Studio’s production of Invisible Man marks the first time the Ralph and Fanny Ellison Trust has authorized an adaptation of any of Ellison’s work. Literary Director Adrien-Alice Hansel spoke with John Callahan, Ellison’s Literary Executor, about his decision to allow Oren Jacoby to adapt this landmark novel, how the stage and literary versions differ, and his reflections on the relevance of Invisible Man 60 years after its publication.

When did you first meet Oren Jacoby? Why did you encourage him to pursue his adaptation of Invisible Man?

I met Oren in 1996, when we were collaborating on a movie project that ultimately didn’t go anywhere. Working together, I was impressed with his conscientiousness. He’s an easy-going guy who has very strong passions. In the course of our conversations I realized how much he loved Ellison’s work. At some point he broached it. Oren was serious about it, the book meant a great deal to him; he’d thought a great deal about it. I respected his work. There was a wariness, but ultimately we thought, ‘What the hell? We have approval rights, so let’s see what he can do.’

Oren’s put the script through any number of drafts since he’s started. I think the key point came when [director] Christopher McElroern got wind of it and got in touch with Oren, which is when we three met to see how we could work together.

Can you talk about the adaptation and staging process? What advice did you find yourself giving?

Ralph had two books over his desk in easy reach. The first was this great big Webster dictionary. The second was Shakespeare’s collected works.

It’s a tricky proposition, this novel, because it’s a novel of meditation as well as action. So when we were in the thick of it, I’d remember the books over Ellison’s desk. All of Shakespeare’s major characters, particularly Hamlet, melded soliloquies with action—sometimes violent and brutal action.

An adaptation has a lot to balance—there’s tracking Invisible Man’s journey towards his identity and capturing all the different styles the novel was written in, as well as respecting the book’s ironic quality. One thing that made it possible to do this—and do it well—is Ralph’s enormous skill at putting the oral tradition in the book. The book is a kind of call and response between Ralph Ellison and his readers. And within the book, a call and response between Invisible Man and the ensemble, the folk. These relationships with ordinary folks really drive Invisible Man—as a character, as a narrator, and as a person who’s coming into himself.

Has watching this script and production take shape given you insight into anything in the book?

I have known this novel—read it, written about it, taught it, and written about it again—for years. But I’ve always known it as a novel, as a literary piece of work. So I’ve learned a lot about the elasticity of drama and had a chance to loosen up a little along the way.

When I think about this journey, I’m left with gratitude for what I’ve learned—from [the adaptor] Oren, from [the director] Christopher, and from [the lead actor] Teagle. I learned a great bit about Invisible Man from Teagle, particularly about the character’s journey from a thinker to an actor, somebody who has an actual role in life, in history.

Why do you think, in its 60^th year, Invisible Man has remained such an enduring classic of American literature?

One of the things that became very clear during the production at Court Theatre is that this book is alive. Ellison’s metaphor is being put through another guise at this moment, and it’s very, very exciting to have Studio produce this play now, in DC, during the re-election campaign of our first black president now.

The book pivots on Invisible Man’s insistence on the condition of invisibility, on how it can be both liberating and incredibly constricting for human beings. And it lives in conversation with Ellison’s belief in the principle—the American principle, the principle of freedom that has to be reflected by a commitment to equality.

I was in Oregon on election night in 2008, a night I never thought I would live to see.  On my way home from a party something compelled me to drive through downtown Portland.  As I got closer to Pioneer Square, I began to hear a hum.  A block or two away I parked my car and walked.  Gradually I realized that some ten to fifteen thousand people were holding candles and singing the national anthem, and thought, “My God, we have got ourselves a different country.”

I forgot about the boomerang of history in Ellison’s novel.  I forgot about the stubbornness of invisibility.  We now know that immediately a conversation started in Washington and around the country that the President was foreign, that there was something alien about him and everything he was doing.  And I had to remember that history doesn’t move in a simple, straightforward way.  As Ralph Ellison wrote in Invisible Man, history is more often a spiral.

In a way, Invisible Man feels more immediately relevant than it did maybe ten years ago. We’re in the crucible right now in this country, and Ellison’s novel gives us a way to think about it more clearly.

