Spoleto cutting back on quantity but keeping quality

Like other festivals across the nation, the Spoleto Festival USA is having to tighten its belt; however, festival officials say the high quality of performances will remain the same.

Festival tickets go on sale Monday for the 17-day comprehensive arts program to be held here May 22-June 7, says Paula Edwards, festival public relations and marketing director.

She also said the number of performances has dipped from 142 held in the 2008 season to 120 scheduled for the 2009 season.

Edwards said the $8.4 million budget for the 2008 festival been trimmed to a $6 million budget for 2009. In a meeting held in New York in November, Spoleto General Director of the festival Nigel Redden announced that for the first time in 13 years the organization finished in the red with a deficit of $372,000.

However, Redden says the overall quality of the festival, celebrating its 33 season, will remain high with a theatrical highlight consisting of a new production by Britain's highly esteemed Kneehigh Theatre titled "Don John," to be performed 19 times. The production was inspired by Mozart's "Don Giovanni," and has a score of specially commissioned music to accompany Kneehigh's distinctive brand of physical storytelling.

"I'm thrilled at how the 2009 program has come together," says Redden. "From the festival's new production of the rarely performed opera 'Louise' to the American premiere of Kneehigh Theatre's 'Don John' to a series of musical tributes in honor of Charles Wadsworth who will be stepping down as Artistic Director of Chamber Music, this year's program is as robust as ever."

Redden also mentioned that the young American puppeteer Basil Twist returns to the festival with what is said to be "an elegant and dreamlike" theater piece "Dogugaeshi," paying homage to the rarefied Japanese stage technique. The shamisen virtuoso Yumiko Tanaka will accompany the hour-long production. Rounding out the theatrical roster will be the Dutch theater ensemble Kassys with its reportedly quirky and hilarious "Good Cop Bad Cop" routine, along with Welsh artist Hugh Hughes' winsome "Story of a Rabbit," which recently swept Scotland's Edinburgh Fringe awards.

Although earlier reports cast doubt as to whether the Wachovia Jazz Series would exist this year since Wachovia Bank recently has been bought by Wells Fargo, the jazz series will continue with five artists.

Read more in Sunday's editions of the Post and Courier.