Intercollegiate Collaborative Arts Project
The Cradle Will Rock will debut on Thursday, March 31 at Theatre 80 St. Marks. Tickets are $5 and will be available on Theatre 80′s website.
Press Release
Broadway’s First Show to be Stopped by the US Government, Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 The Cradle Will Rock, to be Produced by The New School University Students March 31, April 1 and April 2 at Theater 80.
Theater 80, 80 St. Marks Place, New York, NY 10003, March 31, April 1, April 2, 2011
A bleak tale of corruption, lies and deceit broken only by the fervent passion and justice of the revolting service workers in Stocktown USA (formerly Steeltown, USA), Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 The Cradle Will Rock, freshly adapted by playwright JK Fowler and directed by Sean Elias, is soon to rush the stage of Theater 80, 80 St. Marks St. from March 31st-April 2nd.
1947. The New York Times writes: The Cradle Will Rock, “has qualities of genius. It catches fire, it blazes, it amuses and grips the listener.”
1936. At the time of its opening, due to the incendiary nature of the play masked by “cuts to the budget” by the Federal Theatre Project, the US government (for fear of worker revolt in America) padlocked the Maxine Elliott Theatre, confiscated the script and forbid the actors to perform the show. The actors, fearful of Equity’s ability to fine and bar them from future work, remained steadfast in their desire to perform the show, however, and performed from their seats as Blitzstein himself played the piano on a bare stage at the Venice Theatre in New York City. Orson Welles would then direct the first official opening of the play in 1937.
The New School’s University Student Senate production includes an adapted script of the 75-year-old controversial play, adapted by playwright JK Fowler.
“At the time of its production, Blitztein saw the bleak prospects of the working class in an industry-based America and one of the greatest income disparities this country has ever faced. That disparity has returned en force and with it, the fervor of the service workers in this country has been stoked as they begin to awaken to the fact that the half of the entire American population owns only 2.5% of this country’s wealth and that those that “have” most definitely do not have our interests at heart but pursue, through greed and manipulation, more and more wealth and power. We see this in places like Ohio and Wisconsin. We will begin to see it more and more here in New York City (the city with one of the worst income inequalities in the country) and beyond. This is no longer a US-based story but reaches across the Atlantic where the calls for true change have already begun breaking. Blitztein’s monumental work is still very much alive today,” says Fowler.
Characters have retained their passion as in Blitzstein’s original. Mr. Mister is the corrupt owner of Stocktown USA’s banks in cahoots with a band of scheming, cowardly business owners, con-men, and elitist swine blindly following behind him. A victim of foreclosure and a stalled career replaces the disillusioned steel factory worker of Blitzstein’s original, morphing the 1937 Larry Foreman to the 2011 Larry Admin, the voice of the people, the leader of the service worker revolt in Stocktown USA, the builder of the hive. The hive represents a future vision of a collective involving both those unionized and not. Technological integration brings the show’s Brechtian style that influenced such Broadway blockbusters as Cabaret and Spring Awakening to life. Merging Bertolt Brecht’s ideology of the didactic/epic theatre and the western aesthetic of emotional sincerity, as transported through the shows use of the mobile phone, the internet, and LED displays, The Cradle Will Rock both dissects and calls into question the corrupted values that have so deeply embedded themselves within our society, and within our minds.
“So often the arts are thought to be removed from the immediacy and radical influx of the political and the social environment in which we exist. Furthermore, students and artists are two groups of people whose political and social opinions are deemed disposable, irrelevant. However, students are more often then not the most impacted by such political and social changes and it’s my opinion that the artist’s societal duty is to reflect and comment upon the political and social environment we live in. Thus we have gone ahead and radically updated and adapted The Cradle Will Rock to respond directly to a society and culture that continues to change drastically. Furthermore, The Cradle Will Rock serves as a vehicle in which our students, moved by the current political and social events, are given a voice and are putting their responses into their art. Historically, theatre has always been used to teach, and through The Cradle Will Rock we have found the aggressive power theatre holds in its ability to mobilize a people towards action,” says Elias.
The show will open at Theater 80, 80 St. Mark’s Place, New York, NY 10003 at 9:00pm on Thursday March 31 with three additional shows on Friday April 1st at 8:00 pm and Saturday April 2nd at 2:00pm and 8:00pm.
Contact:
Melissa Holmes
holmm946@newschool.edu
72 5th Ave
New York, NY 10011
(347) 836-9053
About iCAP
In the winter of 2010, The New School University Student Senate announced one of its most ambitious and exciting opportunities to date for the entire student body: the Intercollegiate Collaborative Arts Project, also known as iCAP.
The Intercollegiate Collaborative Arts Project allows the University Student Senate to commission and pay involved students from various schools within the university to create a unified piece of art; be it theatre, dance, communal drawings or any other artistic venture.
This year, the University Student Senate will be commissioning students under the Intercollegiate Collaborative Arts Project to radically update, design, fully stage and subsequently perform Mark Blitzstein’s 1930′s socio-political Brechtian allegory, The Cradle Will Rock: A Play in Music. The USS firmly believes that The Cradle Will Rock, and its creative and artistic update, will serve as a powerful vehicle for the expression of the many student concerns regarding social justice within the New School system and our country at large. The production will be preceded by a series of workshops on topics of relation to the piece, by student and faculty presenters, including The New School for Drama’s Acting Coordinator Ms. Kathryn Rossetter and Ms. Shelley Wyant.