For me, this whole experience has given me a new way to see Invisible Man. You go along, you teach the book…I had forgotten the enormous appeal of Ellison’s novel, what he was trying to sort out about the American condition, being human in the United States. I was moved by how personally people connect to this, particularly when I heard that Invisible Man is the novel a young “Barry” Barack Obama turned to when he was trying to sort out who he was as a black American.

Teagle F. Bougere (Invisible Man) comes to Studio Theatre having just played the title role in Macbeth, co-directed by Jim Calder and Mark Wing-Davey, for the Continuum Company in Florence, Italy. His Broadway appearances include A Raisin in The Sun as Asaagai and The Tempest as Caliban. His Off-Broadway work includes A Soldier’s Play and Wings at Second Stage Theater; Henry V, Antony and Cleopatra with Vanessa Redgrave, Timon Of Athens, Macbeth, and Space at the Public Theater/NY Shakespeare Festival, A Fair Country at Lincoln Center Theater, A Last Dance For Sybill with Ruby Dee at New Federal Theater. Locally, Mr. Bougere has performed in Othello and The Merchant of Venice at The Shakespeare Theater Company and in more than 30 productions at Arena Stage while a member of the resident acting company from 1990 to 1995. His regional work includes Clybourne Park and Of Mice and Men at Seattle Repertory Theater; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and Blue Door, both directed by Delroy Lindo, at Berkeley Repertory Theater; The Good Negro at The Goodman Theatre; Gee’s Bend at Hartford Stage; and Blue/Orange at the Old Globe Theater. Mr. Bougere’s film work includes Hill and Gully (2013 release), A Night at the Museum, The Imposters, The Pelican Brief, Two Weeks Notice, and What The Deaf Man Heard. He has been seen on television in A Gifted Man, The Big C, Cosby, Conviction, Third Watch, The Job, Murder in Black and White, and several episodes of Law & Order.

McKinley Belcher III (Trueblood, Ras, Ensemble) has appeared in As You Like It at Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, the world premiere adaptation Macbeth 1969 at Long Wharf Theatre, To Kill a Mockingbird at Bay Street Theatre, Medal of Honor Rag at Shadowland Theatre, The Merchant of Venice at Kingsmen Shakespeare Company, Victor Woo at the Village Theatre/NY Fringe Festival, and The Wiz at True Colors Theatre Company, among others. Mr. Belcher’s television credits include Louie on FX, Rizzoli & Isles on TNT, and Law & Order: LA on NBC. His film credits include Ricky and John Sayles’ next independent feature film Go For Sisters (2013 release). Mr. Belcher is a graduate of USC’s Graduate Acting Program, where he won the Ava Greenwald Award.

Brian D. Coats (Grandfather, Burnside, Peter Wheatstraw, Ensemble) has been seen in New York in On The Levee at Lincoln Center Theater/ LCT3, Mongo and La Ruta at Working Theater, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Public Theater/NY Shakespeare Festival, Puddn’head Wilson for The Acting Company, The Bereaved for Partial Comfort Productions, Woza Albert! at Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education, and several productions with Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood Festival. His regional credits include the Southeast premiere of Clybourne Park at the Caldwell Theatre Company, Fences and A Raisin in the Sun at Geva Theatre Center, and Distant Fires at People’s Light and Theater Company, for which he won a Barrymore Theatre Award.  Mr. Coats’s television and film credits include Friendship! from Sony Pictures International, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, JAG, Big Lake (Comedy Central), How to Make it in America, The Sopranos, Blue Bloods (upcoming), and the short film For Flow (HBO Zone). Mr. Coats is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Johnny Lee Davenport (Preacher, Bledsoe, Brockway, Ensemble) has performed in 115 plays in 15 states and four countries over the course of his stage career. His DC credits include The Oedipus Plays with The Shakespeare Theatre Company, which traveled to the Athens Festival. Recent credits include Master Harold . . . and the boys with Gloucester Stage Company, The Tempest (Prospero) and Othello (title role) with Tennessee Shakespeare Co., Broke-ology with Lyric Stage Company (Elliot Norton Award, BroadwayWorld Boston Award), Neighbors with Company One (BroadwayWorld Boston Award), Vengeance Is the Lord’s with Huntington Theatre Company (IRNE nomination). His film credits include Ted, The Fugitive, and U.S. Marshals. Mr. Davenport has played more than 50 roles in 22 of Shakespeare’s plays and hopes to complete the canon. For his body of work during the 2010-2011 season, he was named Best Actor in Boston Magazine.

