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Press Contact: Tamar Fortgang
REDCAT Publicist and Promotions Manager
fortgang@muse.calarts.edu / 661-253-7724 (Do Not Publish)

REDCAT Presents 11 September 2001, a Provocative International Production Created by the Center for New Theater at Calarts

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April 2005, Los Angeles--A landmark collaboration between the Center for New Theater at CalArts and the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne culminates with the world premiere of French playwright Michel Vinaver's 11 September 2001, directed by Robert Cantarella, Director of the National Dramatic Center of Dijon and presented by REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater.

A dramatic oratorio composed of newspaper and documentary accounts, 11 September 2001 was written by Vinaver in English as a meditation on the events of 9/11. "All the world was witness to this live event," notes Vinaver, "the shock was amazing -- with reverberations that blinded us." Vinaver constructs a textual cantata from thematic "melodies", a chorus, and "recitatifs" made specific by taking on character roles -- from victims, to journalistic observers, to Bin Laden and Bush.

Performed in multiple variations by an ensemble cast, Cantarella's daringly physical production takes on complex and shifting perspectives. "Theater works on the invention of a new understanding," says Cantarella, "Vinaver's text produces a theory from this history, and creates a poetic collage." Canterella's production defies conventional gestures of representation. Instead, he crafts a constantly shifting landscape of feeling that dramatizes consciousness in catharsis.

Discussions with the artists and a featured reading are part of this residency. For a detailed schedule and general information, visit redcat.org.

Friday, April 22 at 7 p.m.
Poetic Address to Tragedy: the theater confronts 9 /11
This moderated discussion will include Vinaver, Cantarella and the Center for New Theater at CalArts Artistic Director, Travis Preston.

Saturday, April 23 at 2 p.m.
A reading of Trojan Women: Les Troyennes
Michel Vinaver will read his world premiere adaptation, the companion piece to 11 September 2001.

REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts, is located at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. 11 September 2001 will be performed Thursday--Sunday, April 21-24 at 8:30 p.m. Ticket prices range from $28-20. Student discounts available; tickets for the panel discussion and reading are free. Seating is general admission. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office-located at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, by calling 213.237.2800 or by clicking here.

Funded in part by Étant Donné, The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Association Francaise d'Action Artistique and Cultural Services of the French Embassy of the United States.

REDCAT's 2004-05 season programming is generously supported by The Herb Alpert Foundation; American Center Foundation; The Annenberg Foundation; Anonymous; Asian Cultural Council; Bank Julius Baer; Booth Heritage Foundation; Canada Council for the Arts; Hyon Chough; CONACULTA; Cotsen Family Foundation; CNMAT; Cultural Contact, the U.S.-Mexico Foundation for Culture; Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States and the French Consulates in Los Angeles and San Francisco; DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art; Discover Signs; Robert B. Egelston; Étant Donnés, The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts, a program of the French American Cultural Exchange; Factory Signage & Graphics; The French-American Fund for Contemporary Music, a program of FACE; The J. Paul Getty Trust; Harriett and Richard Gold; Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg; The Jim Henson Foundation; Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater; The James Irvine Foundation; The Japan Foundation; The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles; Korea Art Foundation of America; The Korea Times; The Korea Culture and Art Foundation; Korea Foundation; The JL Foundation; The Sharon D. Lund Foundation; Meet The Composer, Creative Connections Program; México Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores; National Dance Project; National Endowment for the Arts; Pasadena Art Alliance; Wendy Keys and Donald A. Pels; Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant from The James Irvine Foundation; Lee and Lawrence J. Ramer; Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation; The Judith Rothschild Foundation; Dee Sherwood; Shiseido Co., Ltd.; The Skirball Foundation; SRE/Consulate of Mexico; Eve Steele and Peter Gelles; Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust; Dallas Price-Von Breda; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Yamaha Corporation and The Walt Disney Company.

The Center for New Theater at CalArts was established in 1999 as a forum for the creation of groundbreaking theatrical performance. Productions include Chen Shi-Zheng's Peach Blossom Fan at REDCAT, nominated for three Ovation Awards; King Lear at the Brewery Arts Center and Frictions Festival in Dijon, France; Macbeth: A Modern Ecstasy with Stephen Dillane and Richard Foreman's Bad Behavior. Seminal artists from around the world are brought to the CNT to develop work that expands the language, discourse, and boundaries of contemporary theater. The Center supports a producing model that is artist and project specific, giving priority to performance that cannot be easily produced in other circumstances. The avant-garde aesthetic of the California Institute of the Arts provides the ideal context for rigorous collaborations between significant guest artists and the CalArts community. CNT operates under the leadership of Travis Preston (Artistic Director), Carol Bixler (Producing Director) and Jon Gottlieb (Acting Dean, School of Theater at CalArts).

