The Negro Ensemble's "Cabaret Émigré," a stageplay by Sophia Romma, will make its debut on November 2 at 8 pm at the Lion Theater in NYC's theater district. A satirical story about emigrants who have traveled to the U.S. throughout the 1900s, the play spotlights a Russian Jew, African, Latino, German and various other émigrés who made this difficult travel in pursuit of the American Dream. The show makes the audience question: Did they achieve this dream? Was it worth it? And, just in time for New Yorkers to decide which president will help them to achieve their goals in the upcoming years. The show runs through Sunday, November 18. Get a first look at the production in the photos below!The play is directed by Charles Weldon, Artistic Director of the Negro Ensemble (NEC), and member since 1970 having performed in over 40 NEC productions and directed such plays as, "Colored People Time" by Leslie Lee, "Savanna Black and Blue" by Raymond Jones, "The Waiting Room" by Samm-Art Williams and "Ceremonies in Dark Old Men" by Lonnie Elder. Weldon saw the reading of "Cabaret Émigré," at that time called "Doroga" or Russian for "the road," at the Dramatist's Guild. He was attracted to the play's theme of being an unwelcome stranger in a strange land. In 2010, at The Cherry Lane Theater, Weldon directed "With Aaron's Arms Around Me and The Mire," an evening of two one-acts by Sophia Romma, both of which dealt with themes of intolerance from an émigré's perspective.
"Cabaret Émigré" explores each character's inner-most feelings on emigrating in the setting of a coarse cabaret. Romma ties each ethnicity and culture together through the characters common, never-ending feeling of displacement in a new country. Written in the rhythmic beat called Quantum Verse, the characters experience great turmoil, from a Columbian drug lord throwing a Latino and Russian Jew overboard into the sea to a Nigerian butcher in a boxing match with an Irish drunk. The play is based on interviews that Romma conducted with other émigrés last October in preparation for a play she was drafting for the Women's Initiative of the Dramatists Guild. After interviewing Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, a Mexican and a Nigerian, Romma saw the setting of a cabaret most fitting for the telling of these tales, and as a place where émigrés would amuse each other with their individual stories.The emigré experience is one in which Romma can relate, having relocated with her mother from Moscow to the US in 1979. "You don't know where your community is," she says. "Where you belong nationally is eradicated. You get confused and dislocated. Every single person I have come across had the same experience.
"Romma is author of the film "Poor Liza," directed by Slava Tsukerman starring Oscar Winners Ben Gazzara and Lee Grant. She has had three productions at La Mama E.T.C.: "Love, in the Eyes of Hope, Dies Last" (1997), a journey through contemporary Jewish/Russian immigration in a series of eight playlets, "Coyote, Take Me There!" (1999), a surrealistic work on the ordeal of immigration and the corruption of the American dream, and "Defenses Of Prague" (2004), a story of revenge set among the gypsies in 1968, on the brink of the Soviet invasion of Prague. Her last production, "With Aaron's Arms Around Me and The Mire," contained one original scenario ("With Aaron's Arms Around Me") and one loosely adapted from Chekhov ("The Mire").The Negro Ensemble Company, Inc. (NEC) is an organization formed in 1965, which provides African-American, African and Caribbean professionals in the theatrical community with support, work and growth opportunities. The NEC has produced more than two hundred plays including, "A Raisin in the Sun" and Tony award winning "River Niger," and several of Romma's plays, "Coyote, Take Me There!" and "Defenses of Prague." In presenting plays by Sophia Romma, The Negro Ensemble Company continues its mission to explore and expose intolerance and bigotry.Theatre Row is a collection of newly renovated historic theatres in Time Square including The Acorn theatre, The Beckett Theatre, The Clurman Theatre, The Kirk Theatre, The Lion Theatre and The Studio Theatre. It is owned and operated by the 42nd Street Development Corporation. Theatre Row Studios is on 410 West 42nd Street in Manhattan.
The human, emigrant condition is examined in "Cabaret Émigré," a new play by Sophia Romma, directed by Charles Weldon, to be presented by the Negro Ensemble Companyfrom November 2 to 18 at the Lion Theater, Theater Row. The play contains ten Lewis Carroll-style testimonials that are told as cabaret acts by a collection of émigrés who are primarily Russian Jews like Romma herself, as well as émigrés from Latin America and Africa. All of them have no other motive than to entertain each other and their resulting acts are outrageous and macabre, like a journey Down The Rabbit hole.
