Lynn Nottage, George C. Wolfe Team Up To Bring ‘Black Orpheus’ To BroadwayPosted by Wilson Morales
July 7, 2014
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Pulitzer-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and director George C. Wolfe are teaming up to bring Black Orpheus, a new musical version of the Brazilian love story made famous in Marcel Camus’ 1959 screen adaptation, to Broadway.
Based on Moraes‘ play Orfeu de Conceicao, Black Orpheus resets the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus against the backdrop of a Rio de Janeiro favela during Carnival.
Producers Stephen Byrd, Alia Jones-Harvey and Paula Marie Black made the announcement this morning, with Byrd stating “We are so thrilled to bring this classic piece of Brazilian popular culture to life on stage.The World Cup is providing a wonderful international platform for Brazil right now, and we look forward to spotlighting this legacy on Broadway.”
The film. an Oscar for best foreign-language film as well as the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The musical will include a number of themes heard in the film, by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfa and Vinicius de Moraes.
Together, Byrd and Jones-Harvey have adapted The Trip to Bountiful, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for Broadway with a Black cast. Cicely Tyson, who starred in ‘Bountiful,’ won the Tony Award for Best Actress in 2013.
Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2009 for Ruined, her play about the plight of Congolese women. Nottage’s credits include Intimate Apparel, Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, which starred Sanaa Lathan in the original production.
Wolfe, who won Tony Awards for directing both parts of Angels in America, Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk and Take Me Out, recently directed Tom Hanks in the 2013 production of Lucky Guy.
