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Edward Albee's Occupant was first produced by Signature as part of our 2000/01 Season. Below is an article from that time about the production.
Edward Albee's Occupant Continues Tenth Anniversary Celebration
Signature Theatre Company is pleased to welcome back 1993-94 Playwright-in-Residence and three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Albee with his newest play, Occupant. Signature's world premiere production of Occupant continues our Tenth Anniversary All-Premiere Celebration, presenting premieres from our past Playwrights-in-Residence. Occupant features Anne Bancroft as the famed American sculptor Louise Nevelson and Neal Huff as The Man.
Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), born Leah Berliawsky, immigrated from Russia to Rockland, Maine with her family in 1905 and married shipping magnate Charles Nevelson in 1920. She began exhibiting her work in the 1930s and became a major force in the modern art world throughout the mid and late-twentieth century, widely known for her abstract monochromatic wood "assemblages"-- large sculptures comprised of found objects and usually painted black, white, or gold. Her work has appeared in many museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Pace Gallery. She also received commissions for sculptures for many public locations including San Francisco's Embarcadero Center, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the James A. Byrne Federal Courthouse in Philadelphia. "Sky Gate, New York" was installed in the World Trade Center in 1978, and "Shadows and Flags," a series of seven large metal sculptures, was installed in the Legion Memorial Plaza near Wall Street, renamed Louise Nevelson Plaza-the first public place to be named after an artist in New York City. ("Sky Gate, New York" was destroyed in the September 11 attacks.)
Nevelson's persona was just as intriguing and celebrated as her work-she dressed rather dramatically and was immediately recognizable by a head scarf and two pair of sable eyelashes she always wore. Albee met Nevelson in the 1960s and the two remained friends until her death in 1988. "She fascinated me," he says. "Anybody who saw Nevelson parading down the street in one of her costumes wouldn't say, 'that is Nevelson,' but 'that is the Nevelson,'-- the work. She wasn't a shrinking violet! She was conscientious about making sure that we saw the two worlds [public and private] were the same thing."
Nevelson saw the original production of Albee's Tiny Alice in 1965 and was drawn to the play and its visual elements. (The play's setting is an oversized room in a castle with a model of the castle center stage, presumably with another model inside it and an infinite number of models inside each subsequent one.) "She had a very strong reaction and thought it related to what she was doing, probably to the oversized room and the model of the castle. I think she was interested in the fact, that related somewhat to herself I suppose, and to the Big Bang theory, oddly enough: that everything is in proportion to something infinitely larger and infinitely smaller than itself, and it is all circular."
Signature's production of Occupant features Anne Bancroft as Nevelson. Bancroft is known to audiences for her extensive career spanning almost sixty films including her Academy Award-winning performance in The Miracle Worker (1963), her portrayal of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967), The Turning Point (1977), Agnes of God (1985) and more recently Home for the Holidays (1995), GI Jane (1997), Great Expectations (1998), Up at the Villa (2000), and Keeping the Faith (2000). Her numerous stage credits include her Tony Award-winning Broadway debut opposite Henry Fonda in Two for the Seesaw; her Tony Award-winning portrayal of Anne Sullivan in The Miracle Worker; The Devils; Jerome Robbins' staging of Mother Courage; Mike Nichols' revival of The Little Foxes; and the title role in Golda which brought her a third Tony nomination. Occupant marks her return to the New York stage after a twenty-year absence.
Also appearing at Signature for the first time is Neal Huff, whose credits include Paul Rudnick's Rude Entertainment (Drama Dept.), Blue Window (Cellar Door/The Barrow Group) The Lion in Winter (Roundabout Theatre Company), and many others including productions at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Playwrights Horizons New York Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, Manhattan Class Company, Soho Rep, The Worth St. Theater and Williamstown Theatre Festival. At selected performances Kathleen Butler will portray Nevelson. Butler appeared in Signature's production of Albee's Marriage Play, and also the world premiere of that play directed by the playwright at Vienna's English Theatre and the Coconut Grove Playhouse. She originated the role of "B" in the world premiere of Three Tall Women, also directed by Edward Albee at Vienna's English Theatre and appeared in the New York, Chicago, and Houston productions.
Tony Award-winning Anthony Page directs, returning to New York for the first time since his acclaimed production of A Doll's House with Janet McTeer in 1997. As Artistic Director at the Royal Court for various periods between 1964 and 1973, Page directed the premieres of five John Osborne plays: Inadmissible Evidence; A Patriot for Me; Hotel in Amsterdam; Time Present; and West of Suez. Other West End productions include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, currently running at the Lyric; the Edward Albee double bill Marriage Play and Finding the Sun for the Royal National Theatre; and Albee's Three Tall Women and A Delicate Balance with Dame Maggie Smith. Page also directed the New York productions of Inadmissible Evidence on Broadway, The Caretaker at the Roundabout and Heartbreak House at Circle in the Square. His films include Inadmissible Evidence, Alpha Beta, Absolution and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. He has also directed many movies for television, including the 1994 mini-series adaptation of "Middlemarch."
Occupant's design team includes set designer Christine Jones (Signature's The Late Henry Moss, Enter the Night, Mud and Drowning, and When the World Was Green) whose recent work includes the off-Broadway productions of True Love, Nocturne, and The Green Bird on Broadway. Signature is pleased to welcome costume designer Jane Greenwood, whose extensive career spans Broadway, off-Broadway, dance, opera, and film, including the 1996 Broadway revival of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance. Recent work includes Major Barbara and The Dinner Party on Broadway. We welcome back lighting designer Patricia Collins (Signature's Thief River), whose work also includes A Delicate Balance and many other Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional productions. Her recent credits include Proof and Moon for the Misbegotten on Broadway.
Albee is happy to return to Signature, citing his 1993-1994 season with the company as a turning point in his career. "I was fortunate enough in a low point in my career to have the Signature Theatre present a full season of my work," he explains. "Not only was it an invaluable experience to have such a retrospective, but it also turned my career around and made people aware of what I had been doing while the New York eye was elsewhere." The season of all New York premieres included Marriage Play; a double bill of Counting the Ways and Listening; "Sand," an evening of the three plays Box, The Sandbox and Finding the Sun, and Fragments.
Albee adds that Occupant is about "Leah Berliawsky becoming Louise Nevelson," but also that "the play is less about Louise than it is about how we invent ourselves. How we invent, reinvent and create ourselves, and the difference between the private person and the public image. How we become that which, with any luck, we wish to become, whether that's wise or not. Many, many creative people do this. I am fascinated by the great difference between the public persona and the private."
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