Bach at Leipzig

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Bach at Leipzig

Organic Farce

Review: Cast ably scales Baroque 'Bach' 

Biddeford Journal Tribune

Bach at Leipzig

About the Playwright

Itamar Moses (b. 1977) is a young American playwright who, with eight successful scripts under his belt, many have claimed to be in "his moment - his time to break through to a wider audience."  Moses grew up in Berkeley, California, and earned his bachelor's degree at Yale and his MFA in dramatic writing from NYU.  Often compared to Tom Stoppard, his plays are intricately designed theatrical structures.  In Back Back Back (2008), three pro baseball players square off over the use of steroids in their sport.  In Yellowjackets (2009), students at Berkeley High School wrangle over a backdrop of race, class and progressive politics.  And at the opposite end of the spectrum, the spare, two-character play The Four of Us (2008) is an apologetic and playful meditation on envy, aspiration and memory.  Moses's other works include Celebrity Row (2005), Outrage (2001), and Authorial Intent (2004). 

In 2000, as a graduate student at NYU, Moses revisited an old idea for a play about what happened "behind the scenes" in Bach's life, and eventually developed Bach at Leipzig through workshops over the next five years at various theaters, including The Hangar Theater, Florida Stage, and finally New York Theater Workshop (NYTW).  Bach at Leipzig finally premiered at NYTW in November, 2005.  Despite a scathing review in The New York Times, Tom Stoppard's support of the young playwright helped draw enthusiastic audiences from the New York theater community and Bach at Leipzig has gone on to be a success at regional theaters across the U.S., including Shakespeare Santa Cruz and South Coast Repertory.

About the Cast

RON BOTTING (Johann Christoph Graupner) is an actor who has worked both regionally and in New York.  He was last seen in Portland Stage Company's production of Syncopation.  Special love to my family, Anita, Cecelia, and James.

TOM BUTLER (Johann Friedrich Fasch) is excited to be back in Portland for Bach at Leipzig and the springtime. In previous PSC seasons he appeared in Two Rooms and Magnetic North. In addition to acting both regionally (Bershire Theatre Festival, Philadelphia Theatre Co.) and Off-Broadway ( Ohio Theater, Epic Theatre Ensemble) Tom directs and teaches at universities around the country, including Long Island, Willamette, and New York University. Education: BFA Brown University, MFA NYU Graduate Acting, NYU directing fellowship. Thanks to Sam and Anita, my Mom n Sis, and JM.

                                                                                                                     COLBY CHAMBERS (Georg Lenck) is proud to be making his Portland Stage debut.  Off-Broadway credits include, Ewan in Bad Jazz, Calvin in Father's Day, Matt in Dog Sees God, Giovanni in ‘Tis Pity She's a Whore.   Some regional credits include, Mozart in Amadeus at The Asolo Theatre, Skeets Miller in Floyd Collins at The Berkshire Theatre Festival,  Ste in Beautiful Thing at the Human Race, Giovanni in ‘Tis Pity She's a Whore at Baltimore Centerstage.  Television/Film include Law and Order and Guiding Light: Featured roles.  Colby studied at The Oxford School of Drama in Oxford, England, The College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati and is a graduate of The Juilliard School.

DENIS G. FONTAINE (The Greatest Organist in Germany) Denis is a Gorham resident with many theater and film productions to his credit. Among his past theater roles have been Cogsworth in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Oscar in Sweet Charity, Mr. Fezziwig in A Christmas Carol - the Musical and Doc Gibbs in Our Town. Denis is a veteran of the Maine Playwrights Festival, and participates in theater and film projects for the University of Southern Maine. Denis is also a perennial judge for the Maine Principals Association One Act Drama Festival.

