From New York’s Shakespeare in the Park to Balboa Park, Old Globe Artistic Director
Barry Edelstein makes his debut on the Globe’s outdoor stage with one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.
Despite the prejudices in Venice, the brilliant general Othello excels both on the battlefield and in the halls of state.
But when he marries Desdemona, his envious lieutenant Iago sets in motion a diabolical plan to destroy him.
With a superb cast led by Blair Underwood (“L.A. Law”),
Richard Thomas (“The Waltons,” “The Americans”), and Kristen Connolly (“House of Cards”),
Edelstein gives us a riveting, intense, and intimate production
where poetry soars and swords clash, where true love and wrenching jealousy collide.
________________________________________________________
MULTI-AWARD-WINNING ACTOR BLAIR UNDERWOOD
MAKES HIS OLD GLOBE DEBUT IN THE TITLE ROLE OF OTHELLO,
JOINING RICHARD THOMAS AND KRISTEN CONNOLLY
OTHELLO KICKS OFF 2014 SUMMER SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
PERFORMANCES RUN JUNE 22 – JULY 27,
WITH OPENING NIGHT ON SATURDAY, JUNE 28 AT 8:00 P.M.
SAN DIEGO (April 9, 2014)—The Old Globe today announced that two-time Golden Globe Award nominee Blair Underwood—who most recently made his acclaimed Broadway debut in the iconic role of Stanley in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire and garnered rave reviews opposite Cicely Tyson in Lifetime’s The Trip to Bountiful—will make his Globe debut in the title role of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Othello, the first show of the Globe’s 2014 Summer Shakespeare Festival. Underwood’s films include Something New, Deep Impact, Gattaca, and Rules of Engagement, and his television credits include “Ironside,” “In Treatment,” “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” and “Sex and the City.” Joining him and also making their Globe debuts are the previously announced Emmy Award winner Richard Thomas (“The Americans,” “The Waltons”) as Iago and Kristen Connolly (“House of Cards,” The Cabin in the Woods) as Desdemona.
From New York’s Shakespeare in the Park to Balboa Park, Artistic Director Barry Edelstein makes his outdoor directorial debut in The Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre with one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. Despite the prejudices in Venice, the brilliant general Othello excels both on the battlefield and in the halls of state. But when he marries Desdemona, his envious lieutenant Iago sets in motion a diabolical plan to destroy him. Edelstein gives us a riveting, intense, and intimate production where poetry soars and swords clash, where true love and wrenching jealousy collide.
Performances run June 22 ? July 27, with Opening Night on Saturday, June 28 at 8:00 p.m. Tickets to the Globe’s 2014 Summer Season are currently available by subscription only, and prices range from $92 to $332. Subscription packages may be purchased online at www.TheOldGlobe.org, by phone at (619) 23-GLOBE, or by visiting the box office.
No stranger to the Bard, Underwood starred in Measure for Measure with Lisa Gay Hamilton and Kevin Kline for the 1993 summer season at the New York Shakespeare Festival (aka Shakespeare in the Park). Richard Thomas and Kristen Connolly continue collaborations with Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein that began in New York: Thomas starred in Edelstein’s critically acclaimed production of Timon of Athens at The Public Theater in 2011, and Connolly in three Shakespeare plays that Edelstein helped produce at The Public.
“I’m honored and excited to welcome the great Blair Underwood to the Old Globe family,” said Edelstein. “He is a distinguished stage actor whose intensity and charisma will give us a majestic and magnetic Othello. That he joins a company already boasting the luminaries Richard Thomas and Kristen Connolly is truly for me an embarrassment of riches.”
Blair Underwood (Othello) is an award-winning actor/writer/director/producer. Underwood has received two Golden Globe Award nominations, 10 NAACP Image Award nominations (six wins), and was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for former Vice President Al Gore’s album An Inconvenient Truth. His theatre credits include the recent Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, which garnered him a 2012 Drama League Distinguished Performance Award nomination; his one-man show IM4: From the Mountaintop to Hip Hop, Purlie, New York Shakespeare Festival’s Measure for Measure, The Game of Love and Chance, and Love Letters. His television credits include “Ironside,” The Trip to Bountiful with Cicely Tyson, “The Event,” “In Treatment,” “Dirty Sexy Money,” “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” “Sex and the City,” Mama Flora’s Family, Murder in Mississippi, Soul of the Game, “City of Angels,” The Wishing Tree, Heat Wave, and “L.A. Law.” His film credits include The Art of Getting By, Madea’s Family Reunion, Something New, Full Frontal, Rules of Engagement, Deep Impact, Just Cause, Posse, Set It Off, The Second Coming (director, executive producer, writer, and star), and The Bridge to Nowhere (directorial debut). He is the co-founder of Artists for a New South Africa (ANSA). In 2009, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation opened the Blair Underwood Clinic, a full-service, state-of-the art HIV/AIDS treatment clinic in Washington, D.C. The clinic was named after him due to his longtime charity advocacy.
