July 21 at 7:30pm, July 22 at 7:30pm AND 9:30pm, July 23 at 9:30, July 24 at 7:30 * buy tickets at ps122.org *

Nu Classic Theater presents
Replikas of Apocalypsis Cum Figuris & The Constant Prince
This year marks the 50th anniversary since Jerzy Grotowski became the director of the Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole, and the 10th since his death.  In commemoration, NU Classic Theatre is presenting, a program of two fragments inspired by and leaning on the work of Grotowski and his actors.  Drawing on the print series by Albrecht Durer of the same name, Apocalypsis cum Figuris was Grotowski and his company's final professional production.  A collage of biblical, poetic, and other texts, our homage to this piece depicts seven monks and nuns who in a state of crisis enter into dialogue with seven angels.  Grotowski's production of Calderon de la Barca's The Constant Prince, which starred Ryszard Cieslak, was one of his most famous productions.  Here we present a fragment of Calderon's play, performed in a combination of English and the original Spanish, with an etude from Meyerhold's biomechanics called "The Fool".

Written by:: Calderon de la Barca, Ramon Lull, T.S.Eliot, St. John, Buddha, Barryman, C.S.Lewis, F.Kafka, Rumi, and Lou Reed
Directed by: Niky Wolcz
Performed by: Laura Butler, Sanam Erfani, Susan Hyon, Jon Froehlich, Kyle Knauf, Daniel Irizarry, David Skeist, Isaac Woofter.
Assistant Director: Brooke Leigh-Barefoot Bell

“This production of "The Constant Prince" is intense and powerful. It captures the essence of the famous Grotowski production, but its energetic physicality makes it clearly of our time. One comes away from it with an understanding of the spiritual aspect of the play, together with a dynamic theatricality.” -Arnold Aronson, Chair and Professor of the Theater department at Columbia University.- “I am familiar with the work of this group of passionate and talented actors, who are engaged, under the wise and skillful leadership of master teacher and brilliant director Niky Wolcz, to recreate the atmosphere of the Polish laboratory theater. It is true that Grotowski's work is unique and can not be repeated or reproduced by anyone else. But what these actors are doing is to try to understand concretely, in their own bodies, fragments of Grotowski's cosmic message. Their attempt is to modestly evoke, honor and celebrate the memory of his and of his actors work.” -Andrei Serban- “The directorial intention is admirably served by Daniel Irizarry, a total actor: ballet dancer, fighter, yogi, mime, dancer (the director’s mirror)- combining the body’s expression in psychological metamorphosis started by the top of tragic end.” -Carmen Firan, Rumania Libera Newspaper. The Constant Prince, NYC & Berlin.- “The Constant Prince is an intensely emotional exercise in ecstatic asceticism. This time we find ourselves in the realm of Grotowsky’s “poor theater”, where an extraordinarily gifted actor (Daniel Irizarry) displays a formidable physical and verbal intensity through movement, acrobatics and fanatical devotion to the spirit of the play.” -Peter Rado, Columbia University. The Constant Prince, NYC & Berlin.-

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About the company
NU Classic Theater is based on the deep conviction that out of studying theatrical practices and traditions arises the potential for revelation in the present – by looking back, we look forward. We choose texts that are in some way impossible; impossible because their meaning is obscure or their form is archaic. Our method is to solve these texts through the work of the actor. NU Classic Theater applies the techniques of Grotowski, Commedia dell’Arte, Meyerhold’s Biomechanics, Artaud, Delsartre, etc., to canonical texts in the hope of generating a unique and contemporary theatre rooted in the past.

Project History
The history of our current project is twofold. Our director was asked to prepare a program that would be the centerpiece of a dramaturgical symposium at Berlin’s Freie Universität on the work of the actor. His solution was to work with a group of his former students on a triptych of fragments that would test some of the central dramatic propositions – those of Delsarte, Artaud, Grotowski, and Meyerhold – as they applied to three somehow impossible texts – Gertrude Stein’s Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights, Calderon’s The Constant Prince, and Genet’s The Maids. The project was not simply aimed at applying these theories and realizing these texts, but engaging deliberately in the transmission of theatrical practice as it has occurred since Zeami, the Greeks, the Natyasastra through the practitioners mentioned above. This transmission – non-verbal, non-linear, mysterious and untranslatable – was connoted for us by the Japanese word Kuden and has remained beyond that project as the spine of our collective body.__The second trajectory for this project was our plan to mark the fiftieth year since the founding of Grotowski’s Theatre Laboratory at Opole and the tenth year since his death – also to honor the work of Ryszard Cieslak as we feel a company based on the work of the actor ought. We already had a response to The Constant Prince from our original Triptych, and our director, in looking for a companion fragment, looked to Apocalypsis Cum Figuris, the last full production Grotowski’s Theatre Laboratory created. In both fragments, we have tried not to mimic the work of the Theatre Laboratory, but to encounter the material guided by its principals.