TOM FORD (Georg Balthasar Schott) Tom is very pleased to be returning to Portland Stage where he has appeared in The Mystery of Irma Vep, I Am My Own Wife, Billy in Iron Kisses, Kipps in The Woman in Black, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Max in Lend Me a Tenor, Mr. Manningham in Gaslight and Yvan in Art. Earlier this year as Mr. Cupp in A Christmas Carol at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Last summer, at the New London Barn Playhouse, Tom appeared as Max in The Producers, Sipos in She Loves Me and directed The Fantasticks. On Broadway in Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Weber's By Jeeves at the Helen Hayes Theater. At the Idaho Shakespeare Festival: the Baker in Into the Woods, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, the King of Navarre in Love's Labour's Lost, Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew, Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Touchstone in As You Like It, Casca in Julius Caesar, the title role in You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown and Hucklebee in The Fantasticks. For Great Lakes Theater Festival: Into the Woods, A Funny Thing Happened..., Love's Labour's Lost, Julius Caesar, as Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol, Nicola in Arms and the Man and Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Other performances: Dromio of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors at Pittsburgh Public Theater, Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream at Lincoln Center Director's Lab, Once Around the City at New York Stage and Film, Rutherford and Son at the Mint Theater, Salvador Dali in Hysteria at Florida Studio Theater, Johnny in Maurice Sendak's production of Really Rosie, and Hysterium in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at McCarter Theatre. Visit him at tomfordactor.com

DANIEL NOEL (Georg Friedrich Kaufmann) is an Affiliate Artist at Portland Stage where he co-created the Longfellow's Shorts series and is on the Artistic Advisory Committee. As an actor, he has appeared in The Human Comedy on Broadway and for Joe Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival where, among other things, he was featured in Liz Swados The Beautiful Lady on WNYC's Live From The Public.  At Portland Stage, Dan has been seen in The Drawer Boy, Arcadia, Terminal Exit, The Foreigner, Rough Crossing, A Christmas Carol, and From Away and Little Festivals since1998/1999. Regional theater and opera work includes The Brooklyn Academy of Music- Next Wave Festival, Lincoln Center, New Playwrights, The Santa Monica Playhouse, The Theatre at Monmouth, Boston's New Opera and Musical Theater Initiative, The Portland Symphony,  North Shore Music Theater, P.S. 122 and the Seattle Repertory Theater where his short play Transformations & his musical review Brush Up You Shakespeare (co-created w/J.K. Simmons & included on the Rep. Tour) were part of the Seattle Rep's Sunday at Sunday's Series. His play, Longfellow: A Life in Words, was done this year as part of the Portland Stage Studio Series where he played the title role. TV includes political commentary for "Liberty News TV", Steve Lutrell's "The Poet's Café" and ABC's "Loving". Look for him in Will Fraser's "The Artifact" on the Sci-Fi Channel and the upcoming films: "As We Were" and Thomas Higgans' "The Fun House" and this summer as the title character in the new opera, Burt Dow: Deep Water Man at the Stonington Opera House. Dan also records audio books.

DENVER REY (The Greatest Organist in Germany) Originally from Appalachia, Denver Rey is but only too tickled to be back at Portland Stage after spinning a bed in this season's A Christmas Carol, wearing a pig-nose in last season's Peer Gynt and carting off corpses in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  Trained at Acorn Studios, he credits any talent he has to having taken Mike Levine's Actor's Workshop four times.  As much a playwright as an actor, his full-length comedy Lookout, Texas, was a 2006 national semifinalist.  His short play Got Them Low-Down Dirty Cotton Pickin' Blues was a 2008 finalist in Maine and his current energy, The Tobacco Kid chronicles one youth's six year walk out of the Nuba Mountains in Sudan and onto the tarmac of a New England airport.  He is a member of the Maine Playwrights' Lab, the Dramatists Guild of America, the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and serves on the Board of HOPE Healing, Inc.

