HOOKED ON HAPPINESS spotlights a high-school drama class that decides to create their own original musical about the global climate crisis, instead of selecting from the musical and play their drama teacher has suggested. Many of their parents are very conservative, and the often frank, passionate content of their lyrics outrages members of the audience.
Concerned they may not have a future, they want to join their voices with other young people across the globe to confront the threat our warming climate poses to their future. As one of the students says, “If 16-year-old Greta Thunberg could sail across the Atlantic to demonstrate against climate change, we should at least be able to do a show about it.â€
When their drama teacher sees some of the material they've written – about parents being hooked on misery, glued to the news and, in the case of the parents who are Fundamentalist Christians, just waiting for the so-called End Times – she decides to let them go ahead with it. They pull no punches in their lyrics, and the parents who are outraged begin calling for the show to be shut down and the drama teacher to be fired. In response, the students threaten to go on strike.
The cast of HOOKED ON HAPPINESS features Liz Bealko, Hannah Carne, Spencer Martinez, Leonard W. Rose, Jordan Rubio, Jazz Sunpanich, and Hannah Weaver.
HOOKED ON HAPPINESS has Set Design by Mark Marcante, Lighting Design by Alexander Bartenieff, Sound Design by Alex Santullo, Video and Projection Design by Dylan Vaughn Skorish, Costume and Prop Design by Lytza Colon; Assistant Director, Jordyn Prince; Assistant Costume Designer, Nikki Reed; Production Stage Manager, Melissa Mauer; and Assistant Stage Manager, Melanie Phaneuf.
in association with
Theater for the New City
present
New York Butoh Institute Festival 19
October 10-27, 2019
at Theater for the New City
New York Butoh Institute presents the New York Butoh Institute Festival 19 from Thursday, October 10 through Sunday, October 27, 2019 at Theater for the New City. This year will mark the 60th anniversary of the Japanese performance art form butoh.
Curated by New York Butoh Institute's founder Vangeline, the Festival will consist of an exciting program of Butoh workshops and masterclasses, as well as seven nights of groundbreaking performances presented at Theater for the New City. The festival will conclude on Sunday, October 27 with a lecture and short film celebrating the founder of butoh, Tatsumi Hijikata, and the 60 years of this historical and revolutionary art form as it continues to evolve into the 21st century.
The bold butoh performances being presented during the festival will feature 14 female dancers from Japan, Colombia, Norway, Italy, Germany, France, and the U.S. One of the pieces, Hijikata, Mon Amour, will be performed by Vangeline as an homage to butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata. A highlight of the piece will be the costume Vangeline will wear: an exact replica of the bold red costume Tatsumi Hijikata wore in his legendary butoh performance of Tatsumi Hijikata and The Japanese-Revolt of the Flesh in 1968.
Thanks to a loan from the Tatsumi Hijikata Archives and a Janet Arnold Award from the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Festival is able to showcase the replica of this iconic costume worn by Tatsumi Hijikata in Revolt of the Flesh. Hijikata's costume remains a totem for butoh-it holds secrets of the avant-garde art form.
Much like butoh itself, it was born at the confluence of East and West. This costume chronicles the evolution of postmodern art in Japan. The Festival will close with a short film of Tatsumi Hijikata in his 1968 solo, and a lecture with costume expert Todd Thomas who recreated the costume, and who will discuss his process, shedding light on how the original costume was designed and constructed. Prior to and during the presentation, the replica will be on display for audience members to see.
The New York Butoh Festival 19 will take place at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue, NYC. Thursday through Saturday October 17-19 and October 24-26 at 8pm, Sunday October 20 at 3pm, Sunday October 27 special event lecture at 3pm. Tickets are $18-$20, and can be purchased by phone at (212) 254-1109 or online at https://butohfest-19.eventbrite.com/. The lecture on Sunday, October 27 is free and open to the public.
Artists Featured:
Eri Chian (Osaka, Japan); Mari Osanai, (Aomori, Japan), Tove-Elena Nicolaysen (Chile/Norway), Salome Kokoladze (Georgia), Sindy Butz (Germany), Katherine Adamenko (USA), Madelyn Sher (USA), Angela Newsham (Hawai-USA), Melissa Lohman (Italy), Margherita Tisato (Italy), Yazmin Gonzalez (USA), Vangeline, (France), Lauren Farber (USA) and Brenda Polo (Colombia).
VANGELINE THEATER/NEW YORK BUTOH INSTITUTE aims to preserve the legacy and integrity of Japanese Butoh while carrying the art form well into the future. The unique art of Butoh originated in post- World War II Japan as a reaction to the loss of identity caused by the westernization of Japanese culture, as well as a realization that ancient Japanese performing traditions no longer spoke to a contemporary audience. One of the major developments in contemporary dance in the latter half of the 20th century, Butoh combines dance, theater, improvisation and influences of Japanese traditional performing arts to create a unique performing art form that is both controversial and universal in its expression. The Vangeline Theater is home to the New York Butoh Institute, dedicated to the advancement of Butoh in the 21st century. www.vangeline.com
Vangeline is a teacher, dancer, and choreographer specializing in the Japanese postwar avant-garde movement form Butoh. She is the artistic director of the Vangeline Theater (New York), a dance company firmly rooted in the tradition of Japanese Butoh while carrying it into the 21st century, and the founder of the New York Butoh Institute. Her work has been heralded in publications such as The New York Times ("captivating"), Los Angeles
Times, ("moves with the clockwork deliberation of a practiced Japanese Butoh artist") and LA Weekly, to name a few. More recently her solo "Butoh Beethoven: Eclipse" received critical acclaim from the Ballet Review.
Vangeline is a 2018 NYFA/ NYSCA Artist Fellow in Choreography. She is also the winner of the 2015 Gibney Dance's Beth Silverman-Yam Social Action Award. Film projects include a starring role alongside actors James Franco and Winona Ryder in the 2012 feature film The Letter, written and directed by Jay Anania, She has performed with/for Grammy Award-winning artists SKRILLEX and Esperanza Spalding. She is the author of a forthcoming book about butoh and looks forward to curating the second New York Butoh Institute Festival 19 this October.
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York's most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC's Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Vin Diesel, Oscar Nuñez, Laurence Holder, Romulus Linney and Academy Award winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and COBU, the Japanese women's drumming, and dance group. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company's 1997 production of Between Life and Death, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 42 OBIE Awards for excellent in every theatrical discipline. TNC is the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.