De’Lon Grant (Ralston, Tod Clifton, Ensemble) has been seen around the country in Troilus and Cressida and Cymbeline at Actors’ Shakespeare Project; Big River, Superior Donuts, and 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at The Lyric Stage Company; Passing Strange, Dessa Rose, and The World Goes Round at New Repertory Theatre; Big River and Richard III at The Arkansas Shakespeare Festival; and Rent at The Roxy Regional Theatre, among others. Mr. Grant’s film credits include Surrogates and Silver Circle.

Edward James Hyland (Mr. Norton, Brother Hambro, Ensemble) appeared with Lorna Luft last winter in White Christmas at the Paper Mill Playhouse. He has been seen on Broadway in Arcadia, The Man Who Had All the Luck, Feste, The Price, and Ah, Wilderness. His Off Broadway credits include Big Doolie and Juno and the Paycock. Locally, Mr. Hyland has appeared in The Heavens Are Hung in Black at Ford’s Theatre, Passion Play and Theophilus North at Arena Stage, and Macbeth at The Shakespeare Theatre Company. His regional work includes Much Ado About Nothing, Mary Stuart, The Tempest, Oedipus the King, and Electra at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, as well as productions at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Huntington Theatre, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Missouri Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Hartford Stage, and Alabama Shakespeare Festival, among others. He recently appeared with Susan Sarandon in her new series Political Animals. His other film and television work includes The Happening, The Caller, Asylum Seekers, The Next Big Thing, The Cradle Will Rock, Law & Order, Gossip Girl, Guiding Light, and One Life to Live.

Joy Jones (Slave Girl, Mattie-Lou, Old Woman, Ensemble) has performed locally at the Washington Stage Guild, Theatre of the First Amendment and American Century Theatre. In New York, she has performed in Zaide at the Lincoln Center Festival, among others. Ms. Jones’s regional acting credits include Ruined and Tantalus at The Denver Center; Well, The Little Prince, Young Lady From Rwanda, Pride & Prejudice, Nicholas Nickleby, Pericles, and Romeo and Juliet at PlayMakers Repertory Company; Romeo & Juliet and The Tempest at Arkansas Repertory Theatre, as well as work at Georgia Repertory Theatre, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, and others. Internationally, she appeared in Tantalus with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her television credits include Homicide on NBC, and Tantalus and The Shakespeare Sessions on PBS. Ms. Jones holds an MFA from UNC-Chapel Hill/PlayMakers Repertory, a BA in Drama from the University of Virginia, and a Certificate in Classical Acting from the British American Drama Academy.

Jeremiah Kissel (MC, Emerson Jr., Brother Jack, Ensemble) credits include The Cherry Orchard, The Sisters Rosensweig, Circle Mirror Transformation, at Huntington Theatre Company; Henry V, The Accident, and Three Farces & A Funeral at American Repertory Theater; Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and The Tempest for Commonwealth Shakespeare; The Scene, Time Stands Still, and Noises Off at Lyric Stage Company; Hard Times at New Rep; Little Black Dress Mortal Terror at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. He is also a multi-year veteran of Shear Madness in Boston, appears as guest narrator with The Boston Pops, and can be heard on WGBH-produced installments of NOVA and Frontline. His recent film and television credits include The Town, The Fighter, and ABC’s Body of Proof. He has won several Norton and Irne awards, and is the recipient of The 2003 Eliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence.