DUSTIN TUCKER (Johann Martin Steindorff) PSC: The Santaland Diaries, Fully Committed, Peer Gynt and Fred in A Christmas Carol.  Broadway: The Rainmaker (Roundabout).  Off-Broadway: Stone Cold Dead Serious (Edge Theater Co./NY Premiere); Life is a Dream (Edge Theater Co./SoHo Rep); La Dispute (Primary Stages/ACT II Productions).  Other NY: Falstaff and The Merry Widow (Dicapo Opera); Moonchildren and Pains of Youth (HERE); Woyzeck in Woyzeck (Culture Project) and The Maids (2001 NY Fringe Festival).  Regional credits: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Rainmaker (Williamstown); The Mystery of Irma Vep, Midsummer Night's Dream and Valere in La Bête (Theater at Monmouth); Around the World in 80 Days, Perfect Wedding and No Sex Please, We're British (Sierra Repertory Theater); Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew (Interlochen Shakespeare Festival).  Dustin is a member of Actor's Equity Association and very proud to be a new addition to the Affiliate Artists at Portland Stage.  www.dustintucker.com. 

 The Design Team

SAMUEL BUGGELN (Director)  is delighted to be back at PSC, where he has previously directed Indoor/Outdoor, Noises Off, Wait Until Dark, and Sleuth. New York: the new musical Bedbugs!!!, at the New York Musical Theater Festival (recipient of five NYMF jury awards, currently in development for Off-Broadway.) Also at NYMF: Plagued, with Tony nominees Brenda Braxton and Lorraine Serabian.  Off-Broadway: Rum & Vodka (O-B première) by Conor McPherson at the Ohio Theatre, where he is an Artistic Associate with Soho Think Tank.  Other Ohio Theatre: Cressida Among the Greeks (Drama Desk nom), plus The Flight of Icarus, Blue Eyes Black Hair, and The Last Days of Madalyn Murray O'Hair.  Other NYC: Go-Go Kitty, Go! (FringeNYC awards: Outstanding Play, Outstanding Sound Design) at the Lucille Lortel; plus work at New York Theatre Workshop, Atlantic, Rattlestick, Makor, HERE, Expanded Arts, Theatre for the New City. Other regional: Friend of a Friend, A Christmas Carol (Capital Rep, Albany); The Food Chain, As Bees in Honey Drown (Mason Street Warehouse, Mich.); Speech & Debate (Kitchen Theatre, Ithaca); Rites of Passage, Play by Play and Dirty Blonde (StageWorks/Hudson).  He is a Lincoln Center Directors' Lab alum, was a 2001 Artist-in-Residence with New York Theatre Workshop at Dartmouth College, and is a frequent faculty guest artist at SUNY Albany and the Stella Adler Conservatory/Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.  In addition, this is Sam's tenth season as Portland Stage's Casting Director.

WILSON CHIN (Set Designer) Portland Stage: Wait Until Dark.  New York: Next Fall (Broadway), Masked (Daryl Roth Theatre), 10 things to do before I die, Len Asleep in Vinyl and The Dear Boy (Second Stage Theatre), Dark Matters (Rattlestick Theatre), boom (Ars Nova), King of  Shadows (Working Theatre), Christine Jorgensen Reveals (New World Stages).  Opera: Lucia di Lammermoor and The Saint of Bleecker Street (Central City Opera), Don Giovanni (San Francisco Opera), Dido and Aeneas (NY Chamber Opera).  Regional: Hartford Stage, Shakespeare Theatre Company, The Old Globe, Barrington Stage, Signature Theatre, Trinity Rep, ACT, Two River Theatre, Indiana Rep, Geva Theatre, People's Light and Theatre, Dorset Theatre Festival, Weston Playhouse, Yale Rep. MFA: Yale School of Drama.  www.wilsonchin.com

KRIS HALL (Costume Designer) is very happy to be returning to Portland Stage after designing costumes here for Third last fall. Some of her previous design credits include Pump Boys and Dinettes at Maine State Music Theatre; Doubt and Almost Maine at the Public Theatre in Lewiston; Inook and the Sun (an Inuit folktale told with masks, puppets and aerial dance) and the opera Suor Angelica at USM (where she is also the Costume Director), as well as the feature length independent film Mr. Barrington.  Upcoming designs include Hansel and Gretel with Port Opera at Merrill Auditorium in July.  Her work as a multimedia artist is featured in Add Verb Production's new play Major Medical Breakthrough which has been viewed by audiences of medical professionals across the country.  Kris received her BA in Political Science from USM and her MFA in Studio Art from MECA.  She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2006 on a full scholarship.

