Northern Stage Premieres DAMASCUS 2/17-3/7

Humor, pathos, romance and suspense fill the rarified Syrian air as Northern Stage presents the first-ever U.S. production of the award-winning Damascus by David Greig, from February 17 through March 7 at the Briggs Opera House in downtown White River Junction, VT, directed by Northern Stage Artistic Director Brooke Ciardelli, featuring Broadway Tony nominee John Herrera.

It's a new play, but it's a story as old as Damascus itself: boy meets girl in a hotel lobby, sparks fly, signals are crossed and other characters intrude, leading to a shocking conclusion. Because of Northern Stage reputation for top-quality theater, the company was chosen to be the first to produce this important new work.

Throughout the process, Ciardelli has been working closely with the playwright. Greig says, "I'm hugely excited that Northern Stage will be producing the first American production of Damascus. It's a play that's very close to my heart as it reflects something of the experience I had teaching and working in the Middle East. I feel proud the play has travelled so far. I'm sure Northern Stage's production will give the audience a great experience of this story."

Damascus, Syria is the oldest inhabited city in the world. It's a city of contrasts, the crossroads of the Middle East, where the ancient collides with the modern, where East meets West. Where Paul, a Scottish textbook salesman, meets Muna from the Education Ministry. Together, they explode our stereotypes and find they have more in common with each other-and with us-than anyone could have imagined.

Damascus performances are Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. (except for the Opening Night show Fri., Feb. 19 at 7:00 pm.) and Sundays at 5:00 p.m., with 2:00 p.m. matinees on Thursday, Feb. 18 and Sat., March 6. For tickets and information, call 802-296-7000. Tickets are also available through the Northern Stage Web site, www.northernstage.org.

Northern Stage's production of Damascus is sponsored by Sabil & Sons Transportation and an anonymous donor.

About the Cast
Each of the actors brings personal experience of the wonders and challenges of immersion in a new culture. Muna's amorous colleague Wasim is portrayed by Tony nominee and Drama Desk Award winner John Herrera, a native of Cuba, whose Broadway credits include Evita (playing Che opposite Patti LuPone), The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Camelot and Man of La Mancha. The Scottish-born Peter Simon Hilton (Paul) has made a name for himself in both England and the U.S. in productions of Frost/Nixon, King Lear, The Odyssey and The Final Revelation of Sherlock Holmes. Lanna Joffrey, a native of Iran who speaks fluent Farsi, wrote and performed in the multiple award-winning Valiant in New York. She has extensive regional theater experience, including stops at the Denver Center, The Public Theatre, Lyric Stage and Capital Rep. Moscow native Nina Kassa, a graduate of the A.R.T./Moscow Art Theater program at Harvard, provides musical accompaniment and running commentary as the Ukrainian hotel pianist Elena, and Indian-born Vandit Bhatt delights as Zakaria, the ambitious desk clerk.

About the Play
Understanding the complexity of Middle East politics begins by understanding how individuals form connections and how they treat each other. Through the fascinating characters playwright David Greig has created, we learn that Arab states aren't always driven by fundamentalist principles and that Western nations aren't always as ideal as we would like to believe.

The play takes us inside a world we don't often see onstage - that of the Arab intellectual. And the relationships will leave audiences laughing and gasping and wondering how so much can go so right and then, in the blink of an eye, go so wrong. It's a very funny and well told story of individuals, and their hopes and despairs.

Although Damascus is not autobiographical, per se, the play developed out of experiences the author had. With the support of several organizations, including the British Council, David Greig had spent about five years in the Middle East to conduct playwriting workshops, particularly in Syria and Palestine. Greig notes that the play "does explore a lot of themes and ideas which came from my experience over that period of time." He continues, "I didn't go out there with the idea of writing a play; quite the opposite, in fact. My job was to encourage young Arab writers to write plays, but the experience of being out of one's own culture was so strong for me that it demanded I explore it in writing." In a separate interview, he said, "Whatever the Arab writers learned, the workshops ended up teaching me an enormous amount about the complexities of relations between the west and the Arab world. In the end, despite my best efforts to avoid it, I felt compelled to write a play to explore those complexities."

He also notes that many of his plays are set in "internationally anonymous spaces like hotels and airports. I think I might be quite obsessed with the idea of belonging and not belonging, and being out of place."

Damascus was first produced in 2007 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it won a prestigious Fringe First Award. Northern Stage Artistic Director Brooke Ciardelli saw it at that time. Recognizing that this was one of the best new plays she had seen, she has pursued the publishers ever since to obtain the rights. After its Edinburgh premiere, the British cast performed the play at the "Brits Off-Broadway" series at the 59E59 Theatres in New York in 2008 and Nicolas Kent's Tricycle Theatre in London for four weeks in 2009, followed by a regional tour that touched down in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and the Palestinian territories.

Northern Stage's production is the first by a U.S. company and the first time U.S. audiences will see it outside of the two-week New York run, continuing the Vermont theater company's tradition of treating audiences to the best new works from around the world.

About the Author

David Greig was born in Edinburgh in 1969 and brought up in Nigeria. He studied drama at Bristol University and has become a renowned-and incredibly prolific-writer and director of plays. He has been commissioned by the Royal Court, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company and is currently Dramaturg of the National Theater of Scotland.

 

In 1990 he co-founded Suspect Culture Theatre Group with Graham Eatough in Glasgow. Many of his plays have debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; he won his inaugural Fringe First Award in 1992 with Stalinland.