Deidra LaWan Starnes (Singer, Kate, Mary Rambo, Ensemble) has previously appeared at The Studio Theatre in Passing Strange, In the Red and Brown Water, Radio Golf, The Old Settler, and Seven Guitars. Other area productions include Blood Wedding at Constellation Theatre; Charlotte’s Web at Adventure Theatre (People’s Choice Award from DC Theatre Scene); 24, 7, 365 at Theatre of the First Amendment; In Darfur at Theatre J; Lysistrata in a co-production between Synetic Theatre and Georgetown University; King Lear at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre; Intimate Apparel (Helen Hayes Award), A Raisin in the Sun, The Gingham Dog, I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document…, Two Trains Running, Personal History, and Spunk at African Continuum Theatre; The Violet Hour and Anna Lucasta at Rep Stage; Blues for an Alabama Sky at Everyman Theatre; Hurly Burly at Woolly Mammoth; and A Raisin in the Sun, Doubt, and Stuff Happens at Olney Theatre Center. Regionally, Ms. Starnes has been seen in The Old Settler at Portland Center Stage and for colored girls who have considered suicide… at New Federal Theatre, for which she received an AUDELCO Award. Her television and film credits include Nocturnal Agony, Ladder 49, and America’s Most Wanted. She received her BA in Theatre from the University of Maryland and her MFA in Drama from The University of Connecticut.

Julia Watt (Stripper, Emma, Woman in Red, Ensemble) returns to the cast of Invisible Man having appeared in the world premiere production at Court Theatre in Chicago. Her regional credits include The Master Builder, Othello, The Wild Duck, and Love’s Labour’s Lost at A Noise Within, Los Angeles; How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, The Tempest, and 1940’s Radio Hour at PCPA Theaterfest; Man of LaMancha at Sierra Repertory; and A, My Name is Alice at Oregon Cabaret Theatre. As a company member for three seasons at The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Ms. Watt  appeared in Titus Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, Noises Off, Disguises, Beauty and the Beast and The Secret Garden. She is a founding member of The American Vicarious, whose production of Living in Exile performed at The Public Theater’s 2011 Under the Radar Festival. She will appear in the upcoming film, Gertrude Stein’s: Brewsie and Willie. Ms. Watt holds an MFA from The Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

Adaptor, Director and Designers

Oren Jacoby (Adaptor) is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. Among the documentaries he has written, produced, and directed are The Second Russian Revolution, The Shakespeare Sessions, Topdog Diaries, Constantine’s Sword with James Carroll, and Sister Rose’s Passion, which was nominated for an Academy Award. His comedy short “The Last Girl on Earth” was commissioned by the Tribeca Film Festival. Mr. Jacoby has directed plays by Moliere, Chekhov, Pirandello and new works by Quincy Long, Richard Dresser, and Franz Xavier Kroetz at venues including: Theater for the New City, the Williamstown Theater Festival, WestBeth Theater and Ensemble Studio Theater. Mr. Jacoby’s adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man premiered at Chicago’s Court Theatre. He is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama and lives in New York with his wife and daughter.

Christopher McElroen (Direction) is a New-York based producer and director. He co-founded the Classical Theatre of Harlem (named “1 of 8 Theatres in America to Watch” by the Drama League) where between 1999 and 2009 he produced 41 productions that yielded 18 AUDELCO Awards, six Obie Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and a Drama Desk Award. He has directed over thirty productions including The Cherry Orchard, an original adaptation of Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, Marat/Sade, The Blacks: A Clown Show (four 2003 Obie Awards, one of the ten best Off Broadway productions of 2003 by The New York Times), and the world premiere of 51st (dream) State, the final work of poet, musician, and activist Sekou Sundiata (BAM’s Next Wave Festival, international tour). Alongside visual artist Paul Chan and Creative Time, Mr. McElroen co-produced and directed Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, a community development through the arts initiative that staged Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot outdoors in the Lower Ninth Ward and Gentilly communities of post-Katrina New Orleans (New York Times Top 10 national art events of 2007). The production archives are now part of the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and were exhibited from May 2010 through September 2011. He has directed at Court Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Walker Arts Center, The Museum of Modern Art, MASS MoCA, and The Contemporary Arts Center Boston, among many others. His work has been recognized with the American Theatre Wing Award (Outstanding Artistic Achievement), Drama Desk Award (Artistic Achievement), Edwin Booth Award (Outstanding Contribution to NYC Theatre), Lucille Lortel Award (Outstanding Body of Work), and two Obie Awards (Sustained Achievement and Excellence in Theatre).

