"... The theater is so endlessly fascinating," playwright Arthur Miller said in 1984, "because it's so accidental. It's so much like life." For internationally recognized director, actor, and teacher John Strasberg, the search for happy theatrical accidents that he believes define all creative processes has been a lifelong quest. Now the 67-year old scion of the Strasberg family has founded his own company, appropriately named the Accidental Repertory Theater.
"Our goal is to produce work that is spontaneous and real, every performance different, and that will entertain, move, and enlighten," Strasberg said recently. "The productions are beautiful and essential, the production values defining the elements of life that are absolutely necessary to create, and illuminate, the human beings who populate the play, and the world they live in."
Strasberg founded the company in 2005 with a close-knit group of actors who had worked with him for a number of years. The company was incorporated in 2006 and received its 501(c)3 tax exemption in 2008.
During its inaugural season in the fall of 2008 Accidental Rep presented:
• Tennessee Williams, the Writer and His World - a biodrama linking Williams' letters and plays, targeted at student audiences.
• Open workshop sessions in which audiences could watch actors still discovering the possibilities of life in the relationships on stage, without conventional directing or staging.
• An original cabaret exploring one man's journey through divorce and reconciliation with himself.
In the upcoming spring season, opening in April, Strasberg plans to offer two contrasting productions of Ibsen's "A Doll's House." "Ibsen is a revolutionary in the theater," Strasberg says. "He is the first writer who showed the audience themselves as they are in their homes. Who revealed to us by what his characters say, do, and don't say, how they really think and feel. We see the labyrinthine thinking that we live with today. Thinking that masks the truth, and makes the lies, the deceptions, seem to be what's real. The hidden desires, the hidden world that is who we really are, is revealed, unpeeled, during the play. He showed us who we are."
ART's contrasting productions may present different adaptations, time periods, social classes, etc. "As a director, I have been extremely successful in making plays clear to my audiences," Strasberg says. "So this adventure is new for me, because I can only guarantee that every night will be different, and that we are trying to illuminate the people, and the play, and what is happening to them.... That's what makes ART fascinating to me.... And believe me, this is not being done by accident. It is a conscious choice."
Accidental Repertory Theater performs at the John Strasberg Studios, 555 Eighth Avenue (at 38th Street), Suite 403. Tickets are expected to go on sale in March.
Clark Kee, Accidental Repertory Theater
555 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
Press Contact Phone: 212-769-2292 Theater Phone: 646-435-7867
http://www.accidentalrep.org