Richard Thomas (Iago) starred in the award-winning series “The Waltons,” for which he won an Emmy Award for Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He has continued to star in series, films, plays, and over 50 movies for television. His theatre career began at age seven with the 1958 Broadway production of Sunrise at Campobello and continued with such shows as Fifth of July, The Seagull, The Front Page, Tiny Alice, Peer Gynt, Richard II, Richard III, Hamlet, and The Stendhal Syndrome. His other stage credits include Broadway’s Democracy and A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, the national tour of the Broadway revival of 12 Angry Men, and Unusual Acts of Devotion by Terrence McNally. His recent projects include the Broadway production of David Mamet’s Race; the title role in The Public Theater’s Timon of Athens; Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays for the Minetta Lane Theatre; and the world premiere of Camp David at Arena Stage. He last appeared on Broadway in the Manhattan Theatre Club revival of An Enemy of the People. Thomas can currently be seen on the hit FX series “The Americans.” He also had starring roles on series such as “Just Cause,” “It’s a Miracle,” and “The Adventures of Swiss Family Robinson.” His television films include the Stephen King miniseries Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Stephen King’s It, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Silence, The Red Badge of Courage, The Master of Ballantrae, Johnny Belinda, Berlin Tunnel 21, Living Proof: The Hank Williams, Jr. Story, Hobson’s Choice, Roots: The Next Generations, Go Toward the Light, In the Name of the People, The Christmas Secret, The Miracle of the Cards, Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anna’s Dream, Annie’s Point, Wild Hearts, and most recently Hallmark Channel’s film Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. As a producer, Thomas has worked on such television projects as What Love Sees and For All Time. Thomas has appeared in such movies as The Wonder Boys, Battle Beyond the Stars, The Todd Killings, Last Summer, Winning, Red Sky at Morning, Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, and the forthcoming Anesthesia.
Kristen Connolly (Desdemona) recently completed shooting the NBC pilot “Tin Man,” written by Ehren Krueger and directed by D.J. Caruso. She also recently completed work on the History Channel miniseries Houdini opposite Adrien Brody. She is best known for playing the role of Christina Gallagher on the acclaimed Netflix series “House of Cards.” She was most recently seen on film in Lionsgate/MGM’s The Cabin in the Woods. Connolly’s other film credits include The Bay, The Happening, and Revolutionary Road. She has appeared Off Broadway in King Lear and the 2011 Shakespeare in the Park productions of All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure.
The creative team includes Wilson Chin (Scenic Design), Katherine Roth (Costume Design), Stephen Strawbridge (Lighting Design), Sten Severson (Sound Design), Curtis Moore (Original Music), Jan Gist (Vocal and Dialect Coach), Tara Rubin Casting (Casting), and Leila Knox (Stage Manager).
Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein (Director) is a stage director, producer, author, and educator. Widely recognized as one of the leading authorities on the works of Shakespeare in the United States, he has directed nearly half of the Bard’s works. He recently made his Globe directorial debut with Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale starring Billy Campbell, the first Shakespeare to be staged in our indoor theatre in over a decade. As Director of the Shakespeare Initiative at The Public Theater (2008-2012), he oversaw all of the company’s Shakespearean productions, as well as its extensive educational, community outreach, and artist-training programs. At The Public, Edelstein staged Julius Caesar starring Jeffrey Wright for Shakespeare in the Park and The Merchant of Venice featuring Ron Leibman’s Obie Award-winning portrayal of Shylock. He was also Associate Producer of The Public’s Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino. From 1998-2003 he was Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company, where he produced and directed some of New York’s most memorable classical productions. Edelstein’s Shakespearean directorial credits include The Winter’s Tale with David Strathairn, Timon of Athens with Richard Thomas, As You Like It with Gwyneth Paltrow, and Richard III with John Turturro. His additional credits include the Lucille Lortel Award-winning revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons; the world premiere of Steve Martin’s The Underpants, which he commissioned; Molière’s The Misanthrope starring Uma Thurman in her stage debut; and the world premiere of novelist Nathan Englander’s play The Twenty-Seventh Man. Edelstein has taught Shakespearean acting at The Juilliard School, NYU’s Graduate Acting Program, and the University of Southern California. His book Thinking Shakespeare (called by New York magazine “a must-read for actors”) was published in 2007 and is now the standard text on American Shakespearean acting. He is also the author of Bardisms: Shakespeare for All Occasions.
