Written and directed by John Strasberg
Beginning November 17; Opening November 20, 2011
At The Living Theatre
New York: Accidental Repertory Theater (John Strasberg, Founder/Artistic Director) will present the Good Morning America Johnny Johnson Dream Show written and directed by John Strasberg. It will begin performances on November 17 and open on November 20and run through December 18, 2011 at The Living Theatre (21 Clinton). Tickets are $25 and can be purchased by visitingwww.SmartTix.com or calling 212 868 4444.
It’s November 1st, the Day of the Dead, on the Good Morning America Johnny Johnson, morning news show starring, none other than Johnny Johnson. On today’s show Johnny will be interviewing a local medium. During the interview, a few uninvited “guests†from the past begin to appear spontaneously. These “guests†include Plato, Mark Twain, Hamlet, Mary, mother of God, Abraham, Bonnie and Clyde, Adolf Hitler and Margaret Sanger and begin to discuss their views on our current events. Presented in a savagely comic way, the show blurs the line between dream and reality.
ACCIDENTAL REPERTORY THEATER was founded in 2005 by Artistic Director John Strasberg as a practical expression of the Organic Creative Process, which he discovered. We were incorporated as a New York State not-for-profit corporation in 2006, and are a 501c3 tax exempt and registered New York State charitable organization. Our weekly professional workshop is a key component of our life as a company, providing an opportunity for each participant to work on his or her creative process, but also helping to establish a common vocabulary and way of working. A major achievement of our first years of existence is the “World of Writers” (WOW) program, whose first segment was devoted to the life and works of Tennessee Williams. Featuring participants from our professional workshop, this 45 minute presentation has been presented to junior high school and high school students, and elsewhere in NYC, and was a featured seminar in our inaugural season in the fall of 2008. Since 2008, our play development program has identified promising new works and provided readings by company participants and others, possibly leading to further developmental productions. In the summer of 2009 we offered a five-week program for 7-10 actors, featuring training in audition technique, preparation, organic script analysis, movement, voice, and scene technique. ART’s productions are dedicated to our philosophy of doing theater that is entertaining and provocative, with actors whose creative process is deeply personal and truthful, in the tradition of the best American theater and acting.
JOHN STRASBERG’s (writer/director) International career as actor, director, producer, designer, and writer, exemplifies and continues the artistic tradition of the Strasberg family. His revolutionary insights and discoveries in teaching, the Organic Creative Process, have gone beyond the systems and methods of the great teachers preceding him. All this marks him as a Renaissance man, and one of the foremost theater artists of his generation. He returned to New York, after directing and teaching in Europe for twelve years, opening John Strasberg Studios, an International Center for Creative Development and Theater Arts Research in 1996, in conjunction with the publication of his first book, Accidentally On Purpose: Reflections on Life, Acting and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity. It is a deeply personal memoir that recounts the evolution and discovery of the Organic Creative Process. A documentary, also titled, Accidentally On Purpose, won Best Education Documentary at the Los Angeles International Independent Film Festival in 2000, as well as winning several Honorable Mentions awards in other festivals. He has conceived, designed, and directed major, award-winning productions of Pirandello, Ibsen, O’Neill, Lope de Vega, and Beckett, among others. In Europe since 1983, most recently productions of Shakespeare’s, Richard III, Aristophanes, The Assemblywomen, in Spain, the latter as a musical play for the Festival de Merida, and Cyrano de Bergerac. In 2005 he founded the Accidental Repertory Theater (ART). In New York, in the mid-1980’s he cofounded the Mirror Repertory Company directed, Paradise Lost by Clifford Odets, Inheritors by Susan Glaspell, Rain, Vivat! Vivat! Regina!, and Ghosts by Ibsen, working with artists like Geraldine Page, whom he met at the Actors’ Studio, where he worked alongside her, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Al Pacino, Marilyn Monroe, Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Harvey Keitel, Elia Kazan, and many others, now famous, actors and directors. He also co-directed Alice in Wonderland on Broadway with Eva LeGallienne. He had schools in New York and Paris, in the 1980’s. Aside from John Strasberg Studios, and ART, he teaches, directs, and lectures in many countries, at the National Theater in London, the Centro Dramatico in Madrid, Spain, the National Theater in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the National Film Board in Canada, and in Italy, Germany, Norway, England, Peru, and several Universities in the United States like Yale, NYU, and The New School. He has developed productions using the actors trained at JSS, in Anna Weiss, a stage reading of La Ronde, and an evening of scenes from Chekhov, Astrov’s Nightmare. Many of the actors belonging to the ART workshop have studied with him, either in his private classes, or in ART’s workshop. Currently, he is developing productions for ART in NY, and has written several plays, Playing House, and Adams’ Apples, inspired by the plays of Ibsen and Chekhov, respectively, as well as a musical play, The Shooting Party, adapted by him from the only full-length novel written by Anton Chekhov. He also wrote the lyrics. In the fall of 2011, ART will produce his new play, The Good Morning American, Johnny Johnson Dream Show.
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