Troy Hourie (Setting) has designed over 275 productions for various Off Broadway, regional, and opera companies across the United States. His work has been seen in New York at The New Victory, New York Theatre Workshop, Cherry Lane Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Classical Theatre of Harlem (resident designer for 22 productions), Epic Theatre Ensemble, and Juilliard, among others. Regionally, Mr. Hourie has designed at The Guthrie, Bay Street Theatre, Westport Country Playhouse, New York Stage and Film, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Court Theatre, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Syracuse Stage, Studio Arena Theatre, Geva Theatre Center, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Pioneer Theatre, and Sarasota Opera. Awards include: 2003 Drama Desk Nomination, 2007 Henry Hewes Nomination, 2005 AUDELCO Award and six nominations, and 2005 Ford Foundation Artist Grant. Mr. Hourie’s design for Waiting for Godot was selected to represent the United States in an exhibition “From the Edge” in the Prague Quadrennial 2011.  He is currently completing his second master’s degree as an MA Scenography candidate at Central School of Speech and Drama.

M. L. Geiger (Lighting) is very pleased to return to the Studio Theatre after last season’s production of Time Stands Still. Upcoming projects include Christopher Wheeldon’s 5 Movements 3 Repeats for Fang-Yi Sheu and Dancers in New York, Taiwan, Beijing, and London; My Fair Lady and The Heart of Robin Hood at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; The Philadelphia Story in Salt Lake City; and The Ramayana at ACT Theatre in Seattle.  Her work has been seen on Broadway in The Constant Wife, and elsewhere in New York in Olive and the Bitter Herbs at Primary Stages; The New York Idea at Atlantic Theatre Company; and Kindness, The Blue Door, and The Busy World Is Hushed at Playwrights Horizons. Additional New York credits include shows with New York Theatre Workshop, the Public Theater, Second Stage, The Vineyard Theatre, The Actors Company Theatre, and Ars Nova. Her design for Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse played St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York and toured around the United States and internationally.  Ms. Geiger is Head of Lighting in the Department of Design for Stage and Film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and trained at the Yale School of Drama.

Kathleen Geldard (Costumes) designed Sucker Punch for The Studio Theatre and Frozen, Autobahn, Terrorism, and A Clockwork Orange for Studio 2ndStage. She is an artistic associate of Signature Theatre, where her work includes Xanadu, God of Carnage, Brother Russia,  Really Really, Hairspray, Side by Side By Sonheim, Art, Sunset Boulevard, Chess, Sweeney Todd, Les Misérables, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and the world premieres of The Boy Detective Fails, The Hollow, Walter Cronkite is Dead, and Sycamore Trees. She has also designed locally for the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Round House Theatre, Imagination Stage, Adventure Theatre, Folger Theatre, Theatre J, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Olney Theatre, Rep Stage, and Everyman Theatre, among others. Regionally, her work has been seen at the La Jolla Playhouse, Huntington Theatre Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and Center Stage in Baltimore. She has been nominated for the Bay Area Critics Circle, an IRNE award, and a Helen Hayes award for her designs.

Alex Koch (Imaginary Media) (Projections) has designed on Broadway for Irena’s Vow (Walter Kerr). Other New York work includes Goodbar WITH Waterwell FOR Under the Radar 2012, Feeder FOR the TerraNOVA Collective, En el Tiempo de las Mariposas andLa Casa de los Espiritus at Repertorio Espanol, ReEntry and The Oxford Roof Climber’s Rebellion at Urban Stages, and Lenin’s Embalmers at Ensemble Studio Theatre. Regionally, his work has been seen in Invisible Man at the Court Theatre; ReEntry at Center Stage, Round House Theatre, and Actors Theater of Louisville; and La Casa de los Espiritus at Mori Theater in Chile. He has also designed FOR The Directors Company, Theater MITU, Electric Pear, Shalimar, SummerStage, Little Opera Theater, and the New Ensemble. He has done technical design WORK for New Georges at 3LD and Big Art Group’s Dead Set II & III. Imaginary Media is Kate Freer, Alex Koch, and David Tennent.

David Remedios (Sound) makes his Studio Theatre debut. Recent projects include Coriolanus with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Captors and In a Forest Dark and Deep with Contemporary American Theater Festival, Car Talk: The Musical!!! with Underground Railway Theater, Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh with Portland Stage Company, and The Luck of the Irish (original music and sound) with Huntington Theatre Company. His work in Boston has also been heard at New Repertory Theatre, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Boston Lyric Opera, and American Repertory Theatre (50 productions), among others. Other regional credits include Theatre for a New Audience, Baltimore CenterStage, La Jolla Playhouse, and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, among others. Mr. Remedios’ work has been heard internationally in South America, Europe, Asia, and the UK. Awards include Independent Reviewers of New England, Connecticut Critics’ Circle, and Elliot Norton.

