[NEohioPAL]FW: PRESS CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT from Cleveland Public Theatre

[Dan Kilbane]

For Immediate Release:  PRESS CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT
Contact:  Dan Kilbane, Director of Marketing & Public Relations
216/631-2727 ext. 203
dkilbane at cptonline.org <mailto:dkilbane at cptonline.org>
CPT’s Marketing Dept. requests attendance by your media organization
promotional photos available by request
October 4, 2004
Los Angeles Theater Directors Peter Sellars and John Malpede Kick Off Los
Angeles Poverty Department’s Agents & Assets Residency at Cleveland Public
Theatre

WHAT: PRESS CONFERENCE Conversation:  Artistic Strategies for Troubling
Times
WHO:  Los Angeles Theater Directors Peter Sellars and John Malpede
WHERE: Cleveland Public Theatre’s James Levin Theatre, 6415 Detroit Ave.,
Cleveland, OH  44102
WHEN: Monday, October 11, 2004 at 7:00 p.m.


CLEVELAND, OH -- Cleveland Public Theatre’s Executive/Artistic Director
Randy Rollison is proud to present renowned opera and theater director Peter
Sellars and Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) Artistic Director John
Malpede, in conversation, to kick off Agents & Assets, a co-production
between CPT’s Y-Haven program and LAPD, Monday, October 11, 2004, at 7:00
p.m. in CPT’s James Levin Theatre.

LAPD will be in residence at CPT during the month of November, and their
acclaimed production, Agents & Assets, will be performed at CPT November 24,
26, 27 and 28, with a combined cast of 14 LAPD members and Cleveland
residents.  Included in the cast are the men of Y-Haven, a comprehensive
transitional housing program designed to serve formerly homeless men who are
in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.

Agents & Assets addresses the misuse of U.S. intelligence agencies by the
executive branch of the government in support of the Nicaraguan Contras.
The events chronicled in the play resonate loudly in current events:  as the
world attempts to comprehend the rush to war in Iraq, where responsibility
lies for the abuses at Abu-Grabib, the ramifications of the Patriot Act, and
the meaning of due process under the law, Sellars and Malpede will discuss
the place of artists and audiences in examining these troubling issues
confronting our democracy.  In doing so, they will use as examples the
artistic strategies of their current projects.  Sellars’ recent staging of
The Children of Heracles brought refugees and immigration officials face to
face for an intimate conversation.  Malpede’s recent production, RFK in EKY,
brought national and regional policy makers together with eastern
Kentuckians to re-examine the issues raised during the 1960’s “War on
Poverty,” and to reassess them in light of current conditions and policy
choices.

With Agents and Assets, LAPD addresses the U.S. government’s escalating war
on drugs. The text is a hearing transcript from the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, the committee charged with the oversight of the
government's intelligence agencies.   The occasion of the March 18, 1998,
hearing is the CIA Inspector General's report denying allegations of CIA
involvement in crack cocaine trafficking to fund the Nicaraguan Contras, at
a time when Congress had expressly forbid such activities.   At the heart of
the issues addressed by Agents & Assets is the misuse of U.S. intelligence
agencies by the executive branch of the government.   These events resonate
loudly in current events as the world tries to comprehend the rush to war in
Iraq.

The entire Agents & Assets script is taken from the hearing transcript.
On-the-ground veterans of the crack epidemic play Congressmen/women and the
CIA Inspector General.  The lives of the cast members have been radically
impacted by drugs, either because they are formerly addicted or simply
because they live in communities that have been devastated by drugs and the
drug war. States Victoria Looseleaf of Downtown News, as Agents & Assets is
"... a theater piece born out of detailed transcripts might be somewhat
dry -- hardly the stuff of high drama.  With Malpede at the helm, however,
provocative seems more the operative word."

Each performance of Agents & Assets is followed by public talkback.
Talkbacks in the L.A. and Detroit productions included treatment vs.
incarceration, arts and recovery, and the rhetoric of war.

Agents & Assets’ director John Malpede says, "The 'War on drugs', as the
name clearly states, imposes a military solution on a  public health and
social problem, and in doing so, turns our own citizens into 'the enemy' and
then proceeds to victimize our citizens and their communities." Agents &
Assets invites its audience to consider the actions of the U.S. Government,
whether it is in a distant country or in Cleveland.

