THE WILMA THEATER presents Amadeus, September 19 – October 27, 2007

THE WILMA THEATER presents
Amadeus
by Peter Shaffer
directed by Jiri Zizka
September 19 – October 27, 2007

PHILADELPHIA – The Wilma Theater is thrilled to open its 2007-2008 season with a uniquely Wilma staging of Peter Shaffer's Tony® Award-winning modern masterpiece, Amadeus, directed by Wilma Co-Artistic Director Jiri Zizka. This grand-scale production includes a cast of 18 New York and Philadelphia based actors and runs September 19th through October 27th, 2007. Tickets to Amadeus cost $37-$60 and are available by calling the Wilma Box Office at (215) 546-7824 or online at www.wilmatheater.org.

One of the most acclaimed and popular plays of the 20th Century, Amadeus has been honored with five Tony Awards®, eight Academy Awards®, extended London and Broadway runs, and sold-out performances when it was revived in the late 90s. The Wilma’s production utilizes a script that has been carefully scrutinized by the playwright and rewritten since its original Broadway and film successes. The play asks the question, “What happens when mediocrity recognizes itself in the face of genius – especially when genius comes in the form of a potty-mouthed former child prodigy?” Shaffer digs deeply into the psyche of court composer Antonio Salieri as he struggles with the growing genius of a younger Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As Salieri's jealousy builds, his relationship with Mozart becomes the battleground of the envious composer’s strife with God. This contemporary classic looks at this tortured relationship and the notion that divine greatness doesn't always fall to those society would consider worthy.

Creatively, Zizka asked his design team to “focus on the surreal and subjective aspects of Salieri's story. After all, he is the master storyteller who presents events only from his perspective,” he says. “Salieri conjures up his private audience of ghosts in an invocation, just like it is done in an opera. We approached the design and staging of this play as a thrilling combination of an opera and dream play. I wanted the evening to have a feeling of mystery, even hallucination, rather than that of a realistic and historical play. This is a play about shrouds of memory, sophisticated intrigue and intense feelings that only genius can arouse.”

Broadway veteran Dean Nolen and New York based actor Drew Hirshfield lead the cast as Salieri and Mozart. The balance of the cast includes: Richmond Hoxie as Count Franz Orsini-Rosenberg, Christian Kauffmann as Joseph II, Russell Leib – who performed in the original Broadway production of Amadeus and who portrays Baron Gottfried Van Swieten at the Wilma, Jered McLenigan and Peter Pryor as the Venticelli (“little winds”), Mary Rasmussen as Mozart’s wife Constanze, H. Michael Walls as Count Johann Kilian Von Strack, and nine other locally-based actors who portray the citizens of Vienna.

The creative team includes: set designer Robert Pyzocha, costume designer Janus Stefanowicz, lighting designer Jerold R. Forsyth, and sound designer Adam Wernick. Except for Wernick, Zizka has reunited the creative team that designed last season’s opening production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, which was recently nominated for six Barrymore Awards, including Best Overall Production of a Play. Wernick, who now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, returns to the Wilma after having worked on numerous Wilma productions since 1986. Most recently, he composed the music and sound design for The Wilma Theater's productions of Outrage and Indian Ink.

While not intended to be historically accurate, Amadeus is based on Shaffer's research of Mozart. At the time he wrote the first draft, Shaffer actively read the widely available biographies of Mozart but has stressed that he wrote a play, not history. “I’m not drawing my Mozart – it’s Salieri’s Mozart,” he said in a recent interview. Even so, noted Mozart scholar Neal Zaslaw (once dubbed “Mr. Mozart” by The New York Times) points out that “almost every important scene begins from an authentic historical document, after which Shaffer extemporizes, filling in gaps and imagining outcomes. This in effect replicates the process of old half-senile Salieri.”

Shaffer has consistently revisited the play, reworking the final encounter between Mozart and Salieri several times up until 1998. “These final revisions,” he wrote, 'represent a huge rethinking of the whole trajectory of action concerning Salieri’s growing guilt, which I had long wanted to explore in greater depth...” He went on to write about the advantages of “scrutinizing it through the glasses of Then and Now, as perspectives change and with them my own taste. Indeed, sometimes I wonder at those writers who display no desire to alter anything when work is revived.”

The Wilma’s production is based on the sixth and what Shaffer currently regards as the final draft. The Wilma last staged a Peter Shaffer work in the 2000-2001 season, when the theater produced Black Comedy.

The Wilma's 2007-2008 season is sponsored by The Sporting Club and Park Hyatt at the Bellevue, and WHYY.

Press Contact:
Canary Promotion + Design
Megan Wendell, megan@canarypromo.com
Carrie Gorn, carrie@canarypromo.com