Robb Hunter (Fights) has directed violence for several Studio Theatre productions including Superior Donuts, American Buffalo, Legends!, Reasons to be Pretty, and The Walworth Farce for which he received a Helen Hayes nomination for outstanding choreography. Other credits include work at The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Arena Stage, Olney Theatre Center, Ford’s Theatre, Centerstage, Rep Stage, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, and Washington National Opera. Mr. Hunter is a Certified Teacher for the Society of American Fight Directors and member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, AEA, SAG, and AFTRA. He is currently Artist in Residence at American University and teaches stage combat in the MFA program at Catholic University.

Adrien-Alice Hansel (Dramaturg) is The Studio Theatre’s Literary Director. At The Studio Theatre, she has dramaturged Sucker Punch, The Golden Dragon, Lungs, The Habit of Art, The History of Kisses, and The New Electric Ballroom, among others. Previous to joining Studio, she spent eight seasons at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, where she headed the literary department and coordinated project scouting, selection, and development for the Humana Festival of New American Plays. She also served as production dramaturg on roughly 50 new, contemporary, and classic plays there, including premieres by Naomi Wallace, Gina Gionfriddo, Kirk Lynn and Rude Mechs, The Civilians, Craig Wright, Charles Mee, Jordan Harrison, Anne Bogart and SITI Company, Adam Bock, and John Belluso. Ms. Hansel is the co-editor of eight anthologies of plays from Actors Theatre of Louisville and holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama.

John Keith Hall (Production Stage Manager) has stage managed productions on the East Coast from New Hampshire to Florida. He spent several years as Resident Stage Manager at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, VA, where he supervised over forty productions.  Mr. Hall is the Resident Stage Manager at The Studio Theatre, where he has stage managed Bachelorette, Sucker Punch, Time Stands Still, The Golden Dragon, The Habit of Art, The History Boys, Adding Machine: A Musical, and The Road to Mecca, among others. A graduate of Virginia’s Longwood University, Mr. Hall is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association.

Alaine Alldaffer (Casting Director) is the Casting Director for Playwrights Horizons. Her Broadway casting includes Grey Gardens and Clybourne Park (both also Playwrights Horizons). She received an Artios Award for her casting of Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights and another for Present Laughter for the Huntington Theatre Company and Roundabout Theatre Company. Ms. Alldaffer also casts for the Women’s Project.  Lisa Donadio is her Associate Casting director.  

Christopher Mirto (Assistant Director) is a producer, director, and performer. Recent directing credits include Semele and L’enfant et les sortileges at Manhattan School of Music, Some Girl(s) by Neil LaBute at Stella Adler Acting Studio, and associate producer on Fucking Hipsters in the New York Musical Theatre Festival. While co-artistic director of Yale Cabaret’s 42nd season, he directed several new musicals, including Three Sisters, or The Dormouse’s Tale, for which he also co-wrote the book. In New York, he directed the revival of Dionysus in 69, directed in Peculiar Works’ East/West Village Fragments (Obie Award), and performed in two Richard Foreman productions. He holds a BFA from NYU and an MFA from Yale School of Drama.

About the Writer

Ralph Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar, and writer. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote two collections of essays, Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986). His awards and distinctions include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, being made a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, election to The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the dedication of the Ralph Waldo Ellison Library in his hometown of Oklahoma City, New York City College’s Langston Hughes Medal, the National Medal of Arts, and a special achievement award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. After his death, more manuscripts were discovered in his home, resulting in the publication of Flying Home and Other Stories in 1996. In 1999, five years after his death, Ellison’s second novel, Juneteenth, was published. It was a 368-page condensation of more than 2000 pages written over a period of forty years. A 1,000-page edition of this incomplete novel was published in 2010 under the title Three Days Before the Shooting.

