Affiliated Artist with Clubbed Thumb, a New York City-based company devoted to new American plays.

Scenic design for Bach at Leipzig is by David Zinn; costume design by Mathew J. LeFebvre; lighting design by David Lander; sound design by John Gromada; and the production stage manager is C.A. Clark.

New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) is a leading voice in the world of Off-Broadway and within the theatre community in New York and around the world. Since its founding in 1979, NYTW has emerged as a premiere incubator of important new theatre, honoring its mission to explore perspectives on our collective history and respond to the events and institutions that shape our lives. In addition, NYTW is known for its innovative adaptations of classic repertory. Each season, from its home in New York's East Village neighborhood, NYTW presents five to seven new productions, over 80 readings, and numerous workshop productions, for over 60,000 audience members. Over the past twenty-five years, NYTW has developed and produced over 100 new, fully staged works, including Jonathan Larson's Rent, Tony Kushner's Slavs! and Homebody/Kabul, Doug Wright's Quills, Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde, Paul Rudnick’s The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla, and Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, Far Away, and A Number. The 2002 remounting of Martha Clarke's seminal work Vienna: Lusthaus and subsequent American tour was one of the longest-running productions in NYTW's history. NYTW supports artists in all stages of their careers by maintaining a series of workshop programs including work-in-progress readings, summer residencies, and minority artist fellowships. In 1991, NYTW received an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement and in 2000 was designated to be part of the Leading National Theatres Program by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Bach at Leipzig plays at New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th Street, between Second Avenue and Bowery. The performance schedule is Tuesday at 7:00pm, Wednesday through

Friday at 8:00pm, Saturday at 3:00pm and 8:00pm, and Sunday at 2:00pm and 7:00pm. The running time is approximately two hours and fifteen minutes with one intermission. Tickets are $60 and, beginning October 1, may be purchased on-line at www.telecharge.com, 24 hours a day, seven days a week or by phoning Telecharge.com at (212) 239-6200. For exact dates and times of performance, call Telecharge.com.  

Maintaining its commitment to making theatre accessible to all theatregoers, NYTW continues its CheapTix program in which all tickets for all Sunday evening performances will cost $20. Tickets may be purchased in advance, payable in cash only, and are available in person only at the NYTW Box Office. And for all performances, student tickets cost $15, based on availability, and can be purchased in advance from the NYTW Box Office with valid student identification.  The NYTW Box Office is open 1:00pm to 6:00pm, Tuesday through Saturday.