Backs are turned and accusations hurled as the Rosens come together and fall apart, bound by heartbreak and humor. Nobody escapes a good kick in the tuchas as they expose their foibles, confront their fears, and cling to their fragile connection amidst the chaos. The story is both elegy and eulogy to the death of a family and reminds us that we're not alone.
Cast:
Yaron Urbas
Dori Levit
Joseph J. Menino*
Francesca Calo*
Lori Ackerman*
James K. Fulater
(*Member AEA)
Technical / Production Staff:
STAGE MANAGERS: Melissa Mauer, Nicole Carne
LIGHTING DESIGNER: Alex Bartenieff
SET DESIGNER: Mark Marcante
GRAPHIC DESIGNER: Lavin Cuddehee
COSTUMES: Juliet Ouyoung
SOUND DESIGN: Paul Howells
***NO LATE SEATING***
Arts.Theatre
Arts.Theatre
takes on the forty-year love/hate relationship between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, two leading twentieth-century philosophers, from their first meeting at Cambridge in 1911 to Wittgenstein's death in 1951.
Russell is heterosexual, hedonistic and agnostic; Wittgenstein is puritanical, gay and Jewish. Russell is an imprisoned pacifist; Wittgenstein a decorated combat soldier. Wittgenstein is intensely religious; Russell mocks religion from first to last. Wittgenstein regards Russell as his "mental father," but their relationship has elements of rivalry.
In Lackeys telling, Wittgenstein's thinking kindles the demolition of facts in our post-truth world while Russell's inspires the National Science Foundation. This play will show you how.
Arts.Performance
GOLDFISH
Sabrina, a feral child, just turned 6 and her parents are throwing her a party in their shabby loft in the desolate rug district. After the cake is eaten, the parents and their only friend Beth, wait for an aristocratic couple to arrive. The couple arrives minutes before midnight with a strange “poet” they just met on the street. Now, as a goldfish presides, the evening begins.
MEMORY LIKE A PALE GREEN CLOCK
A husband surprises his wife with a romantic dinner at an extravagant restaurant. Across from them is a woman sitting alone that he remembers but can’t place. As his distraction persists his wife becomes increasingly irritated. While the evening unravels an ancient waiter serves as an enigmatic master of ceremonies.
BONE APPETITE
A tale inspired by a true story. One character focuses on a special dinner, the other on how it will be served. What is at “steak” here, a simple meal or something of a more existential nature? Enlightenment--served as desert?
Featuring Wynne Anders, Elizabeth A. Bell, Christopher Borg, Claudia Fabella, Steven Hauck, Jamie Heinlein, and Ryan HilIiard.
Produced by Nedworks, Inc. in association with Theater for the New City.
Jennifer Joy has performed her science-inspired repertoire at off-Broadway theaters, NASA conferences, and universities across the US. The Chaos Theory of Now was workshopped at Dixon Place.
Like all CEO's of publicly held conglomerates, Dennis Holland of the fictional company Total Electric must deliver one thing: SHAREHOLDER VALUE. From the financial crisis of 2008 through the present, Holland scrambles to implement short-sighted ways to deliver quarterly profits, including spinning off divisions and green lighting cutbacks, consistently favoring quick fixes over long-term strategy. An activist investor challenges his leadership, and when the CEO decides to sell the light-bulb division, TE’s founder, Thomas Edison, haunts his dreams. When the stock continues to tumble and debt mounts, the cost of his actions becomes increasingly apparent to his shareholders, his employees, and finally to himself. Tickets, priced $10-$15, may be purchased online through SmartTix , by calling (212) 868-4444 or the the box office at (212) 254-1109.
The cast of SHAREHOLDER VALUE features Debbie Bernstein, Joe Candelora, Matt Gorsky, Dennis Holland, Bill McAndrews, Benjamin Russell, and Kristen Tripolitis. Original incidental music is by Arthur Abrams. Costume design is by Desiree Conton; lighting design is by Alexander Bartenieff; sound and video design is by Alex Santullo; and prop design is by Lytza Colon. Jordyn Prince is the assistant director and Jessica Schedlbauer serves as stage manager.
Joining Austin Pendleton and Matt de Rogatis in the cast are: Jim Broaddus, John Constantine, Adam Dodway, Milton Elliott, Carolyn Groves, Debra Lass, Johanna Leister, Rachel Marcus, Pete McElligott, Brian Patrick Murphy, John L. Payne, Tomas Russo and Michael Villastrigo.
Tickets are $18. For tickets and further information visit www.proveavillain.com.
THE OPEN GATE will open on Sunday October 14th, for a limited engagement, through October 27th at Theater for the New City (155 First Avenue at 10th Street). The musical, which deals with the fates of a wealthy Jewish businessman and his four daughters, begins previews on Thursday, October 11th. A musical adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel The Manor, THE OPEN GATE is a struggle between modern thought and values and the old life of intense piety. The musical is written and directed by David Willinger, with music composed by Arthur Abrams and choreography by Michael Vazquez.
The performance schedule for THE OPEN GATE is as follows: Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm, with matinees on Sundays at 3pm through October 27th.
Tickets are $20 and $10 for seniors and students, which can be purchased by visiting www.smarttix.com or by calling 212-868-4444. In an effort to reach all audiences, tickets for previews for THE OPEN GATE will be priced as “pay what you can” and are only available at the Box Office the day or performance. The 15 member cast is soon-to-be-announced.
A world premiere musical black comedy with book, music and lyrics by Kit Goldstein Grant, based on the classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. Michael Chase Gosselin directs and choreographs a cast of 14, including James Beaman*, Jianzi Colón-Soto, Thomas M. Conroy*, Dennis Holland*, Brian Kilday*, Robin Lounsbury*, Christopher Michaels, Tim Realbuto*, Nate Rocke, Simon Schaitkin, Brandon Shockey, Tristan J. Shuler*, James Stafford*, and Joe Veale*.
The Wrong Box first appeared in 2002 as a student production at Union College in Schenectady, NY. After a number of years writing musicals on commission, Kit returned to The Wrong Box in 2012, reworking the book and score. In 2013 she recorded and released a concept album of the show. The show was a finalist for London’s Burbage Productions New Writing Prize, had excerpts performed at Theatre Resources Unlimited, the Musical Theatre Factory, and The Playground Experiment, and was a finalist for Theatre Resources Unlimited’s TRU Voices New Musicals Reading Series. In October 2016 The Wrong Box had a successful staged reading at the National Opera Center, produced by Melissa Nally and Sahar Helmy and featuring Frank Vlastnik (Broadway: Big, A Year with Frog and Toad, The Sweet Smell of Success) in the lead role. Most recently, The Wrong Box was developed in Apples and Oranges Studios' THEatre Accelerator Program, led by Tim and Pamela Kashani (Broadway: An American in Paris, Memphis).