SEASON SUBSCRIPTIONS offer substantial savings with special subscriber benefits. Subscriptions can be purchased online at www.TheOldGlobe.org, by phone at (619) 23-GLOBE [234-5623], or by visiting the box office at 1363 Old Globe Way in Balboa Park. Subscriptions to the Globe’s 2014 Summer Season range from $92 to $332. Discounts are available for full-time students, patrons 29 years of age and younger, seniors, and groups of 10 or more.
Presented in the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, the Old Globe 2014 Shakespeare Festival includes Shakespeare’s comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona, directed by Globe alumnus and Tony Award nominee Mark Lamos (Compleat Female Stage Beauty, Pentecost, Resurrection Blues). The Summer Season will also feature Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Tony Award-winning musical Into the Woods, which made its World Premiere at The Old Globe in 1986, in an inventive reimagining by Fiasco Theater, directed by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld, in a production that originated at McCarter Theatre Center. Rounding out the season is Ronald Harwood’s comedy Quartet, directed by Richard Seer. Into the Woods will run on the Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage in the Old Globe Theatre and Quartet in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, both part of the Globe’s Conrad Prebys Theatre Center. Tickets to the Globe’s 2014 Summer Season are currently available by subscription only, and prices range from $92 to $332. Subscription packages may be purchased online at www.TheOldGlobe.org, by phone at (619) 23-GLOBE, or by visiting the box office.
LOCATION: The Old Globe is located in San Diego’s Balboa Park at 1363 Old Globe Way. There are numerous free parking lots available throughout the park. Valet parking is also available during performances ($10). For additional parking information visit www.BalboaPark.org.
A REMINDER: Balboa Park’s 100-year-old Cabrillo Bridge, which provides access to Laurel Street and the west side of the Park, will be closed to automobiles and vehicular traffic through June during Caltrans’s seismic retrofitting process. The bridge will remain accessible to pedestrians and bicycles, so patrons could arrive a bit earlier and enjoy the short walk across the iconic bridge towards Plaza de Panama and the historic views of the California Tower and Dome. To access The Old Globe during this repair period, vehicle traffic should enter Balboa Park from the east via Park Boulevard and President’s Way. The Organ Pavilion and the Hall of Champions lots all offer ample parking, and a lovely short walk through the Park. Due to improvements under way, the parking lot adjacent to the Alcazar Garden will be temporarily closed through mid-May to increase the number of spots available to disabled users of the Park. During this time, the City of San Diego will extend the hours of the beautiful new Balboa Park trams until after Old Globe performances have concluded; running until 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and until 11:00 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Audience members wishing to take the trams to and from the Globe should park near the pick-up location at Inspiration Point (east of Park Boulevard at President’s Way), where they depart every 10-15 minutes and deliver guests to the heart of Balboa Park at the Plaza de Panama. The trams do not have stops at the Organ Pavilion or Hall of Champions lots. Guests may also be dropped off in front of the Mingei International Museum. The Balboa Park valet is located in front of the Japanese Friendship Garden. For directions and up-to-date information, please visit www.TheOldGlobe.org/Directions.
CALENDAR: Time and the Conways (3/29-5/4), Water by the Spoonful (4/12-5/11), What You Will (4/28), Thinking Shakespeare Live! (5/3), Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (5/17-6/22), Dog and Pony (5/28-6/29), A Distant Country Called Youth (6/9), Othello (6/22-7/27), Into the Woods (7/12-8/10), Quartet (7/25-8/24), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (8/10-9/14).