LAPD and Old Stories:New Lives (Peter Sellars’ producing organization)
originally produced Agents & Assets in January 2001.  The play was also
produced in Detroit in 2002.  Malpede and Sellars are long-time, frequent
collaborators.  Malpede will star as Antonin Artaud in Sellars production of
Artaud/Jordan, which will be produced in L.A. and San Francisco from October
16 through October 31, 2004.

Since 1985, LAPD has been working in Los Angeles’ Skid Row area, offering
free performance workshops, and cultural and education activities and events
with and for the city’s most disenfranchised and forgotten.  From its
inception, LAPD has recognized the inherently social process of theater and
has used it in concert with other means of public education, organizing,
partnering and activism.  To accomplish their goals, LAPD has developed
collaborations across the spectrum, with traditional arts organizations
large and small, and with community-based and faith-based organizations
working with homeless and formerly homeless clients.  These collaborations
are integral to LAPD’s mission, and the organization’s ability to fully
serve the entirety of their audience.  A key competent of LAPD’s mission is
to ensure that diverse audience participate in their work, and that dialogue
is opened and continued between people of all walks of life.  LAPD’s efforts
in the development of civic life have included numerous panels, involving
social service professionals, neighborhood residents, homeless activists,
community artists, professors and scholars, and experts on poverty law,
public health and mental health.

Peter Sellars is one of the leading theater, opera, and television directors
in the world today, having directed more than 100 productions, large and
small, across America and abroad.  A graduate of Harvard University, he
studied in Japan, China and India before becoming Artistic Director of the
Boston Shakespeare Company.  At 26 he was made Director of the American
National Theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.  He is a
recipient of the MacArthur Prize Fellowship and was awarded the Erasmus
Prize at the Dutch Royal Palace for contributions to European culture. He
was Artistic Director of the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals, a
large-scale, grassroots, international, intercultural, and interdisciplinary
initiative mobilizing the arts, and he is currently a Professor of World
Arts and Cultures at UCLA.  A frequent guest at the Salzburg and
Glyndebourne Festivals, he has specialized in 20th century operas, most
notably Olivier Messaien's St. François d'Assise, Paul Hindemith's Mathis
der Maler, György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, and, with choreographer Mark
Morris, the premiere of John Adams' and Alice Goodman's Nixon in China and
The Death of Klinghoffer.   Sellars worked in collaboration with composer
John Adams and poet/librettist June Jordan on I Was Looking at the Ceiling
and Then I Saw the Sky, an "earthquake/romance," and in December 2000,
Sellars directed the premiere production, including a full-length film, of
Adams' El Niño, a nativity oratorio.  Projects in recent years include
Stravinsky's The Story of a Soldier; a 25-year survey exhibition of the work
of American artist Bill Viola; Jean Genet's The Screens, adapted by poet
Gloria Alvarez, with the Cornerstone Theater Company and performers from the
community of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles; Peony Pavilion, composed by
Tan Dun and featuring renowned Chinese Kun Opera performer Hua Wenyi; the
premiere of Kaija Saariaho's opera L'Amour d'Loin at the Salzburg Festival;
Agents and Assets, a symposium about the War on Drugs presented in
collaboration John Malpede and the Los Angeles Poverty Department; and
Artistic Director of the Venice Biennale International Festival of Theater.
Current projects include a new production of the Euripides play The Children
of Herakles, focusing on contemporary refugee experience; and Artistic
Director of "New Crowned Hope" a year-long, city-wide festival in Vienna in
2006 celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth.

Y-Haven, with its two locations on Cleveland’s East and West sides, offers a
continuum of care, beginning with primary treatment for drug/alcohol
dependency. When residents graduate from the primary counseling phase, case
managers focus their treatment plan on continuing care, relapse prevention
and appropriate education and employment programs. When residents complete
the necessary training, they are placed in jobs or sheltered workshops. The
final phase of the treatment plan is finding suitable permanent housing for
the residents. Y-Haven is unique in that residents can stay for up to two
years. Many of the residents have experienced such severe physical, mental
and spiritual trauma that they need adequate time to heal. To be considered
for admission into the Y-Haven program, candidates must be homeless males,
18 years or older who agree to participate in primary treatment as well as
mental health treatment if deemed necessary.

The mission of Cleveland Public Theatre is to foster a more conscious and
compassionate community through the arts.