The Orwell Project: Animal Farm & 1984, at Connelly Theater from 4 Feb 2004

Fri 9 Jan 2004 The Orwell Project: Animal Farm & 1984, at Connelly Theater from 4 Feb 2004 Synapse Productions presents The Orwell Project full Productions Of Orwell's Classics in Repertory from 4 Feb to 7 Mar 2004 at Connelly Theater, 220 East 4th Street (Off Broadway) Animal Farm by George Orwell, adapted by Peter Hall, with music by Richard Peaslee and lyrics by Adrian Mitchell. Directed by David Travis. The cast includes: Timothy McCracken (Snowball); Ben Masur (Squealer); Darius Stone (Napoleon); Scott Hitz (Dogs and Minimus); Connie Hall (Hens); Nelson Lugo (Sheep); Jenny Mercein (Mollie); Meg MacCary (Clover); Aaron Mostkoff Unger (Rat); Francis Kelly (Benjamin); Kelly McAllister (Boxer); Ceili Clemens (Cows) Animal Farm is a musical adaptation of Orwell's novel. Director David Travis will combine the idioms of vaudeville, children's musical theatre and satire to create a theatrical experience designed both to stimulate ideas as well as to entertain. Puppet designers Emily DeCola (from Pericles at the Culture Project) and Eric Wright will employ a full range of puppetry styles - including hand, stick-and-rod, bunraku and masks - to create an amazing array of visual perspectives, textures, comedy and terror. The cast of motley farm animals includes nesting hens, a herd of sheep and a pack of savage dogs all played by individual puppeteers; it also includes a diminutive stick-and-rod puppet rat that serves as narrator, as well as the seven-and-a-half foot high Boxer, an intrepid cart-horse. The Pigs, most human-like of all, are human-sized. 1984 by George Orwell, adaptation by Alan Lyddiard. Directed by Ginevra Bull, designed by Adrian Jones, lighting by Marcus Doshi. The cast includes: Joseph Culliton (O'Brien); Clayton Dean Smith (Winston); Evan Thompson (Charington); Chris Campbell (Julia); Kurt Elftmann (Syme) Orwell's magnum opus on the dehumanizing effects of technology and authoritarian government. Giving a fresh and provocative turn to this timely story, the show creates an explosive theatrical experience using a shifting landscape of two-story high video screens and dense sound design in a state-of-the-art experiment combining film, video and live theatre. Orwell's harrowing vision of society controlled through Newspeak, Doublethink and the ever-present, all-seeing Big Brother himself is dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century using break-neck visual theatre.