The Wrong Box is presented by Theater for the New City. Associate Producer: Benjamin Nissen; Music Director: Justin Ward Weber; Set and Lighting Designer: David Goldstein; Costume Designer: Angela Borst; Sound Designer: Basil Apostolo; Orchestrator: Neil Radisch; Production Stage Manager: Carol A. Sullivan*; Assistant Stage Manager: Ryan A. Ross; Assistant Director: Morgan Rielly; Associate Choreographer: Gabby Cogan; Publicist: Paul Siebold/Off Off PR; General Management/Executive Producer: Visceral Entertainment.
With a cast of twelve, AMERICA’S FAVORITE NEWSCASTER is a new American musical about a young, highly rated TV journalist, struggling to maintain his famously calm yet fearlessly insightful demeanor while dealing with the challenges of today’s news cycle.
Performances will be on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00PM and Sundays at 3:00PM.
Tickets to AMERICA’S FAVORITE NEWSCASTER are priced at ​ $15 ($10 for Students and Seniors) and are now available online at http://www.theaterforthenewcity.net , at the Box Office via telephone at 212-254-1109, and, as the first performance nears, at SmartTix.
The ensemble cast will feature Gwen Grastorf, Karen Hansen (Winner, 2017 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Musical Direction), Mark Jaster (Winner, 2016 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play), Sabrina Mandell, Sarah Olmsted Thomas, and Alex Vernon with Lighting Design by Kris Thompson and Costume Design by Sabrina Mandell (Winner, 2016 & 2017 Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Costume Design).
BrouHaHa has been performed at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, Staunton Music Festival, Celebration Barn, NextNOW Festival at Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Baltimore Theatre Project, NY Clown Theatre Festival in Brooklyn, Capital Fringe Festival, Reston CenterStage and St. Mary’s College. It was developed with a grant from the Morgan Fund and by support from the Share fund. This will be the show’s New York City Premiere.
WHERE: Theater for the New City (155 1st Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets)
WHEN: January 4-21 with performances Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm with an additional performance on Monday, January 15 at 8pm
TICKETS: $25 General Admission $15 Students/Seniors
ONLINE: www.HappenstanceTheater.com/BROUHAHA
BOX OFFICE: 212-868-4444
Happenstance Theater is a professional company committed to devising, producing and touring original, performer-created visual, poetic Theatre. Our ensemble is made up of multi-talented performers who craft all aspects of our work from concept to realization. We harvest imagery from the past and re-contextualize it in works that address eternal themes of life and death. With the simplest means - humor, music, silence, text and beauty - we seek to elevate the moment when the performers and audience meet, to lift the encounter beyond the daily and pedestrian into the realms of dreams, poetry, and art. Meaning is often found by happenstance.
In 2016 Happenstance received three Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Ensemble, Outstanding Costume Design and Outstanding Lead Actor. In 2017 Happenstance received two Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Costume Design and Outstanding Musical Direction.
About the Company: Happenstance Theater
Happenstance Theater is a professional company committed to devising, producing and touring original, performer-created visual, poetic Theatre. Our ensemble is made up of multi-talented performers who craft all aspects of our work from concept to realization. We harvest imagery from the past and re-contextualize it in works that address eternal themes of life and death. With the simplest means - humor, music, silence, text and beauty - we seek to elevate the moment when the performers and audience meet, to lift the encounter beyond the daily and pedestrian into the realms of dreams, poetry, and art. Meaning is often found by happenstance.
In 2016 Happenstance received three Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Ensemble, Outstanding Costume Design and Outstanding Lead Actor. In 2017 Happenstance received two Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Costume Design and Outstanding Musical Direction.
New York Butoh dancer Vangeline conjures the ghosts of two passionate giants - Tatsumi Hijikata, founder of Butoh, and composer Ludwig van Beethoven in this hypnotic, electrifying and award-winning solo performance. 80 minutes with a 10 minute intermission.
"Virtuosic solo performance that will make your skin crawl in the best way possible, conjuring the ghosts of tortured geniuses Beethoven and Tatsumi Hijikata and bringing Butoh into the 21st century with technical marvels and masterful skill. Vangeline is an artist who knows the darkness of Butoh well, and has the incredible skill to make that darkness dance." - Theasy
The word "eclipse"is derived from the ancient Greek verb á¼κλείπω (ekleípÅ) which means "to abandon," "to darken," or "to cease to exist." Butoh is likewise the "Dance of Darkness" where performers dance on the threshold of Life and Death Life.
BUTOH BEETHOVEN: ECLIPSE is a solo piece that illuminates the darkness of Butoh with the addition of cutting edge lighting technologies such as the futuristic creations of European designer Tilen SepiÄ and fiber optic costume by the French company Lumigram. After touring this show for the past three years and receiving four stars at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, five stars at Copenhagen Stage Festival and critical acclaim in New York City, Vangeline shines a new light on Butoh and will transport audiences.
This program is supported in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
ABOUT VANGELINE THEATER
Vangeline is an award-winning teacher, dancer, and choreographer specializing in the Japanese postwar avant-garde movement form Butoh. She is Artistic Director of The Vangeline Theater Inc., an all-female dance company that she founded in 2002. Firmly rooted in the tradition of Japanese Butoh, The Vangeline Theater is committed to providing programming, performances and classes that honor the legacy of the art form while moving it forward in the 21st century. Vangeline is the winner of the 2015 Gibney Dance's Beth Silverman-Yam Social Action Award recognizing excellence in the field of Community Action. Vangeline's Butoh work has been commissioned by Atlantic Records' Grammy award-winning artist SKRILLEX and Grammy Award winner Esperanza Spalding, and is featured in a major motion picture "The Letter" with James Franco and Winona Ryder, as well as on CNN's Great Big Story.
