The Capulets and the Montagues February 5, 2011

ANDAK STAGE COMPANY presents
The Capulets and the Montagues

OPENING PERFORMANCES on
Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 8pm and Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 2:00 PM
Running through February 27, 2011

Los Angeles, CA – Andak Stage Company announces its thirteenth production--and its eighth world premiere in this its fourth season--a modern rhyming verse translation of Lope de Vega’s Romeo and Juliet play, The Capulets and the Montagues. The production will be directed by Anne McNaughton and will feature a new translation by four-time-award-winning translator Dakin Matthews.

Lope’s version was written approximately 400 years ago and not based on Shakespeare’s play, but based on the same source material. Shakespeare saw romance and tragedy, Lope saw comedy and even farce. There’s not only a happy ending, but also surprisingly hilarious hi-jinks along the way. In other words, Romeo and Juliet as you’ve never seen them before.

Lope de Vega was born in 1562, a year and a half before Shakespeare. He was the most prolific writer of plays in the Golden Age of Spanish theatre. His work created the form of the Spanish comedia and set the standard by which all succeeding plays were judged. He was a childhood prodigy and continued writing--plays, novels, poetry, and a vast correspondence--up to his death at 72 in 1635. He lived a scandalous life, sailed with the Armada, took holy orders (in 1614) after the death of his second wife, but continued to carry on an affair with his last mistress and to care for their (and other of his) children. Between 300 and 400 of his full-length plays still survive (the number is vague because of many false attributions) and these may constitute only a fourth of his actual dramatic output. His most familiar plays to the English speaking world are Fuente Ovejuna (The Sheep Well) and The Mayor of Zalamea. He wrote The Capulets and the Montagues more than a decade after Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and it is unlikely he was aware of the earlier play, though both he and Shakespeare used the same source story.

THE CAPULETS AND THE MONTAGUES opens at 8:00 PM on Saturday night, January 29, 2011 and 2:00 PM on Sunday afternoon, January 30, 2011. Performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm and Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00pm through Sunday, February 27, 2011, at NewPlace Studio Theatre, 10950 Peach Grove Street., North Hollywood, CA 91601. Tickets are $25. The box office will open for reservations on January 3, 2011; telephone Ovationtix at 866 811-4111 or visit the Andak website www.Andak.org for tickets.

Anne McNaughton (Director, Co-Producer) is the Associate Artistic Director of Andak Stage Company and directed its previous productions of Spite for Spite and The Bay At Nice, and world premieres of Liberty Inn: The Musical, The Prince of L.A., The Savannah Option, A Magic Christmas, Don Juan The Trickster of Seville, The Letters, and her own Molière update, San Fran Scapin. She was the Artistic Director of the Valley Shakespeare Festival in Saratoga and a founding member of both the Antaeus Company and John Houseman's Acting Company, for which she directed U.S.A. off-Broadway. She was a Resident Director at San Jose Rep, California Actors Theatre, Berkeley Stage Company, and Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, and taught and directed in the American Conservatory Theatre's advanced training program. She is a member of the first graduating class of the Juilliard Drama Division and holds a graduate degree in directing from Stanford University. Her award-winning productions in the San Francisco Bay Area include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Richard III, Artichoke, and Letters Home. Most recently, she directed The Prince of L.A. and Collected Stories at the Old Globe, and The Liar, The Proof of the Promise, Trial By Jury, and The Will for the Antaeus Company.

Dakin Matthews (Translator, Co-producer) is Artistic Director of Andak Stage Company, former Artistic Director of California Actors Theatre, Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, and the Antaeus Company, and an Emeritus Professor of English from Cal State, East Bay. He has completed verse translations of six seventeenth-century Spanish comedies, four of which have had professional, award-winning productions. He is also an actor, director, playwright, dramaturge, teacher, and Shakespeare scholar. As an actor for such companies as ACT in San Francisco, the Old Globe in San Diego, the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, South Coast Repertory Theatre, and numerous summer Festivals, he has specialized in Shakespearean roles, including recently Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare Center of L.A.), King Lear for the Antaeus Company, Antigonus in The Winter’s Tale (Bridge Project World Tour), and Warwick and Glendower in his own adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV at Lincoln Center Theatre (multiple Tony Awards), receiving a Drama Desk award for the adaptation and a Bayfield Award for his performance. He is a member of both the Motion Picture and Television Academies, and has appeared in over twenty-five films (including the Coen brothers’ True Grit) and two hundred fifty television shows. His play Uncommon Players was commissioned and produced at the Old Globe. His comedy The Great Fugue was premiered in ACT’s Plays in Progress program. Two more plays, The Savannah Option and A Magic Christmas, have been produced by Andak Stage Company. His most recent verse-drama The Prince of L.A. was produced in Fall, 2005 at the Old Globe.

Dakin has dramaturged Shakespeare for Jack O’Brien, John Rando, Darko Tresnjak, and Daniel Sullivan, including the Denzel Washington Julius Caesar on Broadway. His handbook on verse-speaking Shakespeare Spoken Here has been used in universities and training programs throughout California; he has given masterclasses in Shakespearean acting across the country and around the world and has taught and directed in professional training programs at The Juilliard School, American Conservatory Theatre, Cal Arts, and USD/Old Globe.

OUR ENSEMBLE

The play will feature Nicol Zanzarella-Giacalone and Benny Wills as the lovers and John Achorn and Micheal McShane as their respective fathers. Also in the cast are John Apicella as Tybalt, Brett Colbeth as Benvolio, R. Scott Thompson as Paris, Etta Devine as Celia, Bruce Green as Marín, and Drew Doyle and Kellie Mattson in multiple roles. Additional casting TBA.

THE CAPULETS AND THE MONTAGUES will feature an original score by composer Carl Smith, costumes designed by Dean Cameron, and stage combat from Fight Master Peter Katona.

After the run of THE CAPULETS AND THE MONTAGUES in Los Angeles, The Andak Stage Company has been invited to participate for the third time in the International Siglo de Oro Festival of Spanish drama at the Chamizal Theatre in El Paso, Texas. The Company will conduct outreach programs on March 4 and perform The Capulets and the Montagues on March 5; it will be the only English-speaking company represented at the Festival.

Andak Stage Company opened its first season with the West Coast premiere of Agustín Moreto’s Spite for Spite in February 2004 in Los Angeles—and touring it to the International Siglo de Oro Festival in El Paso, where it received the Walker Reid Award for Translation and the Franklin G. Smith Award for Production. Since then ASC has produced six more world premieres and three L.A. premieres, including four original plays and two new classical translations, garnering four more awards for playwrighting, translation, acting, and production. In its third season (2007-2008) the Company broke new ground by including Los Angeles premieres of new classical adaptations (Martin Crimp’s The Misanthrope) and contemporary plays (David Hare’s The Bay At Nice, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal) in its repertoire along with world premieres of new plays and new translations. More recently they have staged John W. Lowell’s critically acclaimed The Letters, Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man, and Matthews and Rybeck’s original musical Liberty Inn.

Official Website: http://www.Andak.org