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NEW YORK THEATRE WORKSHOP
TO PRESENT
¡EL CONQUISTADOR!
CREATED BY THADDEUS PHILLIPS AND TATIANA MALLARINO
IN COLLABORATION WITH VICTOR MALLARINO
DIRECTED BY TATIANA MALLARINO
FIRST PRODUCTION OF NYTW'S 2006-07 SEASON
BEGINNING PERFORMANCES WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20
AND OPENING TUESDAY, OCTOBER 3
NEW YORK, AUGUST 29, 2006 - New York Theatre Workshop Artistic Director James C. Nicola and Managing Director Lynn Moffat have announced that ¡El Conquistador!, created by Thaddeus Phillips and Tatiana Mallarino in collaboration with Victor Mallarino, and directed by Tatiana Mallarino, will begin performances Wednesday, September 20 at 8:00pm, at New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th Street, between Second Avenue and Bowery. Opening night is scheduled for Tuesday, October 3 at 7:00pm.
Simultaneously a foreign film, theatre play, epic history and telenovela, ¡El Conquistador! was created on location in Bogotá, Colombia and centers around Polonio (played by Thaddeus Phillips), a peasant who flees his war-ravaged village to become a soap opera star. What he finds instead is a job as the doorman of a fancy high-rise apartment building populated by crazy and exotic residents who are portrayed by some of Latin America's best TV stars (who appear via video). ¡El Conquistador! is a visually stunning, funny and moving play conceived, performed and designed by renegade theater artist Thaddeus Phillips, who collaborated with Colombia's leading TV actor and director, Victor Mallarino, to create this vivid picture of contemporary Latin America.
¡El Conquistador! is performed in Spanish with English surtitles.
¡El Conquistador! premiered at the 2005 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, and makes its New York debut after performances at The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), Nooderzon Festival (Holland), The 4+4 Days Festival (Prague), The National Hispanic Cultural Center (Albuquerque), The Mladi Levi Festival (Ljubliana, Slovenia) and the Traverse Theatre as part of the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Times of London said, "If this rare glimpse of South American theatre is any indication of the creative invention of the rest, we really ought to see more. It is a remarkable technical achievement, but it is witty and clever too." And The Philadelphia Inquirer has said of Thaddeus Phillips, "Watching [him] at work makes you feel as if you're on a mind-altering drug. His DNA might hold traces of Charlie Chaplin, Rowan Atkinson and, perhaps, Einstein."
In conjunction with the staging of ¡El Conquistador!, NYTW will present a panel discussion, The Telenovela and The Media, on Monday, September 18 at 6:30pm, at New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th Street. The panel will feature journalist and author Hanna Rosin (writer for The Washington Post and author of a recent feature on telenovelas in The New Yorker), media specialist Esta de Fossard (Senior Education-Entertainment Advisor in the Center for Communication Programs at Johns Hopkins University) and ¡El Conquistador! creators Thaddeus Phillips, Tatiana Mallarino and Victor Mallarino (one of Colombia’s leading actors and directors who has appeared in several telenovelas). Panelists will explore the overwhelming phenomenon of the telenovela in Colombia - such as the program "Amor a Mil"- and throughout Latin America; the impact of the telenovela on everyday life; the transnationalization of the telenovela; the utilization of the telenovela in social marketing campaigns and its impact on social change; the revelation of Latin American political realities through telenovela narratives; and the telenovela's influence on and shaping of media images of Latino people. This panel is co-hosted by New York Theatre Workshop and The General Consulate of Colombia in New York.
James Nicola, NYTW's artistic director says, "Thaddeus Phillips is a gifted young artist who seamlessly combines theatre with video and the exploding art form of the telenovela. His work perfectly fits NYTW's mission to expand theatrical forms. New York Theatre Workshop has been working with Thaddeus for several years on developing ¡El Conquistador! and the production will be seen just as television audiences can see several new series based on the telenovela form, including ABC's 'Ugly Betty'. ¡El Conquistador! and our panel discussion on the telenovela will illuminate why and how the telenovela has become a worldwide phenomenon."
Thaddeus Phillips is a Pew Fellow who received his B.A. from Colorado College and attended DAMU in Prague. He is a protégé of Bulgarian scene designer Encho Avramov, and studied with tap master Jimmy Payne and Czech Puppet Theater Director Josef Krofta. He is the Artistic Director of The Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, a company that makes original innovative theater based on subjects ranging from airline
security to the last seven days of Edgar Allan Poe. For Lucidity Suitcase he has designed and created Red-Eye to Havre de Grace, The Tempest (in a kiddie pool), PlanetLear (King Lear performed on a putt-putt golf course), Lost Soles (a solo tap adventure about Wyoming and Cuba), The Earth's Sharp Edge (a travelogue through Morocco, 1970's hijackings and Newark's "Liberty" Airport). Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental's work has been presented in the US and Europe at such venues as MassMoca, On The Boards, The Painted Bride Art Center (Philadelphia), The Arcola Theatre and Battersea Arts Center (London), Traverse Theatre (Scotland) and Buntport Theater (Denver). Phillips also worked as a writer and performer in Robert Lepage's The Geometry of Miracles which played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York and at The Royal National Theater in London as well as a world-tour.
Tatiana Mallarino is from Bogotá, Colombia and is currently an artistic associate of the Buntport Theater in Denver and the Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental. While in Colombia, she was involved in television production working on the telenovela, "Leche." Tatiana directed Henry Five Live, Lost Soles and ¡El Conquistador! and appeared as Leila Khaled in The Earth's Sharp Edge. She also served as stage manager for The Tempest in London at the Arcola Theater and worked as a translator for the Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro in Bogotá translating for Ex Machina and Serbian Director Gorcin Stojanovic.
Victor Mallarino is one of the most important figures of Colombian television and theater. Victor has been involved in uncountable telenovelas the first of which were "La Tia Julia," "El Escribor," and "Maten al Leon." More recently Victor has played the male lead in "Sangre de Lobos," "El Inutil," "La Babysister," "Porque Diablos," and "Dora la Celadora." He wrote and directed a satire of those telenovelas called "Leche" (Milk). For Telemundo in Miami, he was the host for that station's "Protagonistas de La Novela" - a reality TV show.
The cast of ¡El Conquistador! is Thaddeus Phillips (Polonio) and, appearing via video, Cristina Campuzano, Luis Fernando Hoyos, Helena Mallarino, Tatiana Mallarino, Victor Mallarino, and Antonio Sanint.
Scenic design for ¡El Conquistador! is by Thaddeus Phillips; lighting design by Jeff Sugg; sound design by Jamie McElhinney; video design by Austin Switser; and the production stage manager is Rachel Zack.
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.
¡El Conquistador! plays at New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th Street, between Second Avenue and Bowery. The regular 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 one hour and 30 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are $50 and 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 or (212) 239-6240 (for Spanish-language operators). For exact dates and times of performance, call Telecharge.com.
Maintaining its commitment to making theatre accessible to all theatergoers, 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 $20, 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.
The panel discussion, The Telenovela and the Media, will take place on Monday, September 18 at 6:30pm, at New York Theatre Workshop. Tickets are $10 and may be purchased at the NYTW Box Office or by calling NYTW at (212) 460-5475, 1:00pm to 6:00pm, Tuesday through Saturday. Student tickets cost $5 with valid student identification and are available only at the NYTW Box Office.
¡El Conquistador! is partially supported by a grant from Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, a program developed and funded by the Vira I. Heinz Endowment; the William Penn Foundation; the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency; and The Pew Charitable Trusts; and administered by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.