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SUPPORTING THE TROUPES INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL BRINGS A COALITION OF THE WILLING TO UCLA.


Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer

Participants in the third annual UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles
UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University)
UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX
 International Theatre Festival come to the Westwood campus from across the globe, across the nation and, in certain cases, from across a couple of freeways.

For the second consecutive season, a much-admired British theater company brings a Shakespeare production to the Freud Playhouse (this year, however, there will be female performers). Also on tap: Nicaragua's first independent theater company, a hip-hopping griot griot

African tribal storyteller. The griot's role was to preserve the genealogies and oral traditions of the tribe. Griots were usually among the oldest men. In places where written language is the prerogative of the few, the place of the griot as cultural guardian is still
 who goes by the name Will Power and a work by the controversial playwright Sarah Kane Sarah Kane (February 3, 1971 – February 20, 1999) was an English playwright.

Her plays deal with themes of redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture — both psychological and physical — and death.
 performed by Britain's Royal Court Theatre.

In addition, Mikhail Baryshnikov Noun 1. Mikhail Baryshnikov - Russian dancer and choreographer who migrated to the United States (born in 1948)
Baryshnikov
 will perform, but won't dance (don't ask him!) in a performance directed by Russian puppeteer/director Rezo Gabriadze. And at least one performance comes with a warning label cautioning those with pacemakers to pick other entertainment. Despite its use of high-voltage electricity, the L.A.-based performance art duo osseus labyrint osseus labyrint is an experimental arts entity which has been working in multiple disciplines and forms of media since 1989.

The group describes its work as "a manifestation of accumulated data from billions of years of evolving and recombining of matter and energy.
 - performing off campus at the New Deal Studios in Marina del Rey Del Rey may refer to:
  • Del Rey, California, a census-designated place in Fresno County, California
  • Del Rey, Los Angeles, California, a small district in the west side of Los Angeles
  • Del Rey (band), an indie rock band
 in November - isn't looking to give a new literal meaning to the term ``heart-stopping entertainment.''

``It's been kind of an ongoing thread of 'who do we work with locally,' '' says UCLA Live Director David Sefton. ``There are plenty of companies that have their own space and don't need me. So what do we do that is different to bring something new to the mix that also works in the festival?''

First up and opening Thursday at the Freud Playhouse is England's Cheek by Jowl presenting the Bard's ``Othello,'' a production that has toured internationally and just completed a run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Brooklyn Academy of Music, performing arts center located in the borough of Brooklyn, N.Y. and popularly known as BAM. Founded in 1859 and opened in 1861, it is the oldest such institution still in operation in the United States. . Directed by Declan Donnellan Declan Donnellan (born 1953) is a British theatre director and writer. He is joint founder of Cheek by Jowl theatre company.

In 1992 he was awarded an Honorary Degree by the University of Warwick and in 2004 he was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
, associate director at the Royal National Theatre, ``Othello'' features Caroline Martin, Jonny Phillips and Nonso Anozie in the title role.

The real star wattage wattage

the output or consumption of an electric device expressed in watts.
 of ``Othello,'' however, may be its director, the multiple-award-winning Donnellan, who Anozie calls ``an inspirational person, one of those kinds of people you don't meet very often.''

``On the first day of rehearsal, he said to us, 'I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed)

"Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party.
 how I'm going to direct this play,' which is unheard of Not heard of; of which there are no tidings.
Unknown to fame; obscure.
- Glanvill.

See also: Unheard Unheard
,'' says Anozie. ``What defines Cheek by Jowl is the truth in performance, the connection between characters.''

Following last year's production of the Globe Shakespeare Company's all-male ``Twelfth Night Twelfth Night, Jan. 5, the vigil or eve of Epiphany, so called because it is the 12th night from Christmas, counting Christmas as the first. In England, Twelfth Night has been a great festival marking the end of the Christmas season, and popular masquerading parties ,'' Cheek by Jowl goes for more contemporary tellings of Shakespeare's plays William Shakespeare's plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. His plays are traditionally divided into the genres of tragedy, history, and comedy. , according to according to
prep.
1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.