The play is based on interviews that Romma conducted with other émigrés last October in preparation for a play she was drafting for the Women's Initiative (which she founded) of the Dramatists Guild. She started by interviewing people she knew, who were mostly performers. These included young Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, a Mexican friend from high school, and a Nigerian man she had gone to college with, all of whom referred more émigrés with tales. The stories that appeared presented a similar theme: that of a poet who is prisoner of a soulless existence, suspended in time. It was in keeping with the nature of the first group she interviewed that Romma set the play in a cabaret, where émigrés would amuse each other with stories that sail off into bizarre reflections from the characters' family histories and are scripted in Quantum Verse.
Most of the skits are autobiographical, presenting distorted family histories and twisted memories of those who left their homelands behind. The émigré experience is one of dislocation, to which Ms. Romma can testify, having emigrated with her mother from Moscow in 1979.
In all of her plays, Ms. Romma questions the reality of what is seemingly obvious in our human existence. There is weirdness and absurdity at play which reigns in the quantum universe, as it does in her verse. The play rhymes, but in non sequiturs. There is repartee of indirect associations. Puns are abundant, often extracted into sexual insults. Characters speak in inappropriate Americanisms (like, "Do you accept God's will for you?" "Yes, Holy Roller-ness, I most certainly do.") Ms. Romma employs various languages (Russian, German, Yiddish and French) which are sprinkled throughout the play in order to add flavor to an eclectic cultural presence within Cabaret Émigré.
Director Charles Weldon, Artistic Director of The Negro Ensemble, saw the reading of "Cabaret Émigré" (then called "Doroga") at the Dramatist's Guild and was drawn to the play's universal theme of being an unwelcome stranger in a strange land. In the winter of 2010, at The Cherry Lane Theater, he directed "With Aaron's Arms Around Me and The Mire," an evening of two one-acts by Sophia Romma, both of which dealt with themes of intolerance from an émigré's perspective.
In presenting plays by Sophia Romma, The Negro Ensemble Company continues its mission to explore and expose intolerance and bigotry. In the past, the focus has been on intolerance that primarily affects the African America community, using characters in various plays as spokespersons for a whole society. Intolerance and bigotry exist, however, within ethnic groups and cultures themselves, to equally damaging degrees.
"Cabaret Émigré" will be acted by Adriana Sananes, Carolyn Seiff, Allan Mirchin, Randy Schein, Walter Krochmal, Tosh Marks, Grant Morenz, Gwenevere Sisco, Dana Pelevine, Bettina Bennett and DeLance Minefee. Dramaturg is Maxine Kern. Set design is by Dara Wishingrad. Music is composed by Lev Zhurbin. Choreography by Leslie Dockery. Costume design is by Lora Jackson. Lighting design is by Ves Weaver, and Sound design by Tommy Renino.
The Negro Ensemble Company will present "Cabaret Émigré" from November 2 to November 18, 2012 at The Lion Theater, 410 West 42nd Street. Performances are Wednesdays at 7:30 PM, Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00 PM, Saturdays at 2:00 PM and 8:00 PM and Sundays at 3:00 PM. Tickets are $18 general admission. For tickets, contact Telecharge at (212) 239-6200 or visit www.telecharge.com.
Playwright Sophia Romma (who previously wrote under the name Sophia Murashkovsky) emigrated with her parents from Russia 33 years ago. She is a resident playwright of The Mayakovsky Academic Art Theatre of Moscow, where the name Quantum Verse was coined to describe her literary style. The name derives from the question "How real is the universe?" and the notion that it may contain parallel dialogues, a simple one and a metaphysical one.
She received her MFA at NYU and her Ph.D. from the prestigious Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. Her last production, "With Aaron's Arms Around Me and The Mire," contained one original scenario ("With Aaron's Arms Around Me") and one loosely adapted from Chekhov ("The Mire"). Romma was author of the film "Poor Liza," directed by Slava Tsukerman ("Liquid Sky") starring Oscar Winner Ben Gazzara, Oscar Winner Lee Grant and Barbora Babulova. She is currently the Literary Manager of the Negro Ensemble Company. For more information about Ms. Romma, visit www.sophiaromma.net.