Since its inception in 2002, Vangeline Theater has fused the post-apocalyptic vision of Butoh (the Japanese dance form that developed after Hiroshima) with the near-cinematic aesthetic of 21st Century science-fiction noir. The mission of Vangeline Theater is to be at the forefront of the artistic movement to address environmental awareness providing artistic, socially responsible engagements in our community. The Vangeline Theater is home to the New York Butoh Institute, dedicated to the advancement of Butoh in the 21st century, with a special emphasis on scientific research as it relates to Butoh.
Lissa Moira directs a cast of 13, including Amanda Alyse Thomas, Matt Angel, Kimberly Bechtold, Torian Brackett, Jef Canter*, Kareem Elsamadicy, Xi Lyu, Zen Mansley, Douglas McDonnell, Amelia Sasson, Matthew Serra, David F. Slone, Esq., and Amanda Yachechak. *Member, Actors' Equity Association. AEA Showcase.
This is first full professional production of Giovanni The Fearless after abridged concert versions were performed at the Dramatists' Guild (2010); Havoc Theatre/Abingdon Theatre Complex (2011); and Nimoy/Thalia at Symphony Space (2012).
Grand Theft Musical is a boisterous, bawdy, bang-bang musical comedy, which openly purloins from some of the greatest examples of the genre to hilarious effect. The cast of 17 characters includes a powerful, bisexual, vindictive columnist and his network of adorable spies; a ridiculously successful good guy Broadway producer, his gorgeous super-smart stripper girlfriend, and his envious sneaky business partner; an exceedingly dangerous mafia Don and his tap-dancing nephew; a larger-than-life Broadway director - a big bear of a man who is an unapologetic Socialist; a beautiful, sensitive suicidal actress and wide-eyed, optimistic writer composer - a stunningly insufferable super-star British couple who invite sexual intrigue; and a highly talented acid-tongued choreographer. How they relate to, deal and double-deal with, fall in and out of love and in and out of bed with each other, while singing and dancing up a storm, constitutes the plot. Grand Theft Musical is a sophisticatedly silly, satirical lampoon yet warm embrace of Broadway and all things theater. Beg, borrow but please don’t steal a ticket to Grand Theft Musical.
Robert Sickinger was a guiding spirit of the theater’s avant-garde, a founder of several cutting edge companies in Chicago and here in New York City (Manhattan Theater Club). He has been sorely missed since his passing. In his final years, Robert became entranced by the musical theater form, so to honor this great man, his ideas and his legacy, Lissa Moira has adapted his 1994 musical Platinum Taps into this brand new incarnation, Grand Theft Musical. John Taylor Thomas remains the composer.
Grand Theft Musical is presented by Theater for the New City. Musical Director/Pianist: Andy Peterson; Choreographers: Carlos Gomez, J. Alan Hanna and Mallory Brophy; Set Designer: Marc Marcante; Sets and Costume Designer: Lytza Colon; Lighting Designer: Alex Bartenieff. Stage Manager: Charles Casano; Fight Choreographer: Mark Lang.
From Oy to Vey is a 20-minute raucous off-color opera vaudeville curtain raiser of five select pieces from the larger work by Seymour Barab.
Lady of The Castle is set in 1947 after the Holocaust. Is there a young Jewish girl still hidden in the old castle? Based on a true story and Lea Goldberg’s Israeli play, Lady of the Castle is a chamber opera about illusion, reality, love, betrayal, death and hope.
Originally commissioned and presented by Theater for the New City in 1982, Lady of The Castle has enjoyed over ten productions internationally. It has been staged in New York off-Broadway and at the JCC, on Long Island and in Massachusetts, in Berlin with support of the Anne Frank Foundation, and in London at Saint Giles Cripplegate Church in the Barbican Center as part of the Festival of Austrian Jewish Culture - produced with the artistic supervision of conductor David Josefowitz. The London concert version is available on Original Cast Recordings.
A three-piece chamber orchestra includes, Piano: Jesse Lozano; Flute: Michael Laderman; and Cello: Vivian Penham.
From Oy to Vey and Lady of The Castle are presented by Theater for the New City and The After Dinner Opera Company; Director: Lissa Moira; Musical Director: Jesse Lozano; Choreographer: Amanda Yachechak; Sets and Costume Designer: Lytza Colon; Lighting Designer: Alex Bartenieff.
Critically acclaimed playwright Antony Raymond’s new play, The Title Should Be Spoken Out Loud Around Three-Quarters In will have its World Premiere at Theater For The New City’s Dream Up Festival on September 12. Raymond, is the Artistic Director of Elsinore County, previous writing/directing credits include JULIO!, Pretty Babies, and yeah i met this girl.
The cast features Greg Bell, Christopher Heard, JJ Pyle, and Eric Doviak. The creative team includes choreography by Bronn Blackwaters, and lightning design by Daryl Embry.
About the Company: Elsinore County
Elsinore County (EC), so-named after one of their most successful productions, is an award winning Greenwich Village based theater company founded in 2011 by a small cohort of talented New York City actors under the direction of Antony Raymond. EC is a tightly knit, uninhibited, impassioned community of artists who are committed to creating entertainment that challenges the status quo. They engage their audiences with works of satire, farce, and dark humor that examine timeless social tenets and the politics of wanton power and sexuality so prevalent today. Elsinore County's mission is to give their audience smart, poignant and exciting entertainment that fearlessly explores the full gamut of human experience: from hilarious to tragic and back again.
Written by Robin Goldfin with live music composed by Oren Neiman and performed by Oren Neiman & Gilad Ben-Zvi. David L. Carson* directs a cast of 6, including Jeffrey Swan Jones*, Antonio Minino, Alyssa Simon*, Kenneth Talberth*, Stephen Thornton, and Elanna White. *Member, AEA
Playwright Robin Goldfin writes: “Etgar Keret is one of Israel’s most celebrated writers. He is the author of six collections of stories that have been translated into more than thirty languages, and most recently the memoir THE SEVEN GOOD YEARS, published first in English. In the U.S., his work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine and The Paris Review. He has also been a frequent contributor on NPR's This American Life. What a pleasure it has been to adapt the stories of this master storyteller to make a new play!" Visit Etgar Keret's official website here.
1929 - New York City. John and Jane Allison are newlyweds. Although they love each other, they have desires they haven’t even acknowledged to themselves, let alone explored. But after giving her neighbor Roberta White a kiss, Jane goes “down the rabbit hole,†entering the strange world of a Speakeasy, where time and space and identity don’t appear to follow conventional rules. On accepting a sexual proposition in a public men’s room, John mysteriously slides “through the looking glass,†and in one fantastical magical realist dream night, they explore their sexuality through the course of two simultaneous and intertwining magical adventures. Lewis Carroll’s literary characters and events from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland†and “Through the Looking Glass†are transformed into real-life historically-significant entertainers and events from NYC’s Prohibition-era queer culture, with whom Jane and John enjoy friendships and love affairs. After a night of speakeasies, buffet flat parties, police raids, drag balls, and a bizarre trial, will they reveal their “dreams†to each other and “speak easy†about their truths?