About the Collaborators

Oren Jacoby (Adaptor) is an Oscar-nominated director, writer, and producer of documentary films, including Constantine’s Sword, Sister Rose’s Passion, The Shakespeare Sessions, Stage on Screen: The Topdog Diaries, The Beatles Revolution, and Sam Shepard: Stalking Himself. He was a co-producer of the PBS series The Irish in America: Long Journey Home. Jacoby was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject for Sister Rose’s Passion, which also won Best Documentary Short Film at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival. His filmmaking has been recognized by the American Film Institute, the MacArthur Foundation, The Independent Television Service, Britain’s Royal Television Society, and by AMPAS. His films have appeared on the BBC, HBO, Cinemax, PBS, National Geographic, VH-1, NHK (Japan), as well as the Nokia, Verizon, and Human Rights Watch websites. He has won CINE Golden Eagles, the Royal Television Society (UK) journalism award, the MacArthur Golden Owl award, as well as grants from the American Film Institute, ITVS, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Jacoby has directed plays at Theater for the New City, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ensemble Studio Theater, West Bank Cafe, and regional theaters. A native New Yorker, he is a graduate of Brown University and the Directing Program of the Yale School of Drama.

Christopher McElroen (Director) is a New York-based producer and director. He co-founded the Classical Theatre of Harlem and served as the organization’s Executive Director from 1999 to 2009, where he produced 41 productions yielding 18 Audelco Awards, six Obie Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, a Drama Desk Award, and CTH being named “1 of 8 theatres in America to Watch” by the Drama League. Christopher has directed over thirty professional productions, including four world premieres and The Blacks: A Clown Show, which received four 2003 Obie Awards and was named one of the ten best Off Broadway productions of 2003 by The New York Times. Alongside visual artist Paul Chan and Creative Time, Christopher co-produced and directed Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, a community development through the arts initiative that staged Waiting for Godot outdoors in the Lower Ninth Ward and Gentilly communities of post-Katrina New Orleans. The New York Times listed the project as one of the top ten national art events of 2007, and the archives from the production have been acquired into the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art. McElroen has directed or guest lectured at Stanford University, Duke University, Purdue University, New York University, Dartmouth College, The Contemporary Arts Center Boston, The Walker Arts Center, and The Museum of Modern Art, among others. His work has been recognized with the American Theatre Wing Award (Outstanding Artistic Achievement), Drama Desk Award (Artistic Achievement), Edwin Booth Award (Outstanding Contribution to NYC Theater), Lucille Lortel Award (Outstanding Body of Work), and two Obie Awards (Sustained Achievement and Excellence in Theatre).

Synopsis

Adapted by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Oren Jacoby, this production of Invisible Man marks the first time that the Ellison Trust has authorized an adaptation of the novel in any medium. The play is directed by award-winning New York City director Christopher McElroen, a co-founder of the Classical Theatre of Harlem. The play premiered at The Court Theatre in Chicago last season, and was the largest-grossing non-musical in its history.

In His Own Words: Ralph Ellison on Invisible Man

In the summer of 1945, I had returned from the sea, ill, with advice to get some rest. Part of my illness was due, no doubt, to the fact that I had not been able to write a novel for which I’d received a Rosenwald Fellowship the previous winter. So on a farm in Vermont, where I was reading The Hero by Lord Raglan and speculating on the nature of Negro leadership in the US, I wrote the first paragraph of Invisible Man, and was soon involved in the struggle of creating the novel. In my novel the narrator’s development is one through blackness to light; that is, from ignorance to enlightenment, invisibility to visibility. He leaves the South and goes North; this, as you will notice in reading Negro folk tales, is always the road to freedom—the movement upward. You have the same thing again when he leaves his underground cave for the open. It took me a long time to learn how to adapt such examples of myth into my work—also ritual. The use of ritual is equally a vital part of the creative process. I learned a few things from Eliot, Joyce and Hemingway, but not how to adapt them. When I started writing, I knew that in both “The Waste Land” and Ulysses, ancient myth and ritual were used to give form and significance to the material; but it took me a few years to realize that the myths and rites which we find functioning in our everyday lives could be used in the same way.

I feel that with my decision to devote myself to the novel I took on one of the responsibilities inherited by those who practice the craft in the US: that of describing for all that fragment of the huge diverse American experience which I know best, and which offers me the possibility of contributing not only to the growth of the literature but to the shaping of the culture as I should like it to be. The American novel is in this sense a conquest of the frontier; as it describes our experience, it creates it.