Theatrical risk-taker Ivo van Hove coming to Philadelphia

A nude Blanche du Bois in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. A barefoot production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. An operatic version of Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain. Shakespeare's Roman plays - Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra - transformed into an epic multimedia spectacle.

These are signature works by Belgian-Dutch director Ivo van Hove, not a household name in America but a powerful force in the European avant-garde, creating films, theater, and mixed-media productions that have earned him dazzling reviews and a slew of prizes. He is artistic director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the largest theater company in the Netherlands.

Philadelphians can dip into van Hove's radical artistic world Sunday, when FringeArts presents Live Remix: Stage Adaptations in the New Media Age. In a major coup for FringeArts, the daylong van Hove-focused program will feature the man himself - he'll screen his first film, 2009's Amsterdam, and then discuss his work.

The social-media film site Letterboxd describes Amsterdam as an ensemble film about "a rich American couple, a family of Dutch criminals, a French gay couple, a working-class family from Germany, and an illegal Moroccan youth and his kid brother, all in Amsterdam, each with their own story. . . . [T]heir paths intertwine, leading to a dramatic climax that changes their lives forever." An unexpectedly familiar face starring in the film is Marisa Tomei.

The movie will be screened from 11 a.m to 12:30 p.m., followed by an hour of conversation with van Hove from 1 to 2 p.m. He speaks English fluently (and, reportedly, very, very fast).

A roundtable discussion will follow at 2:30, including some heavy hitters from the American theatrical avant-garde: John Collins of Elevator Repair Service, Doris Mirescu of Dangerous Ground Productions, and independent visual artist Ryan McNamara.

The sessions are free; you may register for one, two, or all three at fringearts.com.

Van Hove's long relationship with Ingmar Bergman's work led to one of his most controversial productions, his adaptation for the stage of the Bergman's 1973 Scenes From a Marriage, which won a great deal of attention ("scarily good" said one critic), not all of it admiring ("a disservice to the great Swedish director" said another).

Other stage adaptations of Bergman include Cries and Whispers and After the Rehearsal/Persona, two short stage pieces described as a diptych linked by their investigation of theater, and of the blurring of boundaries between art and reality. These works will be on stage in Philadelphia during the 2015 Fringe Festival, Sept. 3 through 5 at the 23d Street Armory.

If this isn't enough of an immersion into van Hove and his ultra-contemporary theater scene, he's coming to Broadway. His acclaimed British production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge starring Mark Strong will open in October. This show lured Strong back to the London stage after an absence of 12 years. American audiences likely know him as a Hollywood villain, in movies such as Kick-Ass and Zero Dark Thirty, and he will soon be seen next year in Sacha Baron Cohen's new comedy, Grimsby.

Strong was startled initially by van Hove's approach to the Miller play, in which he stripped away all the realistic paraphernalia - shoes as well as sets. Eventually, the actor was convinced: "Once you take all that stuff away, as long as you understand the characters' motivations and what they are saying to each other, everything else is just trying to pretend that it's real."

The contemporary relevance of this mid-20th-century play is obvious; its plot pivots on the issue of immigration. It's also a highly charged story of sexual attraction, transgressive and alarming. The British critics found van Hove's production thrilling and scalding, a "pure, primal, colossal thing," and "one of the great theatrical productions of the decade."

Because van Hove's goal is to create what he calls the "ultimate production," he has been viewed as a provocateur, a label he only seems to decline as part of a past when the New York scene saw him as "a bad boy, Eurotrash."

But, as he added in an interview in April in London, "When I do a play, I want to do it in the most extreme way possible."

StartText

Live Remix: Stage Adaptations in the New Media Age

11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at Fringe Arts, 140 N. Columbus Blvd. (at Race St).

Admission: Free, but registration is required.

Information: 215-413-1318 or www.FringeArts.comEndText