Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez to Face Sunny Edwards in Flyweight Title Unification Fight

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Tom Castaneda

Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez is looking to up his title count…

The 23-year-old Mexican American professional boxer and Sunny Edwards have signed contracts for a flyweight title unification fight, Eddie Hearn‘s Matchroom Boxing has announced.

The matchup pits ESPN‘s top two boxers at 112 pounds: Rodriguez, who holds the WBO title, and Edwards, the IBF champion who is rated No. 2.

The fight will take place in the U.S. and will likely land in December, sources told ESPN.

“Delighted to deliver the biggest fight in the division for both of our fighters,” Matchroom Boxing CEO Frank Smith told ESPN. “Respect to both for making it happen.”

Rodriguez, who fights out of San Antonio, captured the vacant WBO flyweight title in April with a unanimous-decision victory over Cristian Gonzalez.

“Bam”, the younger brother of 115-pound titleholder Joshua Franco, broke out last year with a pair of victories over former champions Carlos Cuadras and Srisaket Sor Rungvisai in junior bantamweight fights.

Now, Rodriguez (18-0, 11 KOs) will step up to what shapes up as the toughest test of his career in Edwards, a slick-boxing Englishman.

The 27-year-old retained his title earlier this month with a unanimous-decision win over Andres Campos.

The bout was Edwards’ Matchroom debut, and now he, too, will step up in competition against a fellow elite fighter.

“What I do is different to anything anyone else does in a boxing ring,” Edwards (20-0, 4 KOs) said ahead of his win over Campos. ” … It’s not just that I want all of the belts, I don’t want anyone else to have them.

“It sickens me, it pains me that there’s three other people at my weight that walk around saying the same s— that I say.”

Oscar Isaac to Star in Broadway Production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”

Posted on April 5, 2023 by Tom Castaneda

Oscar Isaac is headed to the Great White Way….

The 44-year-old Cuban-Guatemalan actor will star opposite Rachel Brosnahan later this month in the Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.

The production, which opened a sold-out run Off Broadway at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February, is now set to be the final production of the 2022-23 Broadway season.

Opening night for the limited, 80-performance run is Thursday, April 27, at the James Earl Jones Theatre.

Directed by Anne Kauffman, the revival will mark the first time the Hansberry play has been produced on Broadway in more than 50 years, and the first BAM-produced production to transfer to Broadway since The Gospel at Colonus 35 years ago.

The follow-up to Hansberry’s landmark 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window debuted on Broadway in 1964 shortly before the playwright’s death on January 12, 1965, at age 34. The recent Off Broadway staging broke all house records at BAM’s Harvey Theater.

Set in New York’s Greenwich Village during the early 1960s, Brustein’s Window focuses on the troubled marriage of idealistic writer Sidney (Isaac, in his Broadway debut) and aspiring actor Iris (Brosnahan). As the couple’s marriage seems to crumble, their friends and neighbors in the politically progressive West Village weave in and out of the Brusteins’ apartment and lives.

“This production, directed by Anne Kauffman and originally produced and nurtured by David Binder at BAM, is a celebration of the radical artistic vision of Lorraine Hansberry at the zenith of her art making,” said Joi Gresham, Literary Trustee, Estate of Lorraine Hansberry, in a statement.

The complete cast of the BAM production will make the move to Broadway along with Isaac and Brosnahan, including Gus Birney, Julian De Niro, Glenn Fitzgerald, Andy Grotelueschen, Miriam Silverman and Raphael Nash Thompson. The understudy company features Joey Auzenne, Katya Campbell, Gregory Connors and Brontë England Nelson.

The creative team includes dots (Scenic Design), Brenda Abbandandolo (Costume Design), John Torres (Lighting Design), Bray Poor (Sound Design), Leah Loukas (Wig Design) and Arminda Thomas (Dramaturg).

Oscar Isaac to Star in New York Revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”

Posted on October 7, 2022 by Tom Castaneda

Oscar Isaac is embracing the sign…

The 43-year-old Cuban-Guatemalan actor will star opposite Rachel Brosnahan in the first major New York revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window this February at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The production, running February 4-23, 2023, at the BAM Harvey Theater, will be directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman.

Described by BAM as a “sweeping drama of identity, idealism, and love,” The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window is set in 1960s Greenwich Village and focuses on a diverse group of friends “whose loudly proclaimed progressive dreams can’t quite match up with reality. At the center are Sidney and Iris Brustein, fighting to see if their marriage – with all its crackling wit, passion, and petty cruelty – will be the final sacrifice to Sidney’s ideals.”

The play debuted on Broadway in 1964, five years after Hansberry’s masterpiece A Raisin in the Sun and shortly before her death in 1965 at age 34.

The Sign in Brustein’s Window has not been produced on a major New York stage since then.

Kauffman presented an acclaimed revival of the work in 2016 at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.

