Due to Popular Demand The Smith Center Adds Additional Week of Performances for William Shakespeare’s
‘THE TEMPEST’
Produced by American Repertory Theater
Adapted and Directed by Aaron Posner and Teller
Magic by Teller / Music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
Movement by Pilobolus
The Smith Center for the Performing Arts has added an additional week of performances for the world premiere of a reimagined version of “THE TEMPEST” due to popular ticket demand, which will now play April 6–20. The Smith Center’s first ever co-production, “THE TEMPEST” is produced by the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), adapted and directed by Aaron Posner and Teller from the play by William Shakespeare, with magic by Teller, music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan and movement by Matt Kent of Pilobolus. “THE TEMPEST” performances will take place at The Smith Center’s Donald W. Reynolds Symphony Park in a 500-seat climate-controlled tent, where no seat is more than 60 feet from the stage. Performances are scheduled Tuesday-Sunday at 8 p.m. with additional matinees at 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets for all performances begin at $35 and are on sale now at The Smith Center box office, online at www.TheSmithCenter.com or by phone at (702) 749-2000.
“We are thrilled at the community’s response to “THE TEMPEST,” our very first co-production at The Smith Center with A.R.T.,” says Myron Martin, president and CEO of The Smith Center. “We are adding an additional week of performances to meet demand and allow more guests to experience the world premiere of this incredible staging of the classic William Shakespeare play with an inventive, magical twist.”
Experience Prospero’s wizardry in this thrilling new production of “THE TEMPEST” featuring magic by illusionist Teller (of the legendary duo Penn & Teller). When shipwrecked aristocrats wash up on the shores of Prospero’s strange island, they find themselves immersed in a world of trickery and amazement, where music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan and Pilobolus’ athletic movement animate the spirits and monsters. But the revels come to an end when the master magician realizes he has neglected his life in service of his art, and must now relinquish his conjuring in order to reclaim his life and provide for the future of his only child.
“The Tempest” at The Smith Center will serve as the production’s world premiere. Following the world premiere in Las Vegas, the show will move to Cambridge, MA to begin performances at A.R.T. and then Washington D.C. and New York City.
A perfect opportunity to continue their commitment to the Las Vegas community, Land Rover Las Vegas is the official sponsor of the Las Vegas run of “The Tempest.” As part of its role, Land Rover Las Vegas will have a hospitality tent complete with refreshments for sale pre-show as well as rare vintage vehicles on display.
About the Creative Team:
Director and adaptor Aaron Posner is a Helen Hayes and Barrymore Award-winning playwright and director. His adaptations include “Macbeth” (with Teller, from Shakespeare), “Stupid Fucking Bird” (adapted from Chekhov’s “The Seagull”), “Who Am I This Time? (& Other Conundrums of Love)” adapted from Kurt Vonnegut short stories, “The Chosen” and “My Name is Asher Lev” (adapted from the Chaim Potok novels), “Sometimes a Great Notion” (adapted from Ken Kesey), a nine-actor “Cyrano,” and musical adaptation of Mark Twain’s “A Murder, A Mystery & A Marriage,” and many more. Posner is a founder and former artistic director of Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre and has directed at major regional theaters from coast to coast. He is an artistic associate at Milwaukee Rep and the Folger Theatre in Washington, DC (where his recent production of “Romeo and Juliet” received rave reviews).
Director and adaptor Teller has been the smaller, quieter half of Penn & Teller since 1975. With Penn Jillette, he has played off and on Broadway, toured in North America and Britain, and is currently the longest-running headline act in Las Vegas. Penn & Teller have written and starred in television series and specials, including eight seasons of the Emmy-nominated Showtime series “Penn & Teller: Bullshit!;” “Penn & Teller Tell a Lie” on Discovery; “Penn & Teller’s Sin City Spectacular” on FX; “Behind the Scenes,” a PBS children’s series on the arts; “The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller,” a magic and comedy series on England’s Channel 4; and the recent ITV variety series, “Penn & Teller: Fool Us.” Teller has written for The Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, GQ, The New Yorker; as well as three books with Penn Jillette and two on his own. He is also a frequent contributor to “All Things Considered” on NPR. In 2008, Teller and Aaron Posner co-directed a version of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” conceived as a supernatural horror thriller that employed stage magic to represent the play’s uncanny hallucinations and manifestations. He also co-wrote and directed the original off-Broadway and Los Angeles productions of “Play Dead” and co-directed the performance film “Tim’s Vermeer,” a feature documentary film, which will be released in theaters internationally in 2014 by Sony Picture Classics.
Founded in 1971, Pilobolus has built its fervent and ever-expanding international following by proving the human body to be the most expressive, universal, and magical of media. Pilobolus maintains its own singular style while actively collaborating with the best and brightest minds from all conceivable professions the world over. Based in Washington Depot, Connecticut and New York City, in recent years Pilobolus has transformed from avant-garde dance company into an international entertainment brand featured on the likes of “Oprah,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and the Academy Awards. The company has engaged in activities as varied as making circuses, creating television advertising, publishing books, breaking world records, teaching in schools, and producing music videos. Pilobolus has been awarded prestigious honors over the years, including the Berlin Critic’s Prize, the Scotsman Award, the Brandeis Award, a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cultural Programming, the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement in Choreography, a TED Fellowship for presenting at the TED conference in 2005, and 2012 Grammy® Award nomination for its interactive music video collaboration with OK Go and Google Chrome Japan, “All Is Not Lost” (allisnotlo.st). Pilobolus achieves all of this without ever losing sight of its core mission: to make art that builds community.
Choreographer Matt Kent is the associate artistic director of Pilobolus and has worked with the company since 1996 as a dancer, collaborator, creative director, choreographer, and associate artistic director. Past Pilobolus projects include head choreographer for Andre Heller’s “Magnifico,” a large-scale circus production; choreographer for a sports Emmy-nominated teaser created in collaboration with the NFL network; and choreographer for a television appearance on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” Kent is one of the creators of the Pilobolus’s European hit “Shadowland,” and he has performed in more than 24 countries and on Pilobolus’s appearance on the 79th Academy Awards. Outside of Pilobolus, he has worked as zombie choreographer for AMC’s hit series “The Walking Dead” and as movement consultant on the Duncan Sheik musical, “Whisper House.” He lives in Connecticut with his wife and two sons.
Tom Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor, with a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.” With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona. He has worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and has acted in supporting roles in films, including “Paradise Alley,” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and “Down by Law.” Waits was nominated for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on “One from the Heart.”
Kathleen Brennan is an American musician, songwriter, record producer and artist. Eulogized on husband Tom Waits‘ album “Swordfishtrombones” in the song titled “Johnsburg, Illinois,” which is her birthplace and where she was raised, Brennan is Waits frequent music collaborator.