An adaptation of the Norse tales that inspired Wagner’s Ring Cycle – by Sean Graney

Directed by Sean Graney, Eileen Silvers WBFO Visiting Professor in the Arts and Humanities

Presented in conjunction with UB’s Humanities Institute, the Department of English, with additional support from by the Robert G. and Carol L. Morris Visiting Artist Fund

Thursday, 04/28, 7:30 pm Performance #1 (Preview)

Friday, 04/29, 7:30 pm Performance #2 (Premiere)

Saturday, 04/30, 2:00 pm Performance #3
7:30 pm Performance #4

Sunday, 05/01, 2:00 pm Performance #5
6:00 pm Performance #6 (Closing)

For press release click here.

In Wagner’s Ring cycle, the end of the world foretells a new beginning. The brief interval of human civilization is merely the prelude to the Götterdämmerung, the Twilight of the Gods, which brings with it interminable war, a burning world, a cleansing flood—and, just possibly, rebirth. In other words, Wagner’s fantasy looks very much like our present reality. WBFO-Silvers Visiting Professor Sean Graney’s new play A Ring Never Ends—which receives a world premiere production at UB this spring—begins where Wagner ends. Humanity huddles in the ashes of a ruined world that once resembled our own. Graney’s play asks: How do we rebuild after the end? How do we begin again?

A Ring Never Ends is a play in dialogue with Richard Wagner’s opera Der Ring des Nibelungen. Apocalyptic forces are slowly consuming the world. A young person trying to survive in a demolished opera house finds a program for the Wagner opera and believes the plot described in the pages is the truth. The character creates a religion around the Ring Cycle and worships the various artifacts found from the opera. As the world’s end threatens the harbor, events unfold that mirror the Ring Cycle.

The themes of the play are love, religion and fear. The twelve actors in the ensemble are students from the Department of Theatre & Dance. Each performance features six ensemble members. No two performances have the same cast.

Tickets: Center for the Arts Box Office (Mon-Fri 10 am-6 pm) and tickets.com.  To charge tickets call 1-888-223-6000.  For more information call 716-645-2787 or visit www.ubcfa.org or www.theatredance.buffalo.edu.