Speakeasy: John and Jane's Adventures in the Wonderland shares the sexual freedoms explored in the 1920s and 30s, and how those freedoms were ruined with the end of Prohibition. It is a love song to queer life in NYC and to forgotten entertainers such as Gene (Jean) Malin, the openly homosexual headline act of New York’s short-lived Pansy Craze of 1929; Vaudeville’s famous Dolly Sisters; the larger than life black lesbian singer Gladys Bentley of Harlem’s “Negro Vogue†fame; and the popular female impersonator Julian Eltinge, to name a few. The music in Speakeasy is based on various styles of the era, but with a modern twist, including Tin Pan Alley, showtunes, jazz, swing, cabaret, operetta as well as classical and agitprop strains of the time.
Lissa Moira directs a cast of 28, including Camille Atkinson, Torian Brackett, Anne Bragg, Tim Connell*, Nick DeFrancesco, Darcy Dunn, Rosalie Graziano*, Bevin Bell-Hall, Brian Michael Henry*, Dan Kelley, Marlena Mack, Rebecca Marquardt, Bri Molloy, Sarah Mostov, Matias Polar, Kristen Quinn, Allie Radice*, Nathan Richardson, Kayleigh Shuler, Cory Tarallo, Yeuris F. Taveras, Amanda Thomas, Tommy Vance, Zach Wachter, Desi Waters, and Kit Yan, with additional cast members to be announced shortly. Music direction by Jonathan Fox Powers.
Director Lissa Moira intends to follow the direction of the playwright when he subtitled the play ‘An Apache Dance.’ She and the actors will imbue it with kinetic, sexual rhythm, avoiding the stale, static feel that too many productions of this play take on. Shanley’s bar is not a “real bar;†there is no bartender, no money is exchanged for beer, there are no other people. These two explosive beings cannot be contained by the usual constraints of society and four walls. Time is compressed, and the play is touched by magical realism.
Starring John Talerico and Susan Mitchell*. *Member, AEA.
A tale of two sets of very different lovers and the pitfalls (some of their own making and some imposed by the strict hierarchical society that demands that everybody – especially women know their place) they encounter on their separate roads to finding each other. The mise en scene is early 19th century at war with Napoleon, while members of its intelligentsia fight a war in print about women’s’ duties in maintain family values and by extension the fabric of the nation versus a nascent feminist movement.
Lissa Moira will direct a cast of 19, including Jeffrey Marc Alkins, Louisa Bradshaw*, Thom Brown, Chris Donovan*, Emily Hin, Rebecca Knowles, Mark Lang, Stephanie Leone, Caroline Lyell, Frances Franklin McGovern, James Parks, Katya Powder, Jonathan Fox Powers, Katherine Rose Riley, Robert Charles Russell*, Britney Simone, Henrietta Stevenson, Hallie Wage, and Amanda Yachechak. *Member, Actors' Equity Association. AEA Showcase.
Theater for the New City (Crystal Field, Executive Director) will present Lesser America’s World Premiere of Brian Watkins’ (My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer with The Flea) family drama Wyoming, January 15-31 at Theater for the New City (155 1st Avenue between 9th and 10th Street). The production will be directed by Danya Taymor (I Hate Fucking Mexicans at The Flea). The cast will include Daniel Abeles* (Where We’re Born at Rattlestick), Carter Hudson* (Substance of Fire at Second Stage), Layla Khoshnoudi (My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer at The Flea), Roger Lirtsman* (The Tenant with Woodshed Collective), Nate Miller* (Love and Information at New York Theatre Workshop), Laura Ramadei (Carnival Kids with Lesser America), and Sarah Sokolovic* (Detroit with Playwrights Horizons). The creative team will include Costume Design by Beth Goldenberg, Props Design by Jessica Jalal, Set Design by Edward T. Morris, Original Music by Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Lighting Design by Masha Tsimring, and Sound Design by Asa Wember (brownsville song (b-side for tray) at Lincoln Center). *Appearing courtesy of the Actors’ Equity Association
About the Company: Lesser America
LESSER AMERICA is an ensemble of renegade artists dedicated to smart, quality entertainment that puts the audience first, fulfilling the promise of affordable, accessible theater for the 21st century.
Founded in 2010 Lesser America is best known for presenting the World Premiere productions of Lucas Kavner’s Carnivals Kids (NY Times Critics’ Pick), and Nick Jones’ Trevor (NY Times and Time Out NY Critic’s Picks). In 2011 the company founders were named NY Theatre’s People of the Year. Productions also include Just Right Just Now, American River, Too Much Too Soon, Squealer, and Keep Your Baggage with You (2011 NY Innovative Theater Award for Best Original Full Length Script). Lesser America consists of founding members Daniel Abeles, Nate Miller and Laura Ramadei, and Ensemble Members Stephen Brackett (Carnival Kids, Buyer and Cellar), Portia Krieger (Eager to Lose, Baby Screams Miracle), Daniel Talbott (Scarcity), Anna O’Donoghue, Claire Siebers, Brendan Spieth, and Craig Jorczak.
In "Out The Window" when a willful wife and hapless husband who don’t happen to be married to each other get together to combat a scourge of jealously, will the cure turn out to be worse than the disease? Or, will love prevail? Out The Window stars Lauren Hoffmeier and James Parks.
Rappaccini’s Daughter, a musical tale
Rappaccini’s Daughter, from the story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a gripping Gothic tale set in medieval Italy. Two young lovers with their dreams of a shared future, become the victims of the brilliant Dr. Rappaccini, intent on changing the very laws of nature. No one is safe from his scientific experiments, not even his own daughter–and no one can stop him except, perhaps, for Professor Baglioni, an unheralded doctor committed to healing and humanity. The evil secret lies in a garden.
Rappaccini’s Daughter stars Samantha Britt, William Broderick*, Darcy Dunn, Martin Fisher, and Douglas McDonnell with Michelle Lamb, Bryan Ernesto Menjivar, Michelle West, Masami Ishibashi, Amanda Yachechak, and Gloria Makino*.*Member, Actors' Equity Association. AEA Showcase.
Join the Crummles Troupe in protest mode as they bring The Nickleby Family, The Squeers, The Cheerybles, Smike, Newman Noggs and an array of early Victorian era characters to life. Left penniless after his father’s death, teenage Nicholas, his mother and sister embark on a journey to London to seek help from their Uncle Ralph, who immediately dislikes Nicholas and finds work for him in The Squeers’ boarding school. Run like a prison, Nicholas is horrified by the school’s conditions and escapes with crippled friend Smike back to London. Reunited with his family, Nicholas finds himself defending the honor of his family and friends against his Uncle’s deceptions.
Drama"
Theater.Drama

