FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE &
BROADCAST Press
contact: Dawn Flood publicity@westernstage.com Please see release for all appropriate public
information
The Threepenny
Opera to open at The Western Stage
The Western
Stage continues its 2007 Studio season with Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s
masterpiece The Threepenny Opera in October.
The nefarious thief and murderer Mac the Knife just got married…and his
sinister in-laws want his head. With an inventive score that was influenced by
American jazz and 1920 ’s German Cabaret, this first of its kind pop opera
become one of the most influential plays of the 20th Century. The
Threepenny Opera plays in the Studio Theater,
Hartnell College Performing Arts Center, October 19 – November 11. Performances
are Fridays and Saturdays at
September 20, 2007 -
When you think
of the term rock opera, several plays instantly come to mind: Urinetown, Bat Boy: The Musical, The Who’s Tommy
and, for those with a more avant-garde bent, Robert Wilson and Tom Waitt’s The Black Rider. However, when you look for
the first of this genre, the groundbreaking modern musical that set the stage
for the rest by blending popular music with a socially conscious story, your
literary compass will inevitably guide you back to Weimar Germany 1928 and the
premier of Bertolt Brecht
and Kurt Weill’s masterpiece The Threepenny Opera.
Filled with
colorful criminals, biting social satire, and a brilliant score that fuses
German cabaret with 1920s American jazz, The Threepenny
Opera promises to be one of the most provocative productions of The Western
Stage’s 2007 season when it opens in the Studio Theater on October 19th.
Based on John
Gay’s1728 play The Beggar’s Opera, Brecht’s
script re-tells the story of Macheath, a notorious
thief, pimp and murderer more commonly known as Mac the Knife among his
criminal cohorts. When Mac marries Polly, the daughter of Jonathan Peachum (The King of the Beggars), in a dubiously legal
wedding ceremony, Peachum and his wife set out to
destroy their nefarious son-in-law. The problem? Mac is good friends and
financial partners with Tiger Brown, the Chief of Police, who is protecting
him. Yet, when Peachum threatens to ruin Queen
Victoria’s Coronation by having his army of beggars line the streets during the
ceremony, Brown has no choice but to imprison Mac, where he is certain to meet
a bloody end.
When The Threepenny Opera premiered, it became an international
sensation, enjoying hundreds of productions across Europe in the years that
followed, establishing Brecht as one of the leading
playwrights, directors, and theatre theoreticians of his time. This change in
fortunes for Brecht, however, was by no means
guaranteed. Most of the cast of the original production of The Threepenny Opera were so certain the play would be a
complete disaster that many had begun searching for other gigs before opening
night. (See supplemental article for more.)
After the
success of The Threepenny Opera, Brecht possessed the credentials to experiment and document
his ideas about Epic Theatre. At its core, this form of stagecraft strives to
encourage the audience to view the play objectively, not becoming emotionally
involved with the plight of the characters, but rather assessing and analyzing
the situation of the characters like one might do at a sporting event. Instead
of creating a play in which his audience leaned into the action and became
emotionally invested in the success or failure of a protagonist, Brecht wanted his audiences to lean back and watch the play
from a detached perspective as if viewing it through a cloud of cigar smoke. To
accomplish this, he utilized a number of tools to create what he called the
“Alienation Effect.” These tools included having characters break the fourth
wall and speak directly to the audience, using placards to indicate the title
of scenes and locations, re-telling known stories like John Gay’s The
Beggar’s Opera with a contemporary perspective, and incorporating a
stylized music that commented on the action of the play rather than trying to
provoke an emotional reaction in the audience. Many of these elements were
major components of the stagecraft of The Threepenny
Opera.
The Threepenny
Opera is directed by TWS artistic director Jon Patrick Selover
(Bat Boy: The Musical (2005), Big River: The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (2006).
The Threepenny Opera plays in the Studio Theater, Hartnell College Performing Arts
Center, October 19 – November 11. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8
pm and Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets can be purchased online at westernstage.com or
by calling the Ticket Office at (831) 375-2111. Tickets are $30 adults and $20Jr./Sr./Mil.
Also do not
miss the final show of The Western Stage’s 2007 Mainstage
season, Rodger and Hammerstein’s powerful World War II love story South
Pacific, opening November 10.
Dan Tarker
Literary
Associate