Beckett Solos

OBIE-winning theater company Hoi Polloi, under the direction of Alec Duffy, collaborates on three Samuel Beckett short plays with venerable actress Lelia Goldoni, a pairing that began after Goldoni saw Hoi Polloi’s stage adaptation of John Cassavetes’ Shadows, the 1959 film that made her a fundamental figure in the birth of American independent cinema.  Hoi Polloi will present Footfalls, Rockaby and the radio piece Cascando.  For the production, OBIE-winning set designer Mimi Lien has designed a room-within-a-room at JACK, with an audience capacity of 30.

Performances:

Thursday – Saturday, Oct. 3 – 5

Wednesday – Saturday, Oct. 9 – 12

Wednesday – Saturday, Oct. 16 – 19

All performances at 8 pm

Tickets:

$18

Available at www.brownpapertickets.com or at the door

Location:

JACK

505 1/2 Waverly Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11238

Between Fulton St. and Atlantic Ave. in Clinton Hill.

C or G train to Clinton-Washington.

Website: www.jackny.org

Creative Team:

Director: Alec Duffy

Scenic Design: Mimi Lien

Lighting Design: Yi Zhao

Costume Design: Oana Botez

Composer/Sound Design: Steven Leffue

Stage Manager: Melanie Kulas

 
MORE INFO
 

Lelia Goldoni is best known for co-starring in John Cassavetes’ groundbreaking film Shadows (1959) and playing the best friend of Ellen Burstyn’s character in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974). She appeared in a number of motion pictures and television shows starting in the late-1940s, including uncredited cameo roles in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s House of Strangers (1949), John Huston’s We Were Strangers (1949) and The Italian Job (1969). She costarred on the episode “Fair Exchange” of the British television series Danger Man (1964) with Patrick MacGoohan. In 2010, she appeared in the miniseries The Pacific as Dora Basilone.

Hoi Polloi is an OBIE-winning New York-based theater company founded in 2007.  Pieces are created in collaboration with a core ensemble of artists, usually under the supervision of founding Artistic Director Alec Duffy. Recent work includes Baal, All Hands, Shadows, Three Pianos, The less we talk, and Dysphoria.  www.hoipolloiworld.com

Alec Duffy (Director) is the founder and Artistic Director of Hoi Polloi and of JACK.  Recent work includes Baal, Shadows, All Hands, Three Pianos (as creator/performer) and The less we talk. In 2010, he directed the revival of Murder in the Cathedral at The Church of St. Joseph in Brooklyn.  Duffy is a Drama League Directing Fellow and an OBIE-winner.

Mimi Lien (Set Designer) is a designer of sets and environments for theater, dance, and opera. Having arrived at set design from a background in architecture, her work often focuses on the interaction between audience/environment and object/performer.  She is an artistic associate with Pig Iron Theatre Company and The Civilians, and in 2012 she was awarded an OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence. Previous collaborations with Hoi Polloi include Baal, All Hands, The Less We Talk.  Recent work includes Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812, A Public Reading…About the Death of Walt Disney (Soho Rep), The Dance and the Railroad (Signature), Zero Cost House (Pig Iron). Her work has been presented around the country at Berkeley Rep, A.R.T., Wilma Theater, Longwharf Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, and Alliance Theatre, among others. Mimi’s designs for dance have been presented in the Netherlands and Russia, and she was a semifinalist in the Ring Award competition for opera design in Graz, Austria. Her work has been recognized with an American Theater Wing Hewes Design Award, a Barrymore Award, four Barrymore nominations, and a Bay Area Critics Circle nomination. She was a recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program, a MacDowell Colony fellow, and her sculptures were featured in the exhibition, LANDSCAPES OF QUARANTINE, at the Storefront for Art and Architecture.

Oana Botez (Costume Designer) is a native of Romania, has designed for major theater, opera and dance companies including The National Theater of Bucharest and was involved in different international theater festivals such as the Quadrennial Scenography Show in Prague. Oana is part of the first Romanian theater design catalogue, Scenografica. Since 1999, when she moved to New York, her collaborations in theater, opera, film and dance include Robert Woodruff, Richard Foreman, Maya Beiser, Richard Schechner, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Andrei Serban, Blanka Zizka, Brian Kulick, Zelda Fichlander, Annie-B Parson & Paul Lazar, Jackson Gay, Rebecca Taichman, Eric Ting, Razvan Dinca, Karin Coonrod, Jay Scheib, Kristin Marting, Evan Ziporyn, Eduardo Machado, Gus Solomon Jr. & Paradigm, Carmen De Lavallade, Dusan Tynek, Rania Ajami, Gisela Cardenas, Tony Speciale, Pavol Liska & Kelly Copper, Matthew Neenan, Molissa Fenley, Zishan Ugurlu, Michael Sexton, Michael Barakiva, Pig Iron Company, Play Company, Charles Moulton, Ripe Time, among others. MFA in Design from NYU/Tisch Schoolof the Arts. Princess Grace Recipient, NEA/TCG Career Development Program. Barrymore and Drammy Award. www.oanabotez.com
Yi Zhao (Lighting Designer) Current projects include The Garden, a dance installation for the Philadelphia FringeArts Festival, La Prose du Transsibérien, a musical performance of Blaise Cendrars’ 1913 poem for the 50th Anniversary of the Beinecke Library at Yale University, Much Ado About Nothing at Princeton University, and Black Wizard/Blue Wizard, a new musical at Incubator Arts Project. Past projects include In A Year With 13 Moons (Yale Rep), A Doctor in Spite of Himself (Yale Rep/Berkeley Rep), The Bakkhai (Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College), Luz (La MaMa), The Glass Menagerie (TheatreWorks Colorado Springs), The Hotel Colors (Bushwick Starr), Mary Becoming (ArtPond), etc. Yi graduated from the Yale School of Drama and the University of Chicago. His work can be seen at www.yi-zhao.com.

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JACK

New Brooklyn arts space JACK was founded in June 2012 with a mission of creating radical access to the arts – serving as a platform for the most adventurous of today’s performing artists and as a vehicle for bridging audiences and educating youth.  JACK, located in Clinton Hill, is housed in a standalone building that was built in 1924 as a five-car garage.  It has been transformed into a 60-seat flexible performance space that features theater, music, dance and performance art, as well as programs for teens and young children. JACK is named in honor of Artistic Director Alec Duffy’s grandfather, Jack Duffy, who combined work in the community as a minister at New York’s Labor Temple with a great passion for theater, as well as Duffy’s grandmother, Jacqueline deBrun, a born entertainer and lover of the arts. www.jackny.org.