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by Athol Fugard
directed by Jim Petosa
co-produced with Boston Center for American Performance
In apartheid South Africa, where intimate interracial relationships are illegal, a black man and a white woman share more than just their love, baring all in the face of oppression and uncertainty. Athol Fugard’s Statements is a remarkable love story that stands as a strident reminder of the intolerance and cruelty of a not-so-distant past.
Please note: THIS PRODUCTION CONTAINS EXTENSIVE NUDITY THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PERFORMANCE, and makes use of haze and fog effects.
Running time: approximately 75 minutes
Ideation | Oleanna | Man of La Mancha | The Bakelite Masterpiece | Two Jews Walk into a War…
STATEMENTS OF SURVIVAL SERIES
Unveiled | Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act | Lonely Planet | Ripe Frenzy
Michael Ofori* returns to New Repertory Theatre after last being seen in Cardboard Piano. Other recent credits include The Journey (Ahab), Much Ado About Nothing (Leonato), Blue Orange (Christopher), and Through a Film Darkly (Addo). Michael holds a BFA in Theater from the University of Ghana; and MA in African Studies from Ohio University; and an MFA in Theater Education from Boston University. He currently teachers theater at Mount Holyoke College. Originally from Ghana, Michael now resides in Chicopee, MA.
TIM SPEARS* returns to New Repertory Theatre after performing in Statements After An Arrest Under the Immorality Act, Lonely Planet, Good, The Elephant Man, Amadeus, and Mister Roberts. He also appeared in Good this past summer Off-Broadway (PTP/NYC). Other New York City credits include A Question of Mercy and Assistant Director on Monster (PTP/NYC); and JUMP! and Realism (The Exchange). Other Boston credits include Clybourne Park (Speakeasy Stage Company); Uncle Jack, Monster, House (IRNE Nomination), Good, and A Question of Mercy (Boston Center for American Performance); and The Devil’s Teacup (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre). Mr. Spears received a BFA in Acting and an MFA in Directing from Boston University. Born in Texas, he now resides in Somerville.
Athol Fugard is an internationally acclaimed South African playwright whose best-known work deals with the political and social upheaval of the apartheid system in South Africa. He was educated at the University of Cape Town. His plays include The Captain’s Tiger, Valley Song, My Children! My Africa, A Lesson from Aloes, The Island, and the award-winning Sizwe Banzi is Dead. Mr. Fugard has received six honorary degrees from esteemed colleges and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
JIM PETOSA (Director, Artistic Director) joined New Repertory Theatre as an award-winning theatre artist, educator, and leader in 2012. He has served as Director of the School of Theatre, College of Fine Arts, at Boston University since 2002, and Artistic Director of Maryland’s Olney Theatre Center for the Arts and its National Players educational touring company (1994-2012). While at Boston University, he established the Boston Center for American Performance (BCAP), the professional production extension of the Boston University School of Theatre, in 2008. Throughout the Northeast, Mr. Petosa has directed for numerous institutions, including The Gift Horse, Brecht on Brecht, Good, Freud’s Last Session, The Testament of Mary, Broken Glass, Assassins, On the Verge, The Elephant Man (IRNE Nomination), Amadeus, Three Viewings, The Last Five Years, and Opus at New Rep. In Boston, his work was nominated for two IRNE awards for A Question of Mercy (BCAP). He has served as one of three artistic leaders for the Potomac Theatre Project (PTP/NYC) since 1987. In Maryland, his work earned over 25 Helen Hayes Award nominations as well as the award for outstanding direction of a musical for Jacques Brel is Alive and Well… His production of Look! We Have Come Through! was nominated for the Charles MacArthur Award for outstanding new play, and he earned the Montgomery County Executive’s Excellence in the Arts and Humanities Award for Outstanding Artist/Scholar. A member of Actors’ Equity Association, Mr. Petosa has served on the executive board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for StageSource. Originally from New Jersey, he was educated at The Catholic University of America and resides in Quincy.
JEFFREY PETERSEN returns to New Repertory Theatre after working as Technical Director for Brecht on Brecht and Thurgood. Recent New England design credits include Elemeno Pea, Lost Tempo, Equal Writes, Restricted, and The Honey Trap (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre); and The Werther Project, Uncommon Women and Others, Cosi fan tutte, Rosmersholm, and The Whitmores (Boston University). Assistant design credits include Melancholy Play (Trinity Rep). Select Technical credits include The Cherry Orchard, Ivanov, and Galileo (Classic Stage Company); Collaboration: Warhol & Basquiat (HERE); Rated P (Westside Theatre); and Ripcord, Come Back Little Sheba, The Second Girl, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Huntington Theatre Company). Select regional design credits include Dancing at Lughnasa, Pavilion, Sylvia, Last Five Years, Glass Menagerie, and String (Yellow Tree Theatre); and Rocky Horror Live (Cardinal Theatricals). Jeffrey received his BFA in Performance and Scenic Design from the University of Minnesota Duluth and is anticipating his MFA in Scenic Design from Boston University in the spring of 2018. jeffreypetersendesign.com
Becca Jewett (She/Her) was the 2015 recipient of the Virgil C. Jonson Award for Excellence in Costume Design. She is currently a freelance costumer. Her most recent design credits include Costume Designer at MRT’s production of “A Christmas Carol”, Speakeasy’s “Fairview” and “The Sound Inside”. Her other recent credits at New Rep include, “Trayf”, “We Will Not be Silent”, “Heartland” and “Blackberry Winter”. Greater Boston Productions include, Costume Designer for Umbrella Arts Center’s “The Colored Museum”, Greater Boston Stage Company’s Production of “Last Night at Bowl-Mor Lanes”, and Mask Designer for the Liars and Believers show “A Story Beyond”. Other recent credits include Crafts Department at the Glimmerglass Festival 2014-2017, Costume Shop Manager at Commonwealth Shakespeare Summer 2018, and Assistant Dyer Painter at the Santa Fe Opera 2019-Present. She looks forward to working on many new creative projects and hopes you enjoy the show.
