Rob Melrose

Photos by Rob Melrose

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY: A TRAGEDY - THE CUTTING BALL THEATER

Director • Translator • Playwright     

"The Cutting Ball Theater presents Heiner Muller's Hamletmachine and Vladimir Mayakovsky's Mayakovsky: A Tragedy in a double bill of apocalyptic plays called The End of the World as We Know It. Heiner Muller's devastating Hamletmachine was written in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It foretells the end of history and uses the character of Hamlet to look back on the nightmare of the 20th Century. Written by Russian Futurist Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, Mayakovsky: A Tragedy is an explosive, surrealistic exploration of the poet's fevered mind on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Cutting Ball Theater uses these plays, written during major economic and political revolutions, as a lens to look at our own revolutionary time as the new millennium brings us globalization, cyber-culture, and the increased presence of Orwellian multi-national corporations."

-theatermania


Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy
by Vladimir Mayakovsky
translated by Paul Schmidt
The Cutting Ball Theater
Rob Melrose, Artistic Director
August 8 - 20, 2000

Directed by Rob Melrose
Set Design by Rob Melrose
Costume Design by Amsel Zivkovich
Lighting Design by Rob Melrose
Projection Design by Rob Melrose and Michael Ferris Gibson

Cast

Vladimir Vladimirovich MayakovskyNathan Aaron Place
An old man with scrawny black catsDavid Austin-Gröen
A woman with one earElise Langer
A man with a long faceGabriel Diamond
An enormous womanAdriana Baer / Lara Mathers
An ordinary young manMichael Ferris Gibson
A woman with one eye and one legElizabeth Bullard
A woman who cries ordinary tearsMeara O'Reilly
A woman who cries little tiny earsElise Langer
A woman who cries great big tearsAdriana Baer / Lara Mathers
A man with two kissesGabriel Diamond
A rich lady who never says a thingKris Wasley