Sophia Romma, talented playwright/screenwriter has graduated from the Tisch School of the Arts (Dramatic Writing Program) at New York University with her M.F.A. Her play, "In the Eyes Of Hope" has been produced at the Jewish Repertory Theater and ran in October of 1998 at La MaMa E.T.C., in New York City. Her critically acclaimed musical Coyote, Take Me there!", directed by the Obie Award winning and Tony nominated Playwright, Colonel Leslie Lee, was also performed at La MaMa Experimental Theater in January of 1999. Sophia "s first screenplay, Across Sadovo Ring Road was optioned by the Disney Motion Picture Group. Her second successful screenplay was finally made into a film. Poor Liza, loosely based on Nikolai Karamzin" short story of the same title and directed by the cult director of Liquid Sky, Slava Tsukerman, has been received with flying colors. the film competed at the Cairo Film Festival, participated in the hors concourse demonstration during the 21st Moscow International Film Festival, Shown at the Anthology Film Archives in Greenwich Village and Show-cased at Sochi Film Festival in Russia. The film has won the Grand Prix Garnet Bracelet for best screenplay at the prestigious Gatchena Literature and Film Festival (St.Petersburg 2001). Poor Liza stars the Academy Award Nominee, Ben Gazzara, Academy Award Winner Lee Grant, and Barbora Babulov. Recently Sophia Romma"s book of poetry entitled "God and the Good" was published. Her play, "Coyote, Take Me there!" along with nine short stories has been published as well, in a book entitled, Blue Devils. She has just witnessed the success of "Defenses of Prague" her third musical stage-play at La MaMa E.T.C. She co-directed this intense mystical play about the Legend of Golem and the magic of the Gypsies.
http://doollee.com/PlaywrightsR/romma-sophia.php
The Negro Ensemble Company presents: "The Mire" (excerpted) and "With Aaron’s Arms Around Me" (excerpted) at the Cherry Lane Theater, directed by Charles Weldon circa Dec, 2010. Misha Gutkin for Voices of America interviews the director, Charles Weldon and the playwright, Sophia Romma.
NEW YORK -- Negro Ensemble Company (www.necinc.org), America's legendary black theater company, will present "With Aaron's Arms Around Me and The Mire," an evening of two one-acts by Sophia Romma, a Russian-American playwright, both on the theme of intolerance. The first play, "With Aaron's Arms Around Me," is directed by Negro Ensemble Company's Artistic Director, Charles Weldon. The second, "The Mire," is directed by Yuri Joffe of the Mayakovsky Academic Art Theater in Moscow. Both plays deal with eternal themes of intolerance from an émigré's perspective. Performances are December 3 to 19 at Cherry Lane Theatre (Studio Theatre), 38 Commerce Street.
"With Aaron's Arms Around Me" is a one-act, directed by Charles Weldon, in which two émigré women, one from Jamaica and one from Russia, are thrown together for an interview through a creative writing class at NYU. They tease out the secrets of each others' love affairs, both of which are tests of tolerance to their families, sharing the hardships of love and being young and very much alive. Tanya, the interviewer, is Russian Jewish and in love with an Italian Catholic man, for whom she has been baptized (to the agony of her parents). Madeleine, the interviewee, is Jamaican and in love with a Jewish man who is the son of a Holocaust survivor. She happened to be raised without religion, so her only ethnic "badge" is the color of her skin. To marry Aaron, she must assimilate into the closed culture of his family, in which Jewish identity is a high-stakes issue. The play portrays love, to the émigré, as a sort of universal value and asks, in a country without borders, is love actually unifying or must it submit to the harsh divisions of ethnic identity?
"The Mire," directed by Yuri Joffe, is a one-act play inspired by Anton Chekhov’s 19th century short story of the same name. It spins a stark tale of a vixenish young Russian Jewish émigré, Svetlana Moiseyevna, who captures the heart of a twenty-eight year old renegade Lieutenant, James Perso Arrivederci. The Lieutenant, an Iraq veteran and dissident, visits Svetlana to collect a monetary debt she owes his brother, who coincidentally is her married ex-boyfriend. Arrivederci faces court martial for his opposition to the war and needs money to wed his poor youthful fiancée back in Corpus Christi, Texas. His brother has promised him that if the collection effort is successful, the money will be his. Svetlana speaks in riddles and veiled allusions. She is a devil of a woman who shakes him up so that he falls head over heels in love even though he fully comprehends that she is far from heavenly. Prejudice also rears its ugly head. He loves her beyond reason, yet he resents her for being Jewish.