Drama"
Theater.Drama

Drama"
Theater.Drama

Play"
Theater.Play
Take an adventurous ride on a disco schtick of mystery, music and amusement in a journey to connect-the-dots between pop icons, from Liza Minnelli and Joan Crawford to recent pop idols. PARKER & DIZZY’S FABULOUS JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE RAINBOW follows an unlikely daring duo; Parker, a curious assistant to the stars, and the adorably spunky choreographer, Dizzy. When their boss, famed drag-songstress Victoria Luster, winds up mysteriously murdered in her dressing room, the twosome are not only shocked, but are actually questioned as suspects! Their only hope is a cryptic message uttered by the dying diva. Unbeknownst to them, they are about to embark on a mind-altering, secret-unveiling journey, encountering drag queens, clones, dead bodies and a menacing villainess, questioning not only their own reality, but also their friendship, culture and life purpose! Songs will include “GPeniS,” “Hail the Queens,” “Don’t Even Think About It,” “Hero of This Dream,” “The Troll Song,” “What Makes a Friend” and more.
Returning cast members Peter Zachari (Parker), Joey Mirabile (Dizzy) and Sam Given (aka Millie Grams) are joined by NYC comedian and drag personality Marti Gould Cummings, Eric Byrer, Kasidy Devlin, Solomon Kee, Scott Salame and Jacob Storms.
Theater for the New City, Crystal Field, Exec Director
155 1st Avenue, New York, NY 10003
January 9-26, 2014 – Tickets: $15 general / $10 students and seniors
For tickets, visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net or call (212) 254-1109
Book by Peter Zachari
Music and Lyrics by Damon Maida and Peter Zachari
Directed by Peter Zachari
Musical Direction by Douglas Maxwell
Chorography by Joey Mirabile
Check out Parker and Dizzy on Facebook: www.fb.com/parkeranddizzy
And on Twitter: www.twitter.com/parkeranddizzy
About the Company: Theater For The New City
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York’s most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC’s Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Ma-Yi Theater Company, which won an OBIE Award for its 1996 TNC production, FLIPZOIDS. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company’s 1997 production of BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 40 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.

Comedy"
Theater.Comedy
Drama"
Theater.Drama

Modern"
Dance.Modern
A generic couple struggling to be mutually understood. A couple of patients waiting for deliverance. A pair of janitors meeting a pair of lawyers. Two women in a tense standoff playing a deadly card game. Three of a Kind, With Two Wild Cards is a series of four one-act plays with overlapping characters. Equal parts sketch comedy, melodrama, juggled timelines and theater of the absurd, this new work by writer/director Robert Homeyer explores the variety of ways in which human beings discover their own identity...or have it forced upon them by circumstances beyond their control. In this full house, nothing is what it seems...
About the Company: Theater For The New City
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York’s most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC’s Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Ma-Yi Theater Company, which won an OBIE Award for its 1996 TNC production, FLIPZOIDS. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company’s 1997 production of BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 40 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.

Comedy"
Theater.Comedy
Musicals"
Theater.Musicals

Musicals"
Theater.Musicals
a new play by Julia Pascal (http://www.juliapascal.org/)
Directed by Ludovica Villar-Hauser (http://ludovicavillar-hauser.tumblr.com/)
What happens when Judith, a London journalist, comes to New York to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.
Will those she meets be able to stop her?
* * *
"Remarkable, elevating, exeptional." - The New York Times on Pascal's Dybbuk @ Theatre for the New City
"Pascal's play is a tense and stirring piece of theatre, acted with fierce intensity by an international cast." - The London Times on Theresa
Donations Welcome.
RSVP to womanonthebridgenyc@gmail.com
Monday, October 14th, 2013
7:00pm
Theater for the New City
155 1st ave, New York NY 10003
Play"
Theater.Play

