Macbeth
Third World Bunfight
Concept, Design, and Direction by Brett Bailey
Experience the U.S. Premiere of this radical and innovative live opera with Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Friday & Saturday
September
16 & 17
2016
@8:00 p.m.
$65, $55 | $5 Fairfield University Students
QCA Member Price: $42
“There can be no denying the power and originality of this astonishing appropriation of Verdi’s Macbeth”
– THE TELEGRAPH, LONDON
In 2016 the world will commemorate 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare. This special anniversary presents a truly unique opportunity to visit Shakespeare on stage at the Quick. Join us to celebrate the Bard's lasting legacy in this radical take on Verdi’s Macbeth.
Shakespeare’s story of ambition, treachery and witchcraft is set in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, amongst the wars and ruthless exploitation that tear that invisible corner of the world apart. Within a milieu of multinational double-dealings, ethnic conflict, brutal militia, ‘blood minerals’ and glittering Chinese imports, a Congolese warlord and his ambitious wife murder their leader and unleash atrocities on the crumbling African province that they seize.
Under the artistic direction of Brett Bailey, Third World Bunfight is a performance company whose works foreground issues, stories and situations that are all too often overlooked, suppressed or ignored, and unpack and expose the machinations of power that crush so many people or render them voiceless.
In 2014 Third World Bunfight took Macbeth on a four continent tour visiting over 20 cities including Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Strasbourg, Brisbane, Douai, and Buenos Aires. The Quick Center is collaborating with the renowned Philadelphia Fringe Festival to bring this acclaimed work to the U.S. and we are honored to be the first to offer this work to American audiences.
Experience the Production
Get To Know The Artists
Behind the Scenes with the Brett Bailey and the Actors:
Brett Bailey (Director) is a playwright, designer, play director, festival curator and the artistic director of THIRD WORLD BUNFIGHT. He has worked throughout South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Haiti, the UK and Europe. His acclaimed iconoclastic dramas interrogate the dynamics of the post-colonial world, and include BIG DADA, IPI ZOMBI?, iMUMBO JUMBO and ORFEUS.
His performance installations include BLOOD DIAMONDS: TERMINAL and EXHIBIT B.
Bailey directed the opening show at the World Summit on Arts and Culture in Johannesburg (2009), and from 2006-2009 the opening shows at the Harare International Festival of the Arts. He was the curator of South Africa’s only public arts festival, Infecting the City, in Cape Town from 2008 to 2011.
His works have played across Europe, Australia and Africa, and have won several awards, including a gold medal for design at the Prague Quadrennial (2007). He sits on the Drama selection committee for the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa and he delivered the International Theatre Institute – Theatre Day – message at UNESCO last year.
For this performance, Verdi’s MACBETH performed live on the Quick Center stage has been rearranged for ten singers and twelve musicians by Fabrizio Cassol, who has a strong interest in world music, inspired by time spent with the Aka, a nomadic Mbenga pygmy people who live in the Central African Republic.
Premil Petrović (Conductor) is initiator, chief conductor and artistic director of the No Borders Orchestra. In 1996 Premil founded the music theater in Cinema REX - one of Belgrade’s most important, politically active venues of the 1990s. Premil is one of the leading personalities in the music scene of his native Serbia.
In 2014 he worked with South African director Brett Bailey on the new postcolonial production of Verdi’s Macbeth. Since 2014 the opera has been performed at some of the most important festivals in Europe, and received rave reviews at Wiener Festwochen in Vienna, Festival d´Automne in Paris, Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, and the Barbican in London, among others.
Owen Metsileng (Macbeth) was born in 1987 in a village called Manamakgotha in Rustenburg, South Africa. He comes from a musical family and started singing at an early age in church and school choirs. Owen was a member of the Black Tie Ensemble from 2006 to 2008 and joined the Cape Town Opera Studio in 2010. During his time at the Cape Town Opera he performed as Le Dancaïre in Carmen and Barone Douphol in La Traviata, Marcello in La Bohème, and Jake in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess on a UK Tour.
