Katrien van Beurden plays HEDDA GABLER in Los Angeles

Dutch actress Katrien van Beurden will play the title role in HEDDA GABLER by the Pacific Resident Theater company in Los Angeles starting in January 2014, directed by Marilyn Fox and Dana Dewes. Earlier this year, Van Beurden made her American theater debut with the same company in the production NORA by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.

Van Beurden was approached by director Dana Dewes after the latter had seen her at work in Los Angeles with her own theater company Hotel Courage (formerly Teatro Punto), with which she regularly performs and gives master classes in Commedia dell' Arte at American universities and theater companies. The collaboration on NORA went so well that Van Beurden has now been asked to play the title role in HEDDA GABLER.

Van Beurden: "It feels like an incredible honor. The Pacific Resident Theater is a fantastic company that has been producing beautiful shows for 26 years. Performing in Los Angeles is the complete opposite of here in every respect. LA is a real show business city, and you can see that in the Hollywood audience that flocks to the performances. Moreover, in terms of acting, they work much more with method acting than is the case in the Netherlands. It is therefore a huge challenge to perform such beautiful pieces in that different culture, in a different language. That was already the case with NORA, and it will be no different with HEDDA GABLER. I think it is wonderful to be able to play such a beautiful title role with such good people and such an insane Hollywood audience."

Dana Jackson: "Katrien van Beurden is a wonderful actress and I am overjoyed to have her in my plays. Her unwavering sense of space, physicality, humor, and the truth of the play add a whole new dimension to the productions of the Pacific Resident Theater."

Katrien van Beurden studied at the Theatre Academy in Utrecht and subsequently trained with Ivana Chubbuck and Lecoq, among others. She is an actress and artistic director of the Amsterdam-based Theatre Hotel Courage (formerly Teatro Punto), an internationally renowned contemporary Commedia dell' Arte company, with which she toured the United States and Canada earlier this year. In May, she directed the production OUDA at the Freedom Theatre in the refugee camp of Jenin, Palestine. In the 2013/2014 period, she will travel further with Hotel Courage to England, Ghana, Iran, India, Israel, and Canada, among other countries. The world tour will culminate in 2015 with the Hotel Courage Festival, where actors from the various countries will come together and perform as Hotel Courage.

As a film actress, Katrien van Beurden appeared in the box office hit DE STORM and, alongside Raymond Thiry, in the short film BLIJF BIJ ME, WEG by Paloma Aguilera Valdebenito, which won the Grand Prix Du Jury at the Angers Film Festival in France. Most recently, she played Mara, Yorick van Wageningen's girlfriend, in the critically acclaimed feature film DE WEDEROPSTANDING VAN EEN KLOOTZAK by Guido van Driel, which served as the opening film of the IFFR 2013 and will be released on DVD on July 2.

In the coming period, Van Beurden can be seen on TV in, among others, the new season of the thriller series OVERSPEL and in the reruns of the SBS series DOKTER TINUS starting tonight.



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