The AWOL lieutenant pays our heroine numerous visits, finding that he is unable to escape the "Jewess’s charms" and is reeled deeper and deeper into the haunting chambers of her tumultuous family life. Svetlana’s grandparents provide comic relief. They are pearls of pleasure, a delightful caricature of those hilarious immigrants who rarely make it to the stage: fanatical Russian intellectuals who are ideologically conservative and obstinate against assimilation. At their Hannukah table, within the walls of the family’s loony world, the hero arrives at a credible illuminating sanity, one which he had never possessed before. By the culmination of the play, the temptress Svetlana shows the Lieutenant that life is a grotesque practical joke, constantly tugging at the strings of human dignity and reason--but that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The play is meant to be an explosively liberating, funny and maniacal assault on the banality of materialism and the hypocrisy of war, together with a celebration of unearthly, unexpected and untimely love.
"With Aaron's Arms Around Me" is a world premiere. "The Mire" was first produced by the Midtown International Theater Festival as a work in progress with the title "A Sweet Word Of Advice" in July, 2010 at The Jewel Box Theater in Manhattan. It was directed by Maxine Kern.
"With Aaron's Arms Around Me" will be performed by Naomi McDougall Jones as Tanya and LaTonia Phipps as Madeleine. Ms. Jones played Svetlana in "A Sweet Word of Advice," the workshop predecessor to "The Mire," in July, 2010. Her casting in both Russian Jewish parts is a unifying concept of this evening.
"The Mire" is performed by the cast of its July, 2010 workshop, with Naomi McDougall Jones as Svetlana, Tosh Marks as the Lieutenant, Allan Mirchin as the Grandfather and Carolyn Seiff as the Grandmother.
In both plays, set design is by Inna Bodner and sound design is by Dimitri German.
Director Charles Weldon ("With Aaron's Arms Around Me") has been Artistic Director of Negro Ensemble Company for six years. He has directed the Company's productions of "Colored People Time" by Leslie Lee, "The Waiting Room" by Samm-Art Williams, "Savanna Black and Blue" by Raymond Jones and "Ceremonies in Dark Old Men" by Lonnie Elder. Other directing credits include "Futurology" by Anthony Dixon for National Black Theatre (NYC), "Waiting to End Hell" by William Parker for Shadow Theatre Co. (Denver) and "The Offering" by Gus Edwards for RipRap Theatre Co. (N. Hollywood). Weldon began his performance career in 1960 as lead singer with The Paradons, a Doo-Wop group from Bakersfield, CA, and co-wrote and recorded the smash hit "Diamonds and Pearls." He performed in the original San Francisco production of "Hair" and the Broadway musical "Buck Time Buck White" with Mohammed Ali. He joined the Negro Ensemble Company in 1970 and acted in many of its its classic plays including "The Great McDaddy," "The Offering," "The Brownsville Raid," "A Soldier's Play" and the Company's Broadway production of "The River Niger." His films include "Stir Crazy," "Serpico," "The River Niger" and "Malcolm X." He won an Audelco Award for Best Supporting Actor in "Seven Guitars" by August Wilson at Signature Theater. He co-founded the Alumni of the Negro Ensemble Company.
Director Yuri Joffe ("The Mire") has been a director of the Mayakovsky Academic Art Theater since 1976, where he has overseen the production of over thirty stage plays. He earned his Doctoral Degree in directing from the prestigious Gitis Academy of Theater Arts and has directed plays by world-renowned authors including Babel, Ostrovski, and Mrozeck. In 1994, President Boris Yeltsin personally awarded Mr. Joffe with the highest honorable medal for outstanding direction in Marina Tsvetayevna's "Theater". In 2003, he received the Stanislavski Award for his co-direction of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" with the celebrated Head Director of the Mayakovsky Academic Art Theater, Sergei Arzibashev. He frequently collaborated with one of Russia's most famous theatrical Master Directors, Andrei Goncharov. Mr. Joffe has been a Professor for more than eighteen years at the Gitis Academy of Theater Arts where he runs a Master Class in the Art of Acting and Directing.
Playwright/director Sophia Romma (who also writes under the name Sophia Murashkovsky) emigrated with her parents from Russia 30 years ago. She received her MFA at NYU and her Ph.D. from the prestigious Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. She is author of the film "Poor Liza," directed by Slava Tsukerman ("Liquid Sky") starring Oscar Winner Ben Gazzara, Oscar Winner Lee Grant and Barbora Babulova. The film adapts a classic Russian story by Nikolai Karamzin about a beautiful peasant girl who is seduced and forsaken by a young nobleman. "Poor Liza" won the Grand Prix Garnet Bracelet for best screenplay at the Gatchena Literature and Film Festival in St. Petersburg in 2000. She has had three productions at La MaMa E.T.C.: "Love, in the Eyes of Hope, Dies Last" (1997), a journey through contemporary Jewish/Russian immigration in a series of eight playlets, "Coyote, Take Me There!" (1999), a surrealistic work on the ordeal of immigration and the corruption of the American dream, and "Defenses Of Prague" (2004), a story of revenge set among the gypsies in 1968, on the brink of the Soviet invasion of Prague.
