The O’Neill National Theater Institute Presents WORKING ON LEFTY

Waterford CT, April 15, 2002 – The National Theater Institute (NTI) at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center will present two showings of a music theater work suggested by WAITING FOR LEFTY. The 1935 play by Clifford Odets, which focuses on a taxicab union strike, serves as a jumping–off point for other texts and music created and adapted by the 23 students of NTI’s Spring ’02 semester and presented as their final project. WORKING ON LEFTY will be performed at 8:00 p.m. in the Dina Merrill Theater on April 26 & 27. Admission is free and the public is welcome.

Each semester, the students at NTI spend ten days creating a “final project”. Chosen specifically for them, the project may be the presentation of an established piece, an adaptation of a literary work, or an original creation. The goal of this is to draw together the major elements of acting, movement, and voice they have learned. Recent NTI classes have created THE DREAM PROJECT, adapted Angela Carter’s novel NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS, and presented Tony Kushner’s ANGELS IN AMERICA: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES.

NTI Director David Jaffe said, “WAITING FOR LEFTY was chosen based on my observations of this semester’s students. The goal of the final project is to utilize their strengths as an ensemble and apply the skills they’ve learned in the past 14 weeks to uncharted territory. Odets’ play serves as a foundation for the exploration of their newfound ideas and abilities.”

NTI is an accredited training program for theater artists. The seven–day–a–week schedule includes classes in acting, directing, playwriting, movement, voice and design. This challenging, professional curriculum is enhanced by special workshops, guest artists and theater trips. Two weeks of the semester are spent abroad. In the past, NTI students have traveled to Stratford–upon–Avon to study with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Moscow to train with master teachers from the Moscow Art Theater School and the Vakhtangov School. In 1992 NTI began a collaborative relationship with the Moscow Art Theater (MXAT), offering a semester of study at MXAT in addition to its stateside program.

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, founded in 1964 and based in Waterford CT, is dedicated to the advancement of new work for the theater and creates and operates programs which complement that goal. These include the Puppetry Conference, Playwrights Conference, Critics Institute, Music Theater Conference and the National Theater Institute, a college–accredited training program for theater artists. The O’Neill also owns and operates the Monte Cristo Cottage, childhood home of America’s only Nobel Prize–winning playwright, Eugene O’Neill, and holds an annual celebration honoring the life and works of its namesake every October.

WORKING ON LEFTY may contain mature themes. For more information about the performance or NTI, call (860) 443–5378.