QUICK TAKES - June 4, 2009

UCLA Live will kick off its 2009-10 performing arts season with a world premiere that also represents the first original production to be created by the UCLA Live series: a new interpretation of the Euripides classic “Medea,” starring Annette Bening and directed by Croatia’s Lenki Udovicki.

In an interview Wednesday, series artistic and executive director David Sefton said that despite the fact that Udovicki does most of her theater and opera directing abroad, she and her husband, Croatian actor Rade Serbedzija, are based in Los Angeles and Udovicki was eager to do a production here. She had already negotiated with Bening to star in “Medea” before she brought the project to UCLA Live.

“She said, ‘I really want to do ‘Medea,’ Annette Bening is already committed to it -- do you want it?’ ” Sefton said. “I said, ‘Uh, let me think about that . . . yes, please!’ ”

The four-week run of “Medea,” Sept. 23 to Oct. 18, will launch the performing arts season of jazz, music, dance, spoken word and theater, as well UCLA Live’s Eighth International Theatre Festival.

-- Diane Haithman