MATTHEW GUMINSKI returns to New Repertory Theatre after designing Via Dolorosa and The Testament of Mary. Recent design credits include Ghost: The Musical (WPPAC); Million Dollar Quartet (Seven Angels Theatre); and Rocky Horror and High Society (Winnipesaukee Playhouse). Other regional theatre credits include work at Timber Lake Playhouse, Cape Fear Regional Theatre, Foothills Theatre Company, The Barnstormers Theatre, North Shore Music Theatre, and the North American tour of Sleeping Beauty and The Great Russian Nutcracker (Moscow Ballet). His work has also been seen across most of the world as the Lighting and Video Designer for the pop rock bands JoJo, Jon Bellion, Neon Trees, MisterWives, and Young the Giant. Mr. Guminski is an eight-time recipient of the New Hampshire Theatre Award for Best Professional Lighting Design for Proof (2006), The Woman In Black (2007), Two Rooms (2008), The Glass Menagerie (2009), Around the World in 80 Days (2010), Shipwrecked! (2012), The Fantasticks (2014), and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2015). He received his BFA in Lighting Design from Boston University. mglightingdesign.com
ZACHARY RICE has performed at New Repertory Theatre in The Gift Horse. He was most recently seen in Hamlet (Apollinaire Theatre Company). Other credits include directing Dusa, Fish, Stas & Vi (Boston University); Roundabout (Boston Theater Marathon); InSync (Roxbury Repertory Theater); assistant directing Precious Little (Nora Theatre Company); Matchless & The Happy Prince (Underground Railway Theater); Significant Other (SpeakEasy Stage); The Housekeeper (Fresh Ink Theatre); and dramaturging When January Feels Like Summer (Underground Railway Theater). Zachary received his BFA in Theater Arts from Boston University. He is originally from Washington state and currently resides in Cambridge.
BRIAN M. ROBILLARD* returns to New Repertory Theatre after previously working on Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, Lonely Planet, Ideation, The Gift Horse, Brecht on Brecht, Fiddler on the Roof, Baltimore, Scenes from an Adultery, Albatross, On the Verge, and Pattern of Life. Recent area credits include A Christmas Carol (Central Square Theater); A Little Night Music (Huntington Theatre Company); Romeo & Juliet and King Lear (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company); Don Giovanni and Siren Song (BU Opera Institute); Song Cycle (Peabody Essex Museum); and Hairspray and The Fantasticks (Hope Summer Repertory Theatre). Brian received his BFA in Stage Management from Boston University. A native of Massachusetts, Brian currently resides in Chelmsford. Upcoming projects include Calendar Girls (Greater Boston Stage Company).
Kyna Hamill is the Assistant Director of the Core Curriculum and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Theatre at Boston University. She specializes in the iconography of the commedia dell’arte tradition and the intersection of theatre and visual studies. She has published articles in Print Quarterly, Theatre Symposium and Theatre Survey and is currently completing a monograph examining three centuries of theatrical encounters with the Baroque print artist, Jacques Callot (1592-1635). Kyna has been profiled on her research examining the history of “Jingle Bells” in the Boston Globe, The Guardian and NPR.
Zoliswa O. Mali is the Director of the African Language Program at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. She was born and raised in South Africa and went through apartheid schools. She studied and taught at the University of Fort Hare where Nelson Mandela had attended. She got a BA (Hons) and proceeded to a historically Afrikaans institution, the University of Stellenbosch. She got an MA (cum laude) in African Linguistics there before coming to the University of Iowa where she got a Masters in Linguistics and a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition.
Diana Wylie, professor of history at Boston University, has been studying southern Africa since 1977 and has written three books on the region: A Little God: The Twilight of Patriarchy in a Southern African Chiefdom (1990), Starving on a Full Stomach: Hunger and the Triumph of Cultural Racism in Modern South Africa (2001), and Art + Revolution: The Life and Death of Thami Mnyele, South African Artist (2008).
This program is funded in part by Mass Humanities, State-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Talkbacks
Wednesday 1/31 at 7:30pm
Thursday 2/15 at 2pm
Sunday 2/18 at 2pm
Sunday 2/25 at 2pm
Athol Fugard is a South African playwright, director, and actor whose work gained international attention with the 1961 premiere of his play The Blood Knot. Fugard’s plays, including Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, frequently confront the apartheid system of racial segregation laws, the enforcement of which he witnessed first hand as a clerk at the Native Commissioner’s Court. His openly political work led to the confiscation of his passport by the South African government and the surveillance of his theatre company by the secret police.
The Immorality Act of the play’s title was initially enacted in 1927 to prohibit extramarital sex between white and black South Africans, punishable by up to five years in prison for the man and four years for the woman. The act was amended in 1950, expanding the ban to all “Europeans” and “non-Europeans,” respectively. The Act remained law until 1985’s Immorality and Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Amendment Act, one of the early legislative steps towards the end of apartheid.
New Rep has produced three of Fugard’s plays:
A Lesson from Aloes (1988-1989 Season)
My Children! My Africa! (1992-1993 Season – Boston Premiere)
Exits and Entrances (2008-2009 Season – New England Premiere)
Paul Villani and Wiley Moore in A Lesson From Aloes
(1988-1989 Season)
Will Lyman and Ross MacDonald in Exits and Entrances
(2008-2009 Season)