Bach at Leipzig

By Itamar Moses. Directed by Professor Marco Barricelli. 

About the Show

 It is 1722, Germany – the age of the Enlightenment!  Johann Kuhnau, master organist of the Thomaskirche, has just died. Auditions are held for Kuhnau’s replacement. Seven musicians are invited to apply for the prestigious and lucrative post of organist at the Thomaskirche. Deviousness, and clashing ideologies collide, creating farcical complications in this witty romp through the nature of music, ambition, religion, and art, with implications beyond the secluded world of this particular event in 18th century Leipzig. This play is a subtle reminder that, as one of the characters says, “politics is only war by other means,” proving once more that nothing is what it seems – something that may hold some resonance today. The musicians are faced with an age-old conundrum, exemplified by another character saying, “People now have little interest in music or art … I don’t know what they will call this age… its chief characteristic is a profound lack of enlightenment.” 

Content Warnings

loud noises/music, discussion of drugs

Tickets

December 3 @ 7:30pm

The Cast

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About the Director

Marco Barricelli was artistic director for Shakespeare Santa Cruz from 2008 to 2014. A graduate of The Juilliard School, he has been an actor, director and educator since 1982. He spent eight seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as an actor performing the title roles in Cyrano de Bergerac, Hamlet, Richard III, and Henry V, among many others. From 1997 to 2005, he was an Associate Artist at the American Conservatory Theatre (A.C.T.) in San Francisco, acting on the Geary stage, as well as directing and teaching in the Master of Fine Arts program. His A.C.T. performance credits include roles in A Moon for the Misbegotten, The Real Thing (Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Award), American Buffalo (Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Award), Enrico IV (Dean Goodman Award), Glengarry Glen Ross (Dean Goodman Award), The Invention of Love (Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Award; Dean Goodman Award), A Streetcar Named Desire, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Three Sisters, Night and Day, Buried Child, Hilda, For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, Beard of Avon, Celebration & The Room, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Mary Stuart, Insurrection: Holding History, Hecuba, and The Rose Tattoo (Drama-Logue Award), Vigil, among many others. He has also worked on Broadway, and with Long Wharf Theatre, Williamstown Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, the Old Globe Theatre, South Coast Repertory Theatre, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Missouri Repertory Theatre, the Intiman Theatre, the Huntington Theatre Company, Virginia Stage Company, Center Stage Portland, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Kenyon Festival Theatre, and the California, Utah, and Illinois Shakespeare Festivals, among others. Television appearances include “L.A. Law” and a recurring role on the NBC series “Book of Daniel.”

Directing credits include Hamlet at Utah Shakespeare Festival, Glengarry Glen Ross at Denver Center Theatre Company (Henry Award), Miracle Worker at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Twelfth Night at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Betrayal at USC, Twelfth Night at UMKC, and many productions at the A.C.T. MFA Conservatory and the OSF school visit program, among others. He has performed voice-over work on many national commercials and several computer games, including "11th Hour," "Clandestiny," and "Manhunt 2."

Teaching acting has also taken him abroad to work with Accademia Silvio D’Amico in Rome, as well as Prima del Teatro in Tuscany, where along with his teaching duties, he created an exchange program between the MFA Conservatory at ACT and Prima del Teatro. He has translated Pirandello’s The Mountain Giants and Right You Are If You Think You Are, as well as co-translating and acting in a one-man adaptation of the Pirandellian novel One, No One …

Mr. Barricelli is also a Fox Fellow, the recipient of a Cherashore Foundation grant and L.J. Skaggs grant, and has been awarded an honorary MFA from American Conservatory Theatre.