KNOXVILLE’s first draft received a staged reading in New York City in December 2018. "And after two years of isolation and uncertainty, it’s a joy to return to a show that has so much to do with community and connection.” “The novel has been a wellspring of inspiration,” Ahrens said. “Actors often play instruments throughout the evening, supporting one another both musically and emotionally.”Īhrens’s lyrics reflect and amplify the poetry and mystery of Agee’s prose. “I tried to create a very American sound that had elements of folk and country – music that could have been presented at home in a casual, intimate way,” he said. Flaherty tapped into the story’s history and setting. It revives in your mind what it felt like to be six years old.”įlaherty and Ahrens were also inspired by Agee’s prose.
ILLUMINATIONS KNOXVILLE SERIES
“When you read Agee’s work, you retrieve the series of crises of the heart and faith that are universal. “The story throws us back to the turn of the century and World War I, but it’s sown in the field of 1950s anxiety,” said Galati, who first encountered the book in college in the 1960s and revisited it again six years ago. The show was initially set to premiere in April 2020 but was delayed by the pandemic. Asolo Rep commissioned the project starting in 2018 and hosted a developmental workshop in June 2019, in addition to producing the world premiere. Galati adapted the book, with music by Flaherty and lyrics by Ahrens. He thinks, ‘Maybe by telling my story, I can find out who I am.’”
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“Our musical begins in 1955 in the Author’s workshop. “Agee ‘writes’ the story as the audience experiences it,” Galati said.
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With a sweeping musical score and an extraordinary creative team and cast, this moving and innovative world premiere is a must-see event. A powerful illumination of the forces that shape who we are, KNOXVILLE is a universal coming-of-age story about family, faith and love – and about the boy who will grow up to write it. Now is the time we need the spiritual, moral and artistic guidance of this great trio of American artists – Frank Galati, Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens."īased on James Agee’s autobiographical, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Death in the Family, the story begins as Agee struggles to write his greatest work – about the event that touched his young life and the effect it had on his mother, his town and his own future. “I’m so proud of our contributions to its development. “ KNOXVILLE is a tremendous achievement and a great moment of theatrical artistry,” said Asolo Rep Producing Artistic Director Michael Donald Edwards. The world premiere of KNOXVILLE is made possible by a generous grant from The Roy Cockrum Foundation.
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KNOXVILLE begins previews on April 15, opens on April 23, and runs through May 11, in the Mertz Theatre, located in the FSU Center for the Performing Arts. Galati, an Asolo Rep Associate Artist, also directs the production. The project reunites Frank Galati, Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, the Tony Award ®-winning creative team behind Broadway’s Ragtime.
ILLUMINATIONS KNOXVILLE FULL
(SARASOTA, FLA) - Asolo Repertory Theatre proudly announces full casting for the world premiere of the new musical KNOXVILLE. Paul Daniel wraps Barber's instrumental lines around her voice with perfect tact, while in the Britten there's youthful energy and intensity in every phrase.Book by Frank Galati Music by Stephen Flaherty Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens Based on the novel A Death in the Family by James Ageeīased, in part, on the play All the Way Home by Tad Mosel Directed by Frank Galati It's the least convincing of her three performances, for in both Samuel Barber's rapt, nostalgia-drenched setting of James Agee's text in Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and in Britten's treatment of Rimbaud in Les Illuminations, Gillet shows exactly why she has become such a favourite in French and Belgian opera houses. Though her performance has some striking moments when the strikingly distinctive timbre of her voice does Berlioz's lines very effectively, they are outweighed by those when a weightier voice than hers would have given the music more point and character. Les Nuits d'Eté is generally regarded as the province of mezzo sopranos, and in an interview included in the sleeve notes Gillet admits that taking on Berlioz's great song-cycle was a bit of a challenge. B elgian soprano Anne-Catherine Gillet certainly doesn't play safe on her first solo disc.