The Memorandum: TACT announces cast

TACT/The Actors Company Theatre have announced the complete cast for Václav Havel's comedy, The Memorandum, directed by Jenn Thompson, the first production of the company's 2010/11 season.

The Memorandum opens at Theatre Row's Beckett Theatre on 4 Nov 2010, following previews from 25 Oct and runs through to 27 Nov 2010.

The cast of The Memorandum includes TACT Company Members Mark Alhadeff, Jeffrey C. Hawkins, Simon Jones, John Plumpis, Gregory Salata, Lynn Wright and guest artists Nilanjana Bose, Trent Dawson and Kate Levy.

The creative team is comprised of Adrian W. Jones (sets), David Toser (costumes), Philip S. Rosenberg (lights) and Stephen Kunken (sound).

In The Memorandum, playwright, former political prisoner, and the first president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, gives us a satire of bureaucracy gone mad. When the managing director of an enormous organization discovers that all office communications are suddenly being written in "Ptydepe," a newly invented and impossibly complicated language, his attempts to get one memo translated lead him through an increasingly ridiculous maze of red tape.

Havel began writing The Memorandum as early as 1960. Rewritten many times over the next few years, it became the second of Havel's plays produced at Prague's Theatre of the Balustrade, where he was then literary manager. The play had its American premiere in 1968 as part of Joseph Papp's inaugural season at The Public Theatre winning an Obie Award for Best Foreign Play.

First produced in London in 1977 (and revived in 1995), The Memorandum has been presented regularly around the world. TACT is staging the first major Off Broadway revival in over 40 years.