The Wilma Theater Announces Partnership with Philadelphia Orchestra To Premiere Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor in Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA – The Wilma Theater and The Philadelphia Orchestra announce a historic collaboration with the Philadelphia premier of Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor. The play, with music composed by Andre Previn, will be presented in Verizon Hall in The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and will run from November 20 through
November 26, 2002.

The work includes an original score by Previn and will feature the full Philadelphia Orchestra on stage, along with a cast of six actors. The Wilma Theater’s Co-Artistic Director Jiri Zizka will direct the production and The Philadelphia Orchestra’s assistant conductor Rossen Milanov will conduct the orchestra.

The Wilma Theater has a longstanding relationship with Stoppard, whose play Arcadia opened the new Wilma Theater space on the Avenue of the Arts in 1996. The Wilma has also presented Travesties, On the Razzle and Indian Ink and produced the East Coast debut of The Invention of Love, prior to its Broadway run.

"The Wilma Theater is a nationally recognized and critically acclaimed producer of Stoppard’s plays, having produced all of his major works," said Zizka. "For me, as a director, to collaborate with the Philadelphia Orchestra on this astounding and rarely produced play with music is a source of tremendous joy and an opportunity of a lifetime."

In Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, Stoppard contrasts the circumstances of a political prisoner and mental patient in a Soviet insane asylum, to question the difference, if any, between free will and the freedom to conform. In a chilling, yet funny scenario, the audience learns that the mental patient is in the hospital for hearing an orchestra in his head and he shares a cell with a man who bears his name and is being treated by the same doctor.

Tickets for this special event will be available to Wilma season subscribers and season subscription holders at the Orchestra. Information on single tickets will be made available at a later date.

The Wilma Theater has grown to national and international prestige in the arts community. Zizka’s staging of George Orwell’s 1984 was presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and at the Joyce Theater in New York. The Wilma co-produced Vaclav Havel’s Temptation at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater and a PBS broadcast of Largo Desolato, a feature film directed by Zizka, which was adapted by Stoppard from Vaclav Havel’s play. In Philadelphia, Wilma productions have received 26 Barrymore Awards, more than any other theater, including five for the East Coast premiere production of Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, which was produced the following year on Broadway by The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The Wilma Theater has received high critical acclaim from The New York Times, The New York Post, Time Magazine, USA Today, The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune.

For more information on The Wilma Theater and its programming contact The Wilma Theater Box Office at (215) 546-STAGE or visit us online at www.wilmatheater.org.

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