ALICEGRACEANON

New Georges (Susan Bernfield, Producing Artistic Director; Sarah Cameron Sunde, Deputy Artistic Director; Jaynie Saunders Tiller, Managing Director) in association withIrondale Center (85 Oxford Street between Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street, Brooklyn) will present the World Premiere of Kara Lee Corthron’s ALICEGRACEANON,October 18-November 9. The production will be directed by Kara-Lynn Vaeni and will feature Carolyn Baeumler (Lisa Kron’s The Veri**zon Play at the Humana Festival), Eric Clem (The Elephant Man at Williamstown Theatre Festival), Matt Dellapina (The Civilians’ In the Footprint at Irondale), Teresa Avia Lim (Quiara Alegria Hudes’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful at Hartford Stage), and Christina Pumariega (Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar on Broadway).The creative team will include Sound Design by Marcelo Añez, Music Direction by Ralph Capasso, Set Design by Nick Francone, Costume Design by Liam O’Brien, Installation Design by Rachel Schapira, and Lighting Design by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew. The production will also feature The Spectacle Brigade, a 10-member chorus who facilitate inventive moments of theatricality and play smaller parts; and a live band in the “role” of Jefferson Airplane. Special guest musicians will sit in with the band during a break in the action at each performance. A complete schedule will be available at www.newgeorges.org.                  

A curious girl who falls down a rabbit hole. The lead singer of an iconic ‘60s rock band. The poor, nameless star of a classic druggie diary. Three oddly connected heroines inhabit three separate worlds, playing out their stories exactly as expected. But when those worlds suddenly collide – really, they collide -- they all start to wonder… who's really controlling my destiny?

Corthron’s imaginary meeting of these three characters is inspired by the ways they historically intertwine. It was Grace Slick’s obsession with the works of Lewis Carroll (and the drug imagery she found therein) which inspired Jefferson Airplane’s hallucinatory 1967 hit White Rabbit, which in turn inspired the title of the best-selling 1971 teenage memoir Go Ask Alice – published as the real diary of an anonymous girl, but later revealed to be a work of fiction, a “cautionary tale” by a do-gooding writer named Beatrice Sparks.

The production is designed to feel like a ‘60s-era "happening," an event which used familiar materials in new ways to make participants question their approach to experience. The concept will extend throughout the ample Irondale space -- including the balcony, where audiences will enter the theater through an interactive installation, which explores the backstory of the three protagonists. There, text from their stories mingles with art-school style constructions; and soundscapes and live video create the sense that everyone is a voyeur.

ALICEGRACEANON was originally commissioned in 2010 as part of The Germ Project. As a response to the growing trend towards small-cast, one-set plays, New Georges commissioned four playwrights to write BIG plays, plays of “scope and adventure” that are “unproduce-able” and that “encompass elements which extend and expand the conventional playwriting repertoire.” In June 2011 they presented a “germ” – a 20-minute excerpt – of each of the plays, at 3LD Art & Technology Center. Kara Lee Corthron’s play AliceGraceAnon is the first of these four original Germ Project plays to receive a fully staged production. 

About the Company: New Georges
New Georges (Susan Bernfield, Artistic Director; Sarah Cameron Sunde, Associate Director) the OBIE-winning theater company founded in 1992 produces highly theatrical new works by women.