Drama"
Theater.Drama
Drama"
Theater.Drama
Theater.Comedy
World Music"
Music.World Music
A surreal romp highlighting the US torture policy through the post 9-11 decade
An out-sized mogul (George Bartenieff) controls, cashes-in, and is undone in the only American play about the U.S. torture program. It is a challenge to the legacy of torture.
FAT ASSES: THE MUSICAL follows the crusade of three larger-than-life ladies who find themselves ostracized from their friends, families and even their weight-loss support group. Fed up of feeling invisible, Margaux, Candy and Lacey join forces with the militant newcomer Dustine and decide to storm the offices of the fashion magazine, Gaunt. When the girls are thrust into an immediate spotlight of social media adoration, they are forced to confront their deepest and sometimes deadliest secrets. Songs include, “Fed Up!” “Showstopper,” “Loving You Is a Dying Art,” “A Taste of Fashion,” and “We’re All the Rage” and more.
Featuring rollicking performances by Heather Anderson (The Wild Party; Secret Theater), Jane Aquilina (Bawdy n’ Soul; The Metropolitan Room, NYC), Elise Castle (Parker & Dizzy’s Fabulous Journey to the End of the Rainbow; FringeNYC), Kelly Teal Goyette (Shrek; National Tour), Caitlin McGinty (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; Theatre by the Sea), Joey Mirabile (Parker & Dizzy’s Fabulous Journey to the End of the Rainbow; FringeNYC) and Itanza Wooden (You Can Tell the Devil That I’m Back; Rose Baby Enterprises). Peter Zachari will direct the production with musical direction by Douglas Maxwell and choreography by Joey Mirabile.
For more information, visit www.fatassesthemusical.com
About the Company: Theater For The New City
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York’s most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC’s Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Ma-Yi Theater Company, which won an OBIE Award for its 1996 TNC production, FLIPZOIDS. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company’s 1997 production of BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 40 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.
Jeff Woodbridgedirects a cast of eight including Patrick Eichner, Samantha Jones*, Kurt Kelly*, Jake Levitt, Molly Lovell, Sarah Matteucci, Ted McGuinness, and Michael Mraz. *Member, Actors’ Equity Association. AEA Showcase.
About the Company: Long View Theater Company
Longview Theater Company believes in honestly portraying the human condition with compassion and humor. We want to inspire audiences and give voice to original points of view. We believe theater can provoke thoughtful discussion by portraying the powerful movements, harsh situations, and myriad of inter-connections that end up defining people’s lives. Through this portrayal, we gain understanding of ourselves and our own stories. Long View's inaugural production of And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little by Paul Zindel was hailed by critics as “A near-perfect production,” “A gem, every facet gleaming in a perfect setting.” and “A moving evening of theater.” Pit is their second production.
Trevor is a chimpanzee who once performed with the likes of Morgan Fairchild. Now, he's approaching puberty and can't even get a callback. Is it because he's big and strong and potentially dangerous? Or does he just need better costumes? Trevor lives alone with Sandra, a middle aged widow. Sandra knows Trevor would never hurt anyone, at least not on purpose. And just because he's not "cute" like he used to be, she won't send him to some dirty sanctuary, at least not to appease her paranoid neighbor Ashley and her precious newborn baby.
About the Company: Lesser America
LESSER AMERICA is a pop theater ensemble of renegade artists dedicated to smart, quality entertainment that puts the audience first, fulfilling the promise of affordable, accessible theater for the 21st century. The company’s past productions include Squealer by Jonathan Blitstein, directed by Daniel Talbott,Too Much Too Soon, a series of six short plays, featuring writing by Nikole Beckwith, Dean Imperial, Nick Jones, Melissa Ross, Emily Schwend, and Ken Urban. The series was directed by Portia Krieger alongside Stephen Brackett. In the summer of 2012, Lesser America also presented American River, a world premiere by Micheline Auger, directed by Stephen Brackett. The company is currently in residence at Theater for the New City, Crystal Field, Executive Director. The Lesser Americans were also named nytheatre.com’s 2011 People of the Year.

Performance Art"
Acts/Attractions.Performance Art
Come share our experiences in nature and in the routine workday world of New York City. Transcend your spatial and temporal coordinates as we explore our relationship to time, and to each other, through circus and physical movement. The working version of this show was originally introduced in July 2012 for one night at Circus Warehouse, and now we are very excited to premiere the full-length show for four nights at Theater for the New City.
TIME CO/LAPSE is conceived and directed by Scott Combs, who has been working for a year now on completing this project. The early music of Brian Eno is the catalyst for this
talented cast's exploration of speed and rhythm.
Peformed by Megan Cattau, Scott Combs, Ari Klein, Wendy Louie, Jan Manke, Danielle Natoli, Maia Ramnath, and Satomi Shikata.
4 shows:
Thursday, January 10th 8:00
Friday, January 11th 8:00
Saturday, January 12th 8:00
Sunday, January 13th 3:00pm
Venue:
Theater for the New City
155 1st Avenue (between 9th and 10th Streets)
Arts.Dance
Play"
Theater.Play
The Theater for the New City with the support of Spain Culture New York-Consulate General of Spain presents The New Stage Theatre Company's Garden of Delights, written by Fernando Arrabal and directed by Ildiko Nemeth (NY Innovative Theatre Award nominee), with original music by Jon Gilbert Leavitt (Outmusic Award winner).
A beautiful and troubled actress, Lais, is tortured by guilt and isolated in her palatial home. As she fields prying calls from a live celebrity talk show, her memories and emotions manifest before her. In Fernando Arrabal's Garden of Delights, the lines between reality, imagination and remembering blur. Lais is forced to confront the ghosts of her past, and the injuries she has sustained and inflicted.
The cast includes Kaylin Lee Clinton (NY Innovative Theatre Award nominee), Belle Caplis (NY Innovative Theatre Award nominee), Brandon Olson, Chris Tanner, Geraldine Dulex, Denice Kondik (NY Innovative Theatre Award nominee), Francisca Magalhães, Valerie Miller, Florencia Minniti, Devin Nelson, Emma Pettersson, Alexandra Pike, Juliana Silva and Jeanne Lauren Smith.
About the Company: Theater For The New City
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York’s most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC’s Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Ma-Yi Theater Company, which won an OBIE Award for its 1996 TNC production, FLIPZOIDS. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company’s 1997 production of BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 40 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.
Reading"
Theater.Reading
Play"
Theater.Play

