The second week of REDCAT's New Original Works festival brings Robert Cucuzza's backwoods reinvention of August Strindberg's classic Miss Julie and choreographer Rosanna Gamson's take on the tale of Scheherazade.

Robert Cucuzza: Cattywampus

In this backwoods reinvention of August Strindberg’s classic Miss Julie, writer and director Robert Cucuzza hones an essential tale of class and power, and stages it in modern-day Appalachia. Cucuzza and his collaborators orchestrate a multidisciplinary approach highlighted by distinctly American forms—country-western music written and performed by Juli Crockett, line dancing choreographed by Jordana Che Toback—that binds Strindberg's characters, both the rich and the poor, by exposing their shared vulnerability in a time of economic collapse.

" ... a master of mayhem (albeit the downtown theater kind)." —The New York Times

Rosanna Gamson/World Wide: Layla Means Night

Serving up horrific melodrama as dance-theater divertissement, choreographer Rosanna Gamson and her company World Wide take on the tale of Scheherazade, the cunning bride from One Thousand and One Nights whose skills as a storyteller saved her from a murderous husband. Layla Means Night cleverly employs hyped-up spectacle, along with enticements, misdirections and artful games of smoke-and-mirrors, to craft an intricate exploration of violence, complicity and our insatiable desire to be entertained, set to a live score by master musicians Houman Pourmehdi and Pirayeh Pourafar.

"A confident choreographer deploying a full theatrical toolbox of movement, music, words and props..." —Los Angeles Times