“We are in dire need of Hansberry’s voice…we know so little of her and define her by one play: A Raisin in the Sun,” Kauffman said in a statement. “Without a doubt Raisin is a masterpiece, but Hansberry’s evolution and contribution to this country’s culture, history and political motion stretches way beyond that astonishing accomplishment. Her work as an artist and activist is varied and deep. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, written four years after A Raisin in the Sun, embraces human complexity and frailty while aggressively shaking us free of our delusions, yet very few people know of it. Now they’ll know.”

David Binder, BAM Artistic Director, said, “During the five years I spent working to produce the first Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun (in 2004), I fell in love with The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. I shared this passion for Lorraine’s play with Anne and the two of us spent many, many years working together to mount the show in New York. It’s an honor to present Lorraine’s beautiful, and rarely seen, play, finally, at BAM.”

The creative team and full company will be announced soon.

In addition to his numerous screen credits, Isaac has appeared on the New York stage in Hamlet, We Live Here, Romeo and Juliet and Two Gentlemen of Verona and Beauty of the Father, among others.

The original 1964 production of The Sign in Brustein’s Window starred Gabriel Dell and Rita Moreno. A short-lived 1972 revival starred Hal Linden and Zohra Lampert.

Bobby Cannavale to Star in Simon Stone’s Contemporary Rewrite of Euripides’ Tragedy “Medea”

Posted on July 26, 2019 by Tom Castaneda

Bobby Cannavale is preparing for a tragedy…

The 49-year-old half-Cuban American actor will star opposite Rose Byrne in Simon Stone’s contemporary rewrite of the Euripides’ tragedy Medea at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in January.

Originally staged in 2014 by Amsterdam’s International Theater Amsterdam(formerly Toneelgroep Amsterdam), Medea will pair real-life couple Byrne and Cannavale, with additional cast to be announced.

Stone’s adaptation of the Medea story uses the true-life crime case of American Debora Green, who poisoned her cheating husband and killed two of her three children in 1995. The adaptation played London’s Barbicanin 2019, where it starred Marieke Heebink and Aus Greidanus Jr.

Cannavale was seen on Broadway last fall in The Lifespan of a Fact, co-starring Daniel Radcliffe and Cherry Jones. His many stage credits include the Tony-nominated Mauritius, The Motherf*cker With The Hat, The Hairy Ape, Glengarry Glen Ross, Hurly Burly, and others.

He’s a member of the Labyrinth Theater Company. His upcoming films include The Irishman, Superintelligence, and Motherless Brooklyn.

“I’m excited to welcome writer/director Simon Stone following his enormous success with Yerma,” said BAM artistic director David Binder, “and look forward to having the incredible actors Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale in lead roles on our stage.”

Medea will be produced in Brooklyn by International Theater Amsterdam, BAM, and David Lan, who will serve as BAM’s Theater Associate.

Fonzi to Star in Horror Film “El diablo blanco”

Posted on July 9, 2016 by Tom Castaneda

Dolores Fonzi has landed a devilish role…

The 37-year-old Argentine actress is set to star in the horror film El diablo blanco, converting the project into one of the highest-profile genre offerings coming down the pike in Latin America.

Fonzi joins an Argentine A-list cast that includes Esteban Lamothe and Julieta Zylberberg.

Juan Pablo Gugliotta, co-founder of Buenos Aires’ Magma Cine, a pioneer in pan-Latin American co-production and auteur genre movies, will introduce the horror movie to potential co-production partners and sales agents at next week’s Bogota Audiovisual Market (BAM).

The screenplay allows the involvement of one or two actors from outside Argentina, Gugliotta said.

The feature debut of Ignacio Rogers, a theater actor-turned-filmmaker who is writing the screenplay, El diablo blanco kicks off with three male friends going off camping in the mountains. They meet three girls and immediately hit it off. Romance flowers as they decide to continue the trip together. One of them, Fernando, has a strange encounter with a mysterious man and suffers premonitory dreams of this man killing people, after which a once-carefree holiday trip turns into a ghastly nightmare.

El diablo blanco has its origins in classic American horror, but at least two factors set it apart, said Gugliotta. One is the presence of “deep Latin American roots, Argentine indigenous myths and legends.”

El diablo blanco’s friends are also not teens but adults in their mid-to-late-thirties, one a divorcee, another about to inherit local land, and two of the women qualified anthropologists, searching for traces of the mountains’ original indigenous settlers.

About 60% of “The White Devil’s” budget is covered between Magma Cine’s own financing and subsidy from Argentina’s Incaa film board, Gugliotta said.

Fonzi, Lamothe and Zylberberg have all broken through to international recognition this decade. Fonzi toplined Santiago Mitre’s Paulina, which won the Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize last year; Lamothe was the star of Mitre’s debut, The Student. Zylberberg co-starred in Anna Katz’s My Friend From the Park, a Sundance Film Festival 2016 best screenplay winner.

El diablo blanco is scheduled to shoot in the first quarter of 2017, during Argentina’s summer.

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Tag Archives: BAM

Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez to Face Sunny Edwards in Flyweight Title Unification Fight

Oscar Isaac to Star in New York Revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”

Bobby Cannavale to Star in Simon Stone’s Contemporary Rewrite of Euripides’ Tragedy “Medea”

Fonzi to Star in Horror Film “El diablo blanco”