FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 22, 2018
BREAD & BUTTER THEATRE COMPANY
Presents
John Logan’s RED
SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Bread & Butter Theatre Company proudly announces its inaugural San Francisco production: John Logan’s Red, winner of the 2010 Tony Award for Best Play, from March 23rd to the 31st at The Phoenix Theater.
In Red, abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko has just landed the biggest commission in the history of art, a series of murals for New York’s famed Four Seasons Restaurant. In the two fascinating years that follow, Rothko works feverishly with his young assistant, Ken, in his studio in the Bowery. But when Ken gains the confidence to challenge him, Rothko faces the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also be his undoing. Raw and provocative, Red is a searing portrait of an artist’s ambition and vulnerability as he tries to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting.
Directed by Lana Palmer, with set design by Giulio Cesare Perrone, Red will feature Bruce Avery as Rothko and Nick Moore as Ken.
Tickets are available at www.breadandbuttertheatre.com for performances on March 23 and 24 at 8 pm, March 25 at 2 pm, and March 29, 30, and 31 at 8 pm, at The Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason St, San Francisco. Tickets are $25/General Admission. We are also pleased to offer $10 Student and Under-30 tickets, and $10 tickets for artists in any medium.
For more information email info@breadandbuttertheatre.com, or call (628) 867-4211.
About John Logan. John Logan was a playwright for ten years in Chicago before writing his first screenplay, On Any Given Sunday, on spec. He won the 2010 Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle awards for his play Red, which premiered at The Donmar Warehouse in London and transferred to Broadway at the Golden Theater. Among his many credits are the screenplays for the Bond films Spectre and Skyfall, as well as Gladiator.
About Mark Rothko. Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia, on September 25, 1903. He emigrated to Portland, Oregon in 1913. After completing his high school studies in three years, he went to Yale University. He moved to New York in 1924 and began taking art classes there. Later that year, he interrupted his studies to visit his family in Portland. During his brief stay, Rothko joined an acting company run by Josephine Dillon, the first wife of Clark Gable, and although his career in the theater was short-lived, his interest continued.
Upon his return to New York he enrolled in an art class taught by Arshile Gorky, and from there devoted his life to painting. During the later 20’s he experimented with Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism before turning to Abstract Expressionism, which became his mature form of expression. Along with Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Barnett Newman, Rothko was a major figure of his era’s most important style of painting.
Rothko’s love of the theater informed his works throughout his life; he painted theatrical scenes, admired many playwrights, and referred to his paintings as “drama”, and his forms as “performers”. His experience painting stage sets in Portland may well have influenced the murals he designed years later for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in 1958, which are the murals he works on in Red.
About Lana Palmer. Lana Palmer is a director, actor and writer. She began her career working in on TV shows and feature films in her native Canada, and continues to work as a composer and sound designer. As a composer, her music is used on over 50 shows airing worldwide. She is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA, the Dramatists Guild, and the PlayGround Writers Pool.
About Giulio Perrone. Giulio Cesare Perrone is a playwright, set, and costume designer as well as a stage director. He began his career in his native Italy where he directed and designed mainly for the theatre. Since his arrival in the United States in 1995, he has directed and designed for both the theatre and opera. He was the recipient of a 2000 Pew National Artists Residency grant with Dell’Arte International for his adaptation of Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Giulio graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti “Brera” in Milan in 1988, designing 28 productions for Italy’s most important festivals, resident and touring companies as well as directing Mourning Becomes Electra, Pentesilea, and Andre’s Mother before moving to the United States in 1995. His American design debut was the Laguna Playhouse production of Goldoni’s The Liar, for which he won a Drama-Logue award.
Now a US resident, Giulio has over 200 theatre and opera productions to his credit. He has worked for theatres and opera companies including the San Diego Repertory Theatre, the Alley Theatre, the San Jose Repertory Theatre, Festival Opera, Dell’Arte International, the ACT Academy, Opera San Jose, Foghouse Productions, California Shakespeare Festival, TheatreWorks, A Travelling Jewish Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, and the Magic Theatre.
About Bruce Avery. Bruce Avery teaches Theatre Arts at San Francisco State University, where he has worked since 1994. He founded Bread & Butter Theatre Company in 2015, and has performed as Old Capulet in Romeo & Juliet, Polonius and Gravedigger in Hamlet, Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Dennis Shepard in The Laramie Project, among other roles. His directing credits include Venus in Fur, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and co-directing (with Bill Peters) The Laramie Project. Next fall he will direct Pericles, Prince of Tyre at SFSU.
About Nick Moore. Marin County actor Nick Moore has appeared in over sixteen productions in the Bay Area, including roles such as Theo in Everything That’s Beautiful at The New Conservatory Theatre Center, Craig/Grady in The Normal Heart at Theatre Rhinoceros, and Cleante in The Miser at Curtain Theatre. He has also appeared at The Marin Shakespeare Company and The Novato Theatre Company.
About Bread & Butter Theatre Company. Bread & Butter Theatre stages contemporary drama and Shakespeare in San Francisco, developing a company that pairs study in physical and devised theatre with grounding in the Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov acting techniques. Bread & Butter envisions physically exciting, visually stunning, lyrically moving performances of new work, modern classics, and Shakespeare.