Release date: Feb. 28, 2003
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0644 or dhammac@emory.edu

Theater Emory Presents Woolf in SITI Co's "Room"

The late English writer Virginia Woolf is again at the forefront of arts and letters more than 60 years after her suicide in 1941, but this time because of the Hollywood film, "The Hours." Theater Emory offers yet another view of Woolf through a dramatic sampling of her lifetime writings, created by The SITI Company, featuring actress Ellen Lauren. "Room" will be presented in the Mary Gray Munroe Theater in the Dobbs Center, 605 Asbury Circle on the Emory campus. Shows are 8 p.m. March 21 and 22, and 3 p.m. March 23. A Performers Up Close discussion with artistic collaborators for "Room" will follow the March 22 performance. For tickets or information, call the Arts at Emory box office at 404-727-5050 or go to www.emory.edu/ARTS.

"Room" was created by The SITI Company (Saratoga International Theater Institute) and it is directed by Anne Bogart, co-founder and artistic director of the company. The text of the play is adapted for the stage by Jocelyn Clarke from Woolf's novels, memoirs and essays, including the feminist landmark, "A Room of One's Own," that asserted a woman writer needed her own money and her own space to effectively write fiction. "Room" was perhaps best described by New York Times critic Bruce Weber when he wrote last May that it "is not a biography, nor is it a conventional character study. Rather, as exemplified by Ellen Lauren's highly stylized performance as Woolf, it is a theatrical representation of the writer's mind, an abstraction painted with theater's animated tools."

"Virginia Woolf wrote with delicacy, humor, anger, outrage and passion from the point of view of a highly creative woman in the first half of the 20th century. 'Room' is an adaptation of her notions into the 21st century," says Bogart. "Her issues are still contemporary. Ellen Lauren portrays a modern-day woman, an artist, in the pressure cooker of articulation."

"Room" is a carefully choreographed collaboration between Clarke's text presented by Lauren and the sound design of Darron L. West, the lighting of Christopher Akerlind and the set design of Neil Patel. The synchronicity of the elements creates an exhilarating tribute and inspiration to creativity.

Commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University and City Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pa., "Room" had its world premiere in November 2000. The ensemble-based SITI Company maintains ongoing relationships with a number of theaters and universities, among them Theater Emory, the university's resident professional theater company. Theater Emory's relationship with SITI Company dates to the companies' collaboration for the Cultural Olympiad of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, where SITI Company performed "Small Lives/Big Dreams" as the second performance of the Olympic Arts Festival and offered master classes to theater professionals and a handful of Emory students.

The SITI Company, now in its 11th year, began as an agreement between Tadashi Suzuki and Anne Bogart to establish a new venture in the United States that would emphasize international cultural exchange and collaboration. The company is known for its kinetic, highly physical style of performance. Originally envisioned as a summer institute in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., SITI grew quickly into a year-round theater company based in New York City.

Tickets for "Room" are $25 general admission; $22.50 for seniors; $20 Emory faculty, staff, and ArtsCard holders; $10 Emory students with i.d. (limit two per i.d.). For tickets and information, call 404-727-5050.

"Room" is part of the university's Candler Series and part of "Contemporary Arts Weekend at Emory," a weekend of new and recent work and Atlanta premieres in dance, music, theater and visual art.

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