Nobulumko Mngxekeza (Lady Macbeth), born in Queenstown, was introduced to music when she joined her high school choir at Kwa-Komani High. In her young career she has performed in Carmen as Micaella, as Bess in Porgy and Bess, as Pamina in Der Zaubeflute, as Anna in Nabucco—as well in Rusalko and I’ll Mulatto. Nobulumko has worked for Isango Ensemble where she performed in Impempe Yomlingo (The Magic Flute), Abanxaxhi (La Boheme), Aesop’s Fables and Ragged Trouser Philanthropist.
Otto Maidi (Banquo) began singing at a tender age of eight in his church and grade schools. In 1996 Otto joined the Pretoria State Theatre Chorus and the Pro Musica Opera Chorus. He went on to sing Sacristan in Tosca, Bonzo in Madam Butterfly, Colline in La Boheme, Peter in Hansel and Gretel, Crown in Porgy and Bess, Olin Blitch in Susannah, Ramfis in Aida, Vodnick in Rusalka, Dulcamara in L’Elisir d’amore and a highly acclaimed Joe in Show Boat. Otto sang with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, the Turtle Creek Chorale (Dallas, Texas) as well as the Meadows Symphony Orchestra.
Engaging Events
Join us to be a part of these great, FREE programs that inform and engage with a behind-the-scenes look at the artists and performers offering new and insightful snippets of their work.
Explore Macbeth with a list of artist talks, lectures and panel discussions surrounding this production. FREE and open to the public.
September 14, 12 P.M. — 1 P.M., The Quick
Panel Discussion
Verdi's Macbeth – an in-depth look at the score and performance of Verdi's Macbeth with Conductor Premil Petrovic, Classical expert Orin Grossman and members of the cast.
RSVP by emailing the boxoffice at boxoffice@quickcenter.com
September 14, 5 P.M. Walsh Art Gallery at The Quick
Artist Talk
Artist Talk with Rick Shaefer and innovative South African playwright Brett Bailey, whose new work in progress, SANCTUARY, which will focus a wide lens on the refugee crisis currently playing out in many countries in North Africa. Moderated by Peter Van Heerden. FREE and open to the public but pre-registration is requested.
September 15, 5 P.M. – The Quick
Artist Talk
Macbeth and Third World Bunfight’s Place in the Global Arena with Artistic Director Brett Bailey and Fairfield professors Dr. Terry-Ann Jones and Dr. Martha S. LoMonaco. Moderated by Peter Van Heerden.
RSVP by emailing the boxoffice at boxoffice@quickcenter.com
Sept. 17, 7 P.M. - 7:45 P.M. Wien Theatre at The Quick
Macbeth Performance Pre–talk
Tales of darkness shot through with light: Brett Bailey and Third World Bunfight
-Dr. Megan Lewis, assistant professor of theater history and criticism, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Dept of Theater.
RSVP by emailing the boxoffice at boxoffice@quickcenter.com
See Production Photos:
Macbeth Buzz:
Listen to Third World Bunfight's Artistic Director Brett Bailey on WPKN →
Verdi's Macbeth Reimagined in the Democratic Republic of Congo Comes to Fairfield →
'Macbeth' opera coming to Quick Center →
Ink CT: Finer Living In Connecticut. Macbeth at Fairfield University →
Brett Bailey’s Macbeth makes its U.S. premiere at The Quick Center for the Arts →
Hartford Courant: Quick Center Announces New Season →
Quick Center for the Arts gears up for strong season →
Further Reading:
Macbeth, Barbican, Review: ‘An Astonishing Appropriation’ by Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph
Excerpt: The performance is highly stylized, as everyone sings in Italian (with surtitles in a demotic English) and moves with choreographed precision in front of a screen on to which graphic images and contextualizing photographs and texts are projected. The borders between objectively verifiable fact and subjectively imaginative fiction seem irrelevant.
Can Opera Become an Agent of Change? By Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
For centuries, opera has been a tool of power, a spectacle developed and organized by influential Western nations and the elites within them. It is long past time for the art form to be more open about this heritage, and to make reparations for it. Using opera to understand the connections between cultures and to experiment with what can bridge them is no longer merely an aesthetic possibility; it’s a moral necessity.
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