Ritter, Dene, Voss
By One Little Goat Theatre Company
September 23 – October 10, 2010
In Ritter, Dene, Voss (named for the three actors who premiered the original 1986 production in German), Thomas Bernhard explores sexual repression and sibling rivalry with characteristic tenacity and wit. The play involves two sisters – both actresses – and their attempts at reintegrating their volatile brother into their home. The brother, a tormented genius (loosely based on last century’s great, idiosyncratic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein), has just returned from a mental health institute, complicating the dynamics between the three siblings.
Playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) has been called “Austria’s most provocative post-war writer” (The New Yorker) and a “virtuoso of rancor and rage…a corrosively funny master of lyrical nay-saying” (Bookforum). Distinctive in his style – writing entirely without punctuation, but in accessible, down-to-earth language – Bernhard has been both revered and reviled for his provocative plays.
One Little Goat presented the English-language world premiere of Ritter, Dene, Voss in Toronto in 2006. Hailed by Canadian Theatre Review as “flawless” and by Eye Weekly as a “breathless, two-hour Beckettian farce…intensely mannered and exquisitely controlled,” the production toured to Chicago’s Trap Door Theatre in December 2007, where Newcity Chicago ranked it as its #1 production.
The cast includes three of Canada’s leading young actors, Maev Beaty (Africa Trilogy, Luminato Festival), Shannon Perreault (If We Were Birds, Tarragon Theatre) and Jordan Pettle (Stratford Festival, Soulpepper Co.). Original set and costumes are designed by Jackie Chau, with lighting by Kate McKay.
One Little Goat, North America’s only company devoted to contemporary poetic theatre, “has done audiences a huge service” (Toronto Star) through its highly interpretive, provocative approach to international plays. In 2009, One Little Goat presented the English Canadian premiere of Someone is Going to Come by Norway’s Jon Fosse in a new translation, followed by the world premiere of Talking Masks by Artistic Director Adam Seelig. Both plays entered the 2009 top-ten lists of Toronto’s EYE Weekly and NOW Magazine. The company’s production of Seelig’s Antigone:Insurgency was also a top Toronto theatre production of 2007 in NOW Magazine, and its production of Thomas Bernhard’s Ritter, Dene, Voss has received wide acclaim. From 2002 on, the company has presented the English premieres of radio plays by Israel’s eminent modern poet, Yehuda Amichai, in New York, Toronto, and in a podcast for Poetry Magazine. In 2004 One Little Goat premiered All Is Almost Still by Adam Seelig at the 78th Street Theatre Lab in New York, for which Seelig was called “one of the brightest directors” (Back Stage) of a “compelling and moving” play (NYTheatre.com, Martin Denton). Seelig’s new book, a novella/poem entitled Every Day in the Morning (slow), is being released by New Star Books this September. More information is available at http://www.OneLittleGoat.org.
One Little Goat acknowledges the generous sponsorship of the Austrian Cultural Forum NY, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA) and Weiss-Rohlig Canada.
Directed by Adam Seelig
With: Jordan Pettle, Maev Beaty, Shannon Perreault
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