 

Some of Greig's plays include San Diego (2003), a journey through the American dream; The American Pilot (2005), about America's involvement in the Middle East and Eastern Europe; and Pyrenees (2005), about a man who is found in the foothills of the Pyrenees, having lost his memory. His more recent works include Gobbo (2006), a modern-day fairytale; Yellow Moon (2006), a tale of disaffected youth; Futurology: A Global Revue (2007), in which a woman from an isolated, sinking Pacific island pleads for action on climate change; Midsummer (2008), which deals with a mismatched couple on a lost weekend in Scotland; Miniskirts of Kabul (2009), an imagined meeting between a British journalist and the former president of Afghanistan; Brewers Fayre (2009), an interactive piece that takes place in a Scottish pub; Dunsinane (2010), in which one man fights for peace in 11th century Scotland; and Peter Pan (2010) an adaptation of J.M. Barrie's classic adventure story.

His translations include Camus' Caligula (2003), Candide 2000, and When the Bulbul Stopped Singing, based on a book by Raja Shehadeh. Danny 306 + Me (4 ever) (1999) is a play written for children.

About the Director
BROOKE WETZEL CIARDELLI is the founding artistic director of Northern Stage, a regional non-profit theater operating under an AEA LORT-D contract, located on the border of Vermont and New Hampshire, with over 35,000 visits per year and a $1.8 million annual operating budget. In her career, Brooke has directed over 60 productions and is a proud member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

As a director, she has worked on a number of Arthur Miller plays, including Resurrection Blues with the playwright himself in residence, and an award-winning production of All My Sons. She has directed Patrick Stewart and Lisa Harrow in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and worked with playwright Sonja Linden on the American Premiere of The Strange Passenger. Brooke has also directed regional premieres of Wit, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Pride's Crossing and No Orchids For Miss Blandish, as well as a significant number of large-scale musicals.

As a creator, Brooke has adapted a number of classical pieces for the stage. In 1997 her adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, The "O" Myths - "A most delightful and refreshing original theater piece based on this ancient masterpiece" - was performed at Dartmouth College as the basis of an international exchange between Dartmouth students and actors from New York, Zimbabwe, Mexico and Romania. Her adaptation The Shrew Tamer (a coupling of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and John Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed) was reviewed as "a delicious new comedy," and Ed Siegel of the Boston Globe wrote, "Ciardelli has fashioned a play of significant historical interest." She is currently working on a stage adaptation of Boccaccio's Decameron for international production and developing a musical based on the life of Anastasia Romanov.

Brooke has a great interest in creating collaborative partnerships with International Artists and is currently working with Giles Ramsay (www.gilesramsay.co.uk) and his U.K.-based company Developing Artists (www.developingartist.co.uk). Through their relationship, she has worked with actors from Zimbabwe, Mexico and England, as well as touring, as co-director, with I Am My Own Wife (www.nswife.com), starring Kevin Loreque, to Harare, Zimbabwe and Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2010, she will continue her relationships with Zimbabwean theater artists, students from Durham University, England and new projects with Palestine, Israel and Macedonia both in country and the U.S.

Brooke has been a guest lecturer at the State University of New York, Albany; University College and Chad's College, Durham University, England; Harare International Festival of the Arts, Zimbabwe; the Elderhostel Program Tour to the Fringe Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland; Dartmouth College, NH; New England Theatre Conference, Boston, MA; Kendal at Hanover, NH; Adventures in Learning, NH; Keene State College, NH and others. She is a Visiting Fellow of University College, Durham University, Durham, England.

Brooke received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College, with a concentration in directing; worked at The Williamstown Theater Festival and Broadway general management/producer's office of Gatchell & Neufeld; and currently lives in Norwich, Vermont.

About Northern Stage

Northern Stage now stands as one of the most prestigious and fastest-growing regional theaters in New England. Founding Artistic Director Brooke Ciardelli brought the company to the Briggs Opera House in 1997; since then, Northern Stage has offered over 85 productions, including World Premieres such as The Shrew Tamer, Ovid: Tales of Myth & Magic and A Christmas Carol: The Musical. Other highlights include a staged reading of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Patrick Stewart and Lisa Harrow and a reading of Resurrection Blues, with the playwright, Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Miller, in attendance. The company has twice been honored with Moss Hart Awards for Excellence in Theater for Best Professional Production from the New England Theatre Conference, for productions of To Kill A Mockingbird (1999) and Les Misérables (2008), as well as an Addison Award for The Shrew Tamer (2004).

Community support has enabled the company to sell over 35,000 tickets in downtown White River Junction in the last year to enjoy entertaining and thought-provoking professional theater and theater education here at the crossroads of northern New England. They have also reached out to offer residencies and workshops at over a dozen area schools; initiated "Project Playwright," a literacy program for fifth and sixth graders; and launched NS Touring, which sends top productions to theaters throughout the world and brings international talents to the U.S.

For information or tickets, call 802-296-7000, e-mail boxoffice@northernstage.org, or log on to www.northernstage.org. The Box Office at the Briggs Opera House is open from 5:30-8:00 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 3:00-5:30 p.m. on Sunday during show weeks; tickets for all shows are available by phone or at the Northern Stage administrative office at 28 Gates Street, White River Junction, Monday-Friday from 10 am.-6 p.m. MasterCard and VISA are accepted.