PHILLIP S. ROSENBERG (Lighting Designer) The Lisbon Traviata (The Kennedy Center); The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, Edward II, Amadeus and Cymbeline (Chicago Shakespeare); Knickerbocker (Williamstown Theatre Festival); She Loves Me (Huntington Theatre); Shanghai Moon, The Lady in Question (Bay Street Theatre); and Bury the Dead (Illinois State University). Philip has spent much of the last 10 years as an associate lighting designer on Broadway, where his credits include: A Steady Rain, 9 to 5, Shrek, November, The Pirate Queen, The Caine Mutiny Court-Marshall, The Odd Couple, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Spamalot, Bombay Dreams, The Graduate, Man of La Mancha, Hairspray, The Crucible, 42nd Street, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Music Man, The Civil War, On the Town, and Triumph of Love.

GREGG CARVILLE (Sound Designer) is a free-lance lighting and sound designer who has worked in the Portland area since the early 90's. He has worked for Portland Stage Company for a number of seasons in both administrative and design roles. Gregg is currently the Technical Director for Merrill Auditorium.  Gregg received an MFA in Lighting Design from NYU-Tisch School of the Arts in 2002. Currently Gregg is the technical director for Merrill Auditorium and the City of Portland. He continues to free-lance as a designer as well as provide consulting on various theatrical projects. Gregg has designed lighting for the Portland Stage productions of I Am My Own Wife, Noises Off, Augusta, Indoor/Outdoor, and Wait Until Dark, Third and designed sound for Rough Crossing, Syncopation, The Piano Lesson and The Mystery of Irma Vep.

SALLY WOOD (Fight Choreographer) is an actor, fight choreographer, teaching artist and director.  Sally has worked regionally and abroad. At Portland Stage Sally has been seen as Portia in Julius Caesar, Claire in Augusta, Solveig in Peer Gynt and in the Studio Series in Daniel Noel's world premier of Longfellow: A Life In Words. Other favorite roles include Rosalind in As You Like It, the Landlady in Two and Eurydice in Metamorphosis.  

MYLES C. HATCH (Stage Manager) is currently enjoying his 10^th season stage-managing with Portland Stage. During the past eighteen years, Myles has worked in stage management with such diversified theatres as Maine State Music Theatre (ME), The Theater at Monmouth (ME), Arden Theatre Company (PA), Baltimore Shakespeare Festival (MD), Everyman Theatre (MD), Rep Stage (MD), Horse Cave Theatre (KY), New Stage Theatre (MS), Round House Theatre (MD), Source Theatre Company (D.C.), Washington Stage Guild (D.C.), Washington Jewish Theatre (D.C.), Asolo Theatre Company (FL), Westport Country Playhouse (CT), and the YALE Summer Cabaret (CT).  Myles will next stage manager The Tempest with the Freeport Shakespeare Festival in Freeport, Maine. Myles is a member of the Actors' Equity Association.

RAY CORNILS (Municipal Organist, Kotzschmar Organ) Ray Cornils is the Municipal Organist for the City of Portland , a post which he has held since 1990. He is also the Minister of Music at First Parish Church , UCC in Brunswick , where for the past 20 years he has led an extensive music program of five vocal and two handbell choirs. In addition, he is a member of the music faculties of Bowdoin College, the University of Southern Maine , and the Portland Conservatory of Music, where he teaches organ, harpsichord and related classes. Ray has concertized throughout the United States and in Germany, Russia, New Zealand and France. He has been a featured recitalist for conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society. This summer he will perform a number of concerts in Germany. In addition to his solo work, he performs regularly with the Portland Symphony Orchestra and Musica Tricinia, a group of two trumpets and organ.