The American premiere of LAST SUPPER by Lars Norén, who is widely regarded as Sweden's Eugene O'Neill, will be the debut production of International Theater of New York Actors Without Borders-ITONY, a new resident company of La MaMa headed by Zishan Ugurlu, a member of La MaMa's Great Jones Repertory. The troupe's name is an acronymic dedication to the Gengi Ito (1946-2001), the late beloved La MaMa musician and composer. The production is directed by Ugurlu and translated by Marita Lindholm-Gochman, who is the principal translator of Norén's work into English.

Norén is the Scandinavian playwright most-performed in the world, although his plays, even the well-known "Night is the Mother of Day," are undiscovered by most Americans. There is currently a proliferation of theatres producing Norén's work in Europe. The NY Theatre Wire (Glenn Loney) has called Lars Norén "the only living Swedish playwright who can be compared with the great August Strindberg….an important modern dramatist whose plays should be shown in America." Speaking at the Scandinavia On Stage conference in New York in April, 2001, Danish theater critic Monna Dithmer reflected, "We Scandinavians love him for his sublime spanking and sardonic scrutiny of bourgeois domestic hell."

ITONY is planning a European tour with this play, with productions already scheduled at the City Theatres (Stadsteatern) in Göteborg and Stockholm, Sweden and more planned for Istanbul and Ankara (the director's home country is Turkey).

LAST SUPPER opened in 1985 with a successful run at The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm in 1985, directed by Christian Tomner and starring Erland Josephson, Lena Olin, Mathias Henrikson and Helena Brodin. It is a powerful, voyeuristic and painfully intimate view of two brothers' crumbling marriages in the evening after their mother's funeral. John is a psychologist with a cruel streak. His wife, Charlotte, is an alcoholic who yearns for her husband's love more than anything else. She has surprised him by inviting his estranged brother, Alan, and Alan's unfaithful wife, Monica, to stay the night following the cremation. The mother's ashes are in an urn on the coffee table and there is a palpable sense of imbalance in the house. John has left the phone off the hook to console Nina, his troubled eleven year-old daughter from a previous marriage, whose mother is out carousing and has left the girl home alone. The phone line between them is open, but what the girl will hear is the dissolving of civil conversation and the ruthless playing out of sadomasochistic psychological games as drinks are refilled and two marriages spin out of control.

For this production, La MaMa will reverse the seating in its second-floor Club. The audience is usually seated around small tables on the floor with a proscenium stage in front and with wings extending out along each side. John's and Charlotte's swanky living room will be on the floor surrounded by the audience, who will be seated on risers on what used to be the stage, creating a voyeuristic and almost painfully intimate view of the play.

Video/film maker Brian Dilg has created moving images of the characters' dreams and unconscious, which will be projected in various ways as the play unfolds. Music by Paul Bothén, who has composed numerous films, plays and symphonies in Sweden, will accompany the play. The score will be performed live by Jesper Lundaahl (trumpet), Pete Drungle (percussion and electronics), Marie Howells (cello) and Dasha Koltunyuk (violin and voice of John's 11-year old daughter, Nina). The musicians will be placed above the entrance.

The actors are Olle Agélii (John), Tullan Holmqvist (Monica), Dan Illian (Alan) and Raïna von Waldenburg (Charlotte). Set and lighting design are by Jeremy Morris. Costume design is by Kimberly Matela.

Director Zishan Ugurlu, while known for her performances in such roles as Helen in "The Trojan Women" (directed by Andrei Serban, composed by Elizabeth Swados), admits to being fascinated with Strindberg and Ibsen. She explains, "Lars Norén is the best living writer telling about the bourgeois domestic hell. He verbalizes in a very edgy way our inner darkness." She explains that she loves his writing because it allows one to create a relationship between audiences and actors that is so intimate that it's like watching a peep show--you feel as if you shouldn't be there. Ugurlu feels that Norén's characters are trapped in houses, but are almost homeless in that they have no where to go. She says, "Home is a peaceful mind." The concept of her setting is to use film to juxtapose the oppressiveness of their situation with the peace of the outside, where there is nature and you can breathe.

She also takes a lesson from Marc Bloch, a French philosopher, who said, "Contemporary civilization differs in one particularly distinctive feature from those which precede it: speed. The change has come about within a generation." Ugurlu intends to heighten the light and darkness of the play by speeding it up, using live music to accelerate the rhythm of the play and break it out of the drawing room pace of Scandinavian drama which precedes it. The result, she says, will be "overlapping, speedy, sexy and funny."

Ms. Ugurlu is a Turkish-born actor, teacher and director. As a performer, she has appeared in numerous productions of La MaMa's Great Jones Repertory. She is on the faculty of Trinity College, Hartford, CT, teaching acting and vocal technique. She has previously directed "Until the Next Whirl" at La MaMa, "The Court of Fehim Pasha" at Theater of the Riverside Church, and two plays by Tom Soper, "Water Shed" at La MaMa and "Serious At All" at the Theater Row Theater. She will next stage Lorca's "Blood Wedding" set in Afghanistan at Trinity College. After this, she plans to direct more Scandinavian plays.

This production is supported in part by a grant from the Swedish Consulate in New York.