PHOTO EDITORS: Digital images of The Old Globe’s productions are available at www.TheOldGlobe.org/pressroom.
The Tony Award-winning Old Globe is one of the country’s leading professional regional theatres and has stood as San Diego’s flagship arts institution for over 75 years. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Barry Edelstein and Managing Director Michael G. Murphy, The Old Globe produces a year-round season of 14 productions of classic, contemporary, and new works on its three Balboa Park stages: the Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage in the 600-seat Old Globe Theatre and the 250-seat Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, both part of The Old Globe’s Conrad Prebys Theatre Center, and the 605-seat outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, home of its internationally renowned Shakespeare Festival. More than 250,000 people attend Globe productions annually and participate in the theatre’s education and community programs. Numerous world premieres such as A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, A Catered Affair, and the annual holiday musical Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! have been developed at The Old Globe and have gone on to enjoy highly successful runs on Broadway and at regional theatres across the country.
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FACTSHEET
OTHELLO
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Barry Edelstein
RUNS: June 22 ? July 27, 2014
Lowell Davies Festival Theatre
Old Globe Theatre
TICKETS: Ticket prices start at $29.
SYNOPSIS: Despite the prejudices in Venice, the brilliant general Othello excels both on the battlefield and in the halls of state. But when he marries Desdemona, his envious lieutenant Iago sets in motion a diabolical plan to destroy him. Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein gives us a riveting, intense, and intimate production where poetry soars and swords clash, where true love and wrenching jealousy collide.
CREATIVE TEAM: William Shakespeare (Playwright), Barry Edelstein (Director), Wilson Chin (Scenic Design), Katherine Roth (Costume Design), Stephen Strawbridge (Lighting Design), Sten Severson (Sound Design), Curtis Moore (Original Music), Tara Rubin Casting (Casting), and Leila Knox (Stage Manager).
CAST: Blair Underwood (Othello), Richard Thomas (Iago), Kristen Connolly (Desdemona).
PREVIEWS:
6/22 SUN 8pm
6/24 TUE 8pm
6/25 WED 8pm
6/26 THU 8pm
6/27 FRI 8pm
OPENING NIGHT: 6/28 SAT 8pm
REGULAR PERFORMANCES:
6/29 SUN 8pm
7/1 TUE 8pm
7/2 WED 8pm
7/3 THU 8pm
7/5 SAT 8pm
7/6 SUN 8pm
7/7 MON 8pm
7/8 TUE 8pm
7/9 WED 8pm
7/10 THU 8pm
7/11 FRI 8pm
7/12 SAT 8pm
7/13 SUN 8pm
7/15 TUE 8pm
7/16 WED 8pm
7/17 THU 8pm
7/18 FRI 8pm
7/19 SAT 8pm
7/21 MON 8pm
7/22 TUE 8pm
7/23 WED 8pm
7/24 THU 8pm
7/25 FRI 8pm
7/27 SUN 8pm
INSIGHTS SEMINAR
tbd at 7:00 p.m.
Seminar series features a panel of artists from the current show. Reception at 6:30 p.m. FREE
POST-SHOW FORUMS
Tuesdays, tbd and Wednesday, tbd
Discuss the play with members of the cast following the performance. FREE
SUBJECT MATTERS
tbd
Explore the ideas and issues raised by the production through brief, illuminating post-show discussions with local experts, such as scientists, artists, historians and scholars. FREE
BOX OFFICE WINDOW HOURS: Noon to final curtain Tuesday through Sunday. American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and VISA accepted. (619) 23-GLOBE [234-5623].
LOCATION: The Old Globe is located in San Diego’s Balboa Park at 1363 Old Globe Way. Free parking is available throughout the park. Valet parking is also available ($10).
To download high-res advance cast photos and production photos, please go to: http://theoldglobe.org/pressroom/index.aspx
Mail P.O. Box 122171 • San Diego, CA 92112-2171
Delivery 5335 Market Street • San Diego, CA 92114-2212
NOW PLAYING
Time and the Conways│March 29 ? May 4
Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage
Old Globe Theatre
Conrad Prebys Theatre Center
NEXT UP
Water by the Spoonful│April 12 ? May 11
Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre
Conrad Prebys Theatre Center
COMING SOON
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike│May 17 ? June 22
Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage
Old Globe Theatre
Conrad Prebys Theatre Center
