BY NICOLE CAVAZOS
UCLA Today
From the ancient to the
modern, the local to the global and the underground to the world-renowned,
UCLA Live’s 2003-2004 season presents events in every
shape and size. In his third season as director of the West
Coast’s major presenter and producer of performing arts,
David Sefton has achieved a delicate balance between street
spirit and concert hall refinement.
“When we announced the season last year,
the most common and flattering response was that the year was
so good we would never be able to improve upon it,” said
Sefton. “I am therefore thrilled and delighted to be able
to prove everyone wrong with the announcement of the 2003-04
season. Once again, a highlight is the second annual International
Theatre Festival — and once again UCLA Live will present
the most exciting and extraordinary theater in the world over
the course of the fall. And this time, the range will stretch
from Shakespeare’s Globe to work that is shattering the
boundaries of conventional theater and performance.”
Featuring six events beginning in October and
concluding in December, the International Theatre Festival’s
offerings range from intimate solo performances to large-scale
productions, including Shake-speare’s Globe Theatre, which
will kick off its first U.S. tour with an “original practices”
production of “Twelfth Night.” Direct from a sold-out
run in London, the production features Elizabethan costumes,
props and music true to Shakespeare’s time; it was described
by The New York Times as a version “gleaming like a newly
restored painting by an old master.”
In a chilling commentary on the harmful lessons
that are unwittingly passed on to subsequent generations, Belgium’s
leading director and writer Josse De Pauw exposes the hedonistic
world of grown-ups in “üBUNG.” In this explosive
and controversial work, six children, ages 10-15, take to the
stage to mimic the words and actions of adults at a dinner party,
depicted in a silent black-and-white film overhead, as they
booze, lie, fight and break down.
The International Theatre Festival concludes
with the exclusive U.S. premier engagement of one of the most
revolutionary theater establishments of the past century, Berlin’s
Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, performing Dosto-evsky’s
“The Insulted and Injured,” adapted and directed
by renegade German director Frank Castorf. The work features
German actor Martin Wuttke, who dazzled audiences when he starred
in the Berliner Ensemble’s production of Brecht’s
“The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” at UCLA in 1999.
Bursting with innovations across disciplines,
the season also features Hal Willner as UCLA Live’s Artist
in Residence; a once-in-a-lifetime intimate solo performance
by Mikhail Baryshnikov; violin superstar Itzhak Perlman; the
U.S. debut of Britain’s Ballet Boyz presenting classical
dance for the MTV generation; Montreal’s revved-up La
La La Human Steps in the U.S. premiere of “Amelia”;
ghoulish cabaret cult favorites The Tiger Lillies and the formidable
Kronos Quartet premiering 13 new songs inspired by the unpublished
writings of American illustrator Edward Gorey; knife-edged satirist
Sandra Bernhard; Grammy-winning tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker
and trumpeter Roy Hargrove; the hypnotic Drummers of West Africa;
and the infectious horn-driven rhythms of Cuban big band ¡Cubanismo!.
Also on stage will be the Blind Boys of Alabama
in a soul-lifting holiday concert; master storyteller Salman
Rushdie; filmmaker and political rabble-rouser Michael Moore;
Jamaican-born bass-baritone Willard White in a Paul Robeson
tribute; diva Dawn Upshaw with the Australian Chamber Orchestra;
and the Takács Quartet in a revelatory series of concerts
performing the complete Beethoven Cycle, for which they won
the 2003 Grammy Award.
For ticket information or free brochure, call
the Central Ticket Office at (310) 825-2101. Or visit www.UCLALive.org.