In "Shoot Them in the Cornfields" (2006 at the Producers Club Theater), a fictionalized family history time tripped between World War II, The Khrushchev Reign, and the heady days of the Coup d'etat of 1991. Her "Absolute Clarity," a tale of a teenage heroine--a white raven and rebellious young artist searching for love and absolution--was presented Off-Broadway at the Players Theatre in 2006. In 2007 at the Cherry Lane Theater, her play "The Past is Still Ahead," about the famed Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, had its American debut.
In 2005, Romma's anthology of poetry, "God and My Good" was published by the Gorky Literary Institute. In 2006 her collection of poems, "Garden of the Avant-garde" was published by Noble House. Ms. Romma has co-directed her play "Defenses of Prague" with Obie-winner and Tony Nominated playwright, Leslie Lee. She has also directed Mr. Lee's one-act play, "You're Not Here to Talk about Beethoven." Ms. Romma instructs classes in Playwriting and Screenwriting at the Schomburg Center in conjunction with Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center.
This production is one of three productions in Negro Ensemble Company's 2010-2011 season that continue its mission to explore and expose intolerance and bigotry. In the past, the focus has been on intolerance that primarily affects the African America community, using characters in various plays as spokespersons for a whole society. Intolerance and bigotry exist, however, within ethnic groups and cultures themselves, to equally damaging degrees. So this season, the NEC's mainstage productions widen that exploration.
"Rising," a play by Professor Carolyn Nurstrand, professor of Africana Studies at University of Michigan at Flint, will be produced by NEC in March, 2011. On the eve of Lincoln's drafting of the Emancipation Proclamation, Helen Bruce, a young African American school teacher from Baltimore, travels to St. Helena Island to begin a night class for Gullah field women, designated as contraband by the Union. This is the story of men and women who discover not only what freedom and citizenship mean in America, but are introduced to their own misconceptions, misunderstandings, and intolerances toward the underclass--the same people they have gone to help.
"Soleda," a play written by Raymond Jones, a police Lieutenant assigned to the Bronx DA's office, will be produced by NEC in May, 2011. The play is a portrait of a freewheeling, decorated Latina policewoman who jeopardizes her status and reputation on the force when she falls in love with a black jazz musician who is witness to a murder she is investigating. Compounding her problems are the objections of her family to her wanting to marry an African American because of the ongoing difficulties that still plague the relationship between Blacks and Hispanics
https://www.blackradionetwork.com/black_theater_company_tackles_intolerance
"The Past is Still Ahead," a five-character play about Marina Tsvetaeva, Soviet Russia's most famous poet, debuted in the Cherry Lane Theater, Manhattan in December 2007. It's returning to New York November 27 for one performance (in Russian this time) at The Millennium Theatre, 10-29 Brigton Beach Ave, Brooklyn.
The play was written in English by the Russian-born NY playwright Sophia Romma and was based on a monologue by Israeli playwright Oded Be' eri. The piece has been touring in Russia and England. It stars YeLena Romanova, a well-known Russian actress of theater and film, as the famed poet.
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892-1941), a great Russian poet of the twentieth century, was also one of Stalin's most prominent victims. Her life reads like a profound, tragic reflection of Russian suffering during the first half of the twentieth century, and her popularity is perhaps greater today than ever before. She was inspired by contemporaries like Akhmatova and Rilke, studied the philosophy of Swedenborg, and blended classical and modern poetry in a unique manner. Her whirling and staccato rhythms were forceful and original. Her lyric poems fill ten collections; the uncollected lyrics would add at least another volume. Dmitri Shostakovichset six of Tsvetaeva's poems to music.
On May 21, the Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow presented an outstanding cross-cultural event. A searing play about Marina Tsvetaeva, one of Russia’s most intense and uncompromising poets, who was very Russian and international herself was performed. Tsvetaeva spent much time abroad and spoke several languages. The Past Is Still Ahead premiered at the legendary Mayakovsky Academic Art Theater in April 2007 and recently ran with great success in New York, as it seemed to capture the sacred pattern of the poet’s life. It will also be shown in London and Oxford this summer.
