ROBERT CUCUZZA is a Los Angeles-based theater artist, filmmaker, actor, and acting teacher. As a playwright and director, he has presented his play CATTYWAMPUS in LA at Son of Semele and REDCAT and in New York at the Incubator Arts Project. He directed the world premiere of Iannis Xenakis’ POUR LA PAIX at REDCAT, Jillian Lauren’s MOTHER TONGUE at the Steve Allen Theater, and MEASURE FOR MEASURE and HELLZAPOPPIN’ (also writer) at CalArts. Previously in New York, he spent six years as an artist-in-residence at Richard Foreman’s Ontological Theater where he mounted many highly-acclaimed original plays. As a stage actor he has performed in New York, regionally and internationally in works by Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater and Elevator Repair Service. He has taught acting at CalArts, where he holds an MFA in Directing and was the recipient of a Beutner Family Award for Excellence in the Arts.
Press for Cattywampus in New York
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:
"a raw and raucous updating of August Strindberg’s classic"
"the production has a ferocity that gives it bursts of energizing life."
"With its ripely vulgar language and intensely physical acting style, the production doesn’t lack for surface attractions."
"[Chrissie is] played with amusing, surly truculence by Ms. Greer"
"a tangy stew of vulgarities and colloquialisms that is often funny but mostly unprintable in a family newspaper"
"Mr. Mendel hurls himself into his role with an abandon that impresses."
"Ms. Lauren’s Julie exudes a haughty sexual allure..."
FROM BACK STAGE.
"A disturbingly dirty redrafting of the 1888 August Strindberg tragedy Miss Julie, "Cattywampus" is an unsettling yet riveting look at the combustive power of sexual heat fueled by social-class differences and psychological instability."
"...the production derives its lifeblood from D.J. Mendel's tour de force turn as the gritty blue-collar worker."
"While Cucuzza's astute dialogue captures the rhythms, idioms, and uneducated syntax of Donnie's working-class speech in a fashion that is bothfrighteningly real and entertainingly comic, Mendel's alarming physicality, exploding with rough, sudden moves, fleshes out the role with raw brilliance."
"...Mendel's nuanced acting and Cucuzza's shrewd direction..."
"...the atmospheric score is terrifically chilling"
FROM NYTHEATRE.COM.
"...a meticulously careful and intriguingly stylized updating of the piece"
"I enormously respected and enjoyed the craft involved in rethinking, line by line, a classic into a strong, idiosyncratic modern piece of theater, brought to life by three equally strong and idiosyncratic performances."
FROM TIMEOUT NEW YORK
— Four out of five stars —
"August Strindberg’s Miss Julie has been suped up for maximum mayhem by outré writer-director Robert Cucuzza"
"...raw poetry of Cucuzza’s Appalachian-tinged dialogue"
"Playfully—sometimes excessively—probing his characters’ ids and egos, Cucuzza is abetted by the ample, fearless skills of his cast."