2. In keeping with: according to instructions.

3.
 Sefton.

``I've been aware for some time that they've never been out here, and they've kind of been on my list,'' Sefton says of Cheek by Jowl. ``After the Globe last year, there's sort of a conceptual continuity. Having done the great traditional interpreters of Shakespeare, we're now going to the great new interpreter.''

Nicaragua's El Teatro Justo Rufino Garay moves into the Freud Oct. 26 with the West Coast premiere of ``La Casa La casa (Spanish for The House) is a 1954 novel by Manuel Mujica LaĆ­nez.

It tells the story of a family living in a stately Buenos Aires mansion from the heyday of Argentina's oligarchy in the 1880s to some time in the post-1946 period, the era of Peronist populism,
 de Rigoberta Mira al Sur,'' a family drama that is meant to serve as a metaphor for life in post-Sandinista Nicaragua. ``La Casa'' is a co-presentation with the International Latino Theatre Festival of Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. . It will be performed in Spanish with English subtitles.

In November, the UCLA International Festival takes a turn toward the domestic with ``Flow,'' a one-man show conceived and performed by the San Francisco-born Will Power and directed by Danny Hoch.

The performance, in its L.A. premiere, may be American, but the subject matter has a distinctly international flavor, says Power, who is combining a collection of stories into a single evening.

``I'm starting to realize the multiethnicity of my own work,'' says Power. ``The whole piece takes place in a fantasy neighborhood. There are so many stories and ethnicities. I could look at El Salvador and Nicaragua, back to Africa, Central America. It's all based on stories.''

``The play is stunning,'' adds Sefton. ``You could keep the whole power grid of L.A. going on that performance.''

The Royal Court's production of Kane's ``4:48 Psychosis,'' directed by James Macdonald and opening Nov. 4, doesn't figure to send audiences out whistling ``Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'. ``Written shortly before the author's suicide in 1998, ``4:48 Psychosis'' is a chronicle of depression and emotional highs and lows. The Royal Court's American tour, its first, brings the original production intact.

``The Royal Court is another company I kind of grew up with,'' says Sefton, ``The company is very influential and they go back to that whole ``angry young man'' thing. Their place in the global theatrical world is well-established.''

``Modern Prometheus LLC'' by osseus labyrint is the one festival entry Sefton has never seen, and for obvious reasons: The piece is a festival commission. Sefton had seen the work by Bay Area transplants Hannah Sim and Mark Steger and was willing to commission a work based on the concept - ``a cross between 'Frankenstein' and 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.' '' Working with Bay Area installation artist Barry Schwartz (aka Dr. Pank), Sim and Steger are creating a performance-art piece around the idea of a corporate launch of a new life form.

Staged in the New Deal Studios sound stage, ``Modern Prometheus'' will come with a rather unusual warning: ``Individuals with pacemakers are not advised to attend this event.''

``We weren't really expecting to get into the theater festival, but I'm cool with that,'' says Steger. ``Whenever you get lumped into one of these classifications, it comes with a whole host of assumptions about what you can do, and that can be a problem. David has a much broader concept of what he considers theater than what most people do, and I'm with him on that.''

The festival concludes Dec. 8-12 with Rezo Gabriadze directing Baryshnikov, Jon DeVries and Luis Perez in ``Forbidden Christmas or the Doctor and the Patient'' at the Freud Playhouse.

Evan Henerson, (818) 713-3651

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

OTHELLO

Where: Freud Playhouse, UCLA, Westwood.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; through Sunday.

Tickets: $15 to $55. Call (310) 825-2101.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Will Power is from San Francisco, but his one-man show, ``Flow,'' draws on stories from all over the world.

(2) Declan Donnellan, associate director at London's Royal National Theatre, directs ``Othello,'' which opens the UCLA International Theatre Festival this week.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Daily News
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2004, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Publication:Daily News (Los Angeles, CA)
Date:Oct 13, 2004
Words:1032
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