The Past is Still Ahead is a play written and staged by Sophia Romma, an American playwright and poet, based on a monologue by Oded Be’eri, a prolific Israeli author with Elena Romanova, one of the most talented actresses of the Mayakovsky Academic Arts Theater, staring as Tsvetaeva and supported by a group of Russian and American actors.
This haunting performance captures the emotional and creative life of Marina Tsvetaeva, who was also victimized by Stalin. Tsvetaeva’s tragic life reflects the profound and appalling suffering endured by the Russian people during the first half of the 20th century.
The Past Is Still Ahead portrays the poets’ comprehensive vision of life, perceptions of people and romance with the most significant poets of her time, which gave inspiration to her poetry and drama to her family. The play’s major motifs revolve around the relationship that Marina Tsvetaeva established with poets Sophia Parnok, Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam. We witness her correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke in the summer of 1925; celestial Rilke, with his extraordinary eloquence and personal meditation on the creative process – offering Marina a combination of power and illuminated poetic vivacity. Marina never actually met her cherished Rilke, but nevertheless, he was her escape from the political turmoil and social devastation wrought by the Russian Revolution and later during her long exile. The play shows the imaginary, idealistic world of Marina Tsvetaeva with Rilke by her hand, in contrast to harsh and injured reality.
Marina was born into the family of Professor Ivan Tsvetaev, a founder of the Moscow Fine Arts Museum. Marina’s mother was a pianist, who died early of tuberculosis, a disease, which killed many at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Marina and her sister Anastasia spent much time with their sick mother in Switzerland and Germany, receiving their education at home. Their mother’s early death and a return to regular school studies in Moscow affected both girls considerably, leaving them with the invariable desire to find mother-daughter relations in their adult life.
Marina started writing her poetry and published her first books very early. Her married life and a mother’s responsibilities were never easy and encouraged her to flee into her poetic world. After the dramas of WW I, the 1917 revolution, the Civil War, the death of their baby Irina and starvation, she and her husband Sergei Efron fled Russia for Paris. The family had to take a complicated decision to go back to Russia in 1939 when her husband fell under a dark cloud of suspicion in France, however they were then labeled as enemies of the Soviet State in Russia. Her husband and daughter Ariadna were arrested, and she had to go to the small town of Yelabuga on the Volga River with her adolescent son with no means to support them both. In film-noire style, we witness horrific scenes of the sinister NKVD Officer mercilessly interrogating Marina Tsvetaeva there. In despair, Marina hangs herself; giving life to her poetry for eternity.
Many readers in both the East and the West have been enthralled by Marina’s poetry; marveling at her strength, moved to tears by the sheer depth of her emotions and her steadfast obstinacy to fall in love with the swirling word as well as with some of the most gifted poets of the 20th century.
Elena Romanova, plays the role of Marina Tsvetaeva marvelously; she has starred in more than twenty leading roles in the theater and cinema. She has performed in Geneva with François Rochaix (general director of the Carouge Theater) in Atelier, and played the lead in a great many films in America, Russia, Sweden and Greece.
An accomplished screen and theater actor, (in Moscow as well as in New York), Alexander Rapaport plays the role of the NKVD officer, who materializes as a dark presence throughout the play representing the horrors and pressures to which Tsvetaeva had been subjected in the last years of her life.
Tosh Marks, a consummate and stylish actor strikingly introduces us to a variety of personalities in the drama, from Rainer Maria Rilke to Sergey Efron and even Osip Mandelstam – all of them vital keys to Marina’s life and work. World- renowned concert pianist, Inna Leytush plays Marina Tsvetaeva’s mother. Opera vocalist, Soprano Helen Fosturis, plays the role of Marina’s muse, performing originally composed music to Tsvetaeva’s poems.
There are a lot of beautiful musical pieces in this play by famous Russian composers – Tchaikovsky, Rakhmaninov, Rimsky- Korsakov, and Shostakovich.
One can only hope that dedicated theatergoers will have more chances to see this extraordinary play in Moscow, New York or London. However, the most logic venue for such an event should be the theater in Yelabuga, when the play is translated into Russian.
http://www.passportmagazine.ru/article/1591/
The JCC of Manhattan Presents Sophia Romma's stage-play, "The Past Is Still Ahead" sponsored by the JCC and Zabar's, circa January, 2008. The production highlights the unconventional life of the exiled Soviet Poetess, Marina Tsvetaeva as she converses with the late great poets of our time.