California Institute of the Arts, CalArts, the first U.S. higher educational institution to integrate the visual and performing arts under one roof, is recognized as the nation's leading laboratory for the arts. Housing six schools--Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music and Theater--CalArts embraces creative cross-pollination among diverse art forms and traditions, and strongly encourages each artist to pursue his or her vision within a broad context of social and cultural understanding.

Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, REDCAT, is an interdisciplinary arts center that introduces diverse audiences, students and artists to the most influential developments in the performing, visual and media arts from around the world, and gives artists and future artists in this region the production opportunities and creative support they need to achieve national and international stature.

Event Schedule for 11 September 2001

Thursday, April 21, 8:30 p.m.
Press Opening Performance: 11 September 2001
Reception following the performance

Friday, April 22, 7 p.m.
Panel discussion: Poetic Address to Tragedy: the theater confronts 9/11
Michel Vinaver, Robert Cantarella and Travis Preston

Friday, April 22, 8:30 p.m.
Performance: 11 September 2001

Saturday, April 23, 2 p.m.
Reading by Playwright Michel Vinaver
Les Troyennes

Saturday, April 23, 8:30 p.m.
Performance: 11 September 2001

unday, April 24, 8:30 p.m.
Closing Performance: 11 September 2001

BIOS:

Michel Vinaver
Michel Vinaver was born in Paris to Russian parents in 1927. He worked simultaneously at two careers. In 1950 and 1951, chez Gallimard published his first two novels. Starting in 1953, he was employed by a multinational manufacturing corporation with sizeable distribution, first as part of the administrative staff, then as general director in various tours throughout Europe. He wrote his first play Les Coreens, in 1955, and then began his journey as a writer and translator of theatre, which he pursued in parallel with his career in industry. From 1982 to 1991, he was also a teacher of theatrical studies at the University of Paris. His works Les Coreens, Iphigénie Hôtel, Par-dessus Bord, King, Les Voisins, Les Hussiers, have been mounted notably by Roger Planchon, Antoine Vitez, Jacques Lassalle, Alain Françon and Robert Cantarella, among others.

Robert Cantarella
Praised for his elegant and incisive staging of the work of living playwrights, Robert Cantarella was first commissioned for theatre by Marcel Maréchal at the École de la Criée, then by Antoine Vitez in Chaillot. In 1985, he founded the Compagnie des Ours.

Since 1993, Cantarella has held regular training workshops and taught throughout Europe: l'Ecole Régionale d'Acteurs in Cannes, Théâtre National de Bretagne, Ernst Busch School in Berlin and the l'Institut d'Etudes Européennes in Paris. He wrote and published with Jean-Pierre Han a manifesto, "For Training in Stage Design" and launched the journal Frictions to promote reflection and research in the field of show business.

The Director of the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne/Centre Dramatique National (CDN), Canterella directed Les Apparences sont trompeuses by Thomas Bernhard and the premiere of Philippe Minyana's final work, Pièces,. He directed Le Mariage, l'affaire et la mort by Alexander Soukhovo Kobyline and Les travaux et les jours by Michel Vinaver in Dijon. He directed Ubu Roi for Hans Otto Theatre in Potsdam, Germany and Algeria 54-62 by Jean Magnan in Dijon and at the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris, and, also at the Théâtre de la Colline, Eugene O'Neill's Dynamo.

Center for New Theater at CalArts
Upcoming projects:

April 28-May 1
INVISIBLE GLASS
World Premiere

Inventive filmmaker, visual artist and puppeteer Janie Geiser collaborates with Alpert Award-winning playwright Erik Ehn and adventurous composer Tom Recchion to create Invisible Glass. The multimedia work employs puppets, live actors and film to explore the idea of the "Doppelgänger," or spirit double made flesh, in a new work inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's short story "William Wilson."

An Obie Award-winner, Geiser is the director of the Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts, established at CalArts in 1998 with the goal of making the most creative developments in contemporary puppetry available to students across the Institute's six schools.

Funded in part by The National Endowment for the Arts and Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater and Jim Henson Foundation and co-produced by the Center for New Theater at CalArts and the Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts.

Fall 2005
What to Wear?
World Premiere

What to Wear? is a new music theater creation from one of this nation's most uncompromisingly distinctive artistic voices, Richard Foreman, created in collaboration with composer Michael Gordon.

Foreman's What to Wear? creates "a fashion show pageant in which spiritual emptiness allows for the exploitation of millions of lost souls. These lost souls dream of the dead glamour embodied by a group of fashion models--who parade through the world at inappropriate moments."

Richard Foreman, one of the seminal figures in the American avant-garde, first worked with the Center for New Theater in 2000. In association with Sophie Haviland, he created the enormously successful Bad Behavior. Michael Gordon is founder of the Bang on a Can Festival in New York and a prolific creator of innovative music-theater.

For more information about events at REDCAT, go to www.redcat.org.
For more information about CalArts, visit www.muse.calarts.edu.

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