Other"
Acts/Attractions.Other
Theater.Drama
Musicals"
Theater.Musicals
Dance Theater"
Dance.Dance Theater

Drama"
Theater.Drama
Theater.Play
Comedy.Sketch Comedy
New Genre
Play"
Theater.Play
Theater.Play
Theater.Play
Theater.Comedy
Theater.Farce
Theater.Play
Dance.Dance Theater
Theater.Play
Theater.Play
Theater.Play
Theater.Play
Theater.Play
Theater.Play
Theater.Play
Theater.Multi Media
Theater.Play
Alex Kveton’s witty and daring new play takes a harsh look at the dangers of excessive behavior while bringing us along on an existential roller-coaster ride as one man’s struggle to survive forces him to give up what he loves most in the world – utter indulgence. Directed by Theater Reconstruction Ensemble’s John Kurzynowski, Fat Fat Fatty promises to be an evening of theatrical innovation that will leave you hungry for more!
About the Company: Theater For The New City
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York’s most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC’s Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Ma-Yi Theater Company, which won an OBIE Award for its 1996 TNC production, FLIPZOIDS. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company’s 1997 production of BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 40 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.
Theater.Play
Theater.Play
Theater.Play
Acts/Attractions.Performance Art
Play"
Theater.Play
Comedy"
Theater.Comedy
Comedy"
Theater.Comedy
Reading"
Theater.Reading
Mystery/Thriller"
Mystery/Thriller"
Theater.Mystery/Thriller
Comedy"
Theater.Comedy
Reading"
Theater.Reading
Other"
Arts.Performance
Reading"
Theater.Reading
Reading"
Theater.Reading
Reading"
Theater.Reading

Katherine and William are in lust — with other people. But they are also married — to each other. Unwilling to cheat, they open their marriage, test their limits, and confront hilarious reminders that extramarital escapades can lead to much more than just sex. What begins as an online exercise in physical release becomes a real-life challenge to the couple’s notions of normalcy, love, and fidelity.
What are the moral boundaries of cybersex? What's the difference between pixels and flesh? Find out in this daring, honest new comedy.
- Cast:
Brandt Johnson, Alex Kilgore, Tasha Lawrence, Meghan Miller
Play"

Play"
Theater.Play
Farce"
Theater.Farce
Farce"
Theater.Farce
Play"
Satan’s Whore follows the life of Victoria Woodhull as she journeys from sexually abused child, to the most infamous, celebrated, intellectual beauty of 19th Century New York City. Feminist suffragette & renowned spiritualist, Woodhull was the first female presidential candidate, with Frederick Douglass as her running mate. She was also the first female newspaper publisher & Wall Street broker, but was best known as a fearless free-love advocate & practitioner. Woodhull was a woman so far ahead of her time, that time has yet to catch up.
Featured in this AEA Approved Showcase Production areEmily Bayard Blake*, Paulina Brahm, Robert Colpitts, Tim Douglas*, Nora Mundé Gustuson, Robert Homeyer, George Isaacs, David “Zen” Mansley, Richard O'Brien, Jacob Merrik Storms& Kate Tenetko as Victoria Woodhull.
About the Company: Theater For The New City
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York’s most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC’s Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Ma-Yi Theater Company, which won an OBIE Award for its 1996 TNC production, FLIPZOIDS. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company’s 1997 production of BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 40 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.

Other"
Theater.Other

Other"
Theater.Other
As the sole performer in this musical, Elizabeth Barkan brings to life three generations of this bike-obsessed family, as she builds and fixes real bicycles onstage while backed up by a 4-piece "Bicycle Band".
Play"
Play"
Crystal Field and Theater for the New City (TNC) will present a varied schedule "Scratch Night” performance program, which offers the opportunity for artists to present work in progress to an audience for one night. Scratch Night started in the United Kingdom in 2000 as a way to show work in progress in an evolution of performances. At TNC, we will put our own spin on the idea to best serve our own theatre community and New York area audiences.
Scratch Night is looking for a variety of the most daring artists to try out their most cool thoughts on stage and the audience will help in the development by way of TNC’s scratch ballot. Scratch Nights will take place throughout the year on a varied schedule. All theatrical forms are welcome. All stages of development are welcome.
Reading"
Reading"
Theater.Reading
Reading"
You are cordially invited to attend one of the performances of COBU – Dance like Drumming, Drum like Dancing, at Theater for the New City (TNC), from March 1st through March 4th, Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 3pm.
COBU was founded in 2000 by YAKO MIYAMOTO, Veteran of the hit show STOMP, and has served as the inspiration to the Hollywood movie “COBU 3D,” which is currently being directed by Duane Adler, starring Derek Hough, BoA and Wesley Jonathan. COBU was the winner of the Wella International Trend New York Talent Award in 2011, and won the Audience Favorite Award at the 2011 New York Fringe Festival. They will be performing an excerpt from their TNC concert as part of TNC’s Annual Gala, LOVE N’ COURAGE, at the National Arts Club, 15 Gramcery Park South, on Monday, February 13th, 2012.
This all-girl “TAIKO” drum group mixes traditional with funk and hip-hop for performances like you’ve never seen before. Come feel their girl power and heart beat!!!
Modern"
Unreachable Eden tells the story of Polish Jewish lesbian Eve Adams (born Chava Zloczower) who ran a tearoom on
Unreachable Eden is based on Eve Adams’ deportation file from the
“…if I wanted to write my experiences of my wanderings and people and adventures, which still continue with every blessed day, it would take me years to write and I could fill volumes…” Eve Adams. 1934.
Eve’s first deportation in 1927 led ultimately to her second deportation, this time from
About the Company: Theater For The New City
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York’s most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC’s Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Ma-Yi Theater Company, which won an OBIE Award for its 1996 TNC production, FLIPZOIDS. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company’s 1997 production of BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 40 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.
Featuring: Cara Akselrad, Maggie Burke, Elizabeth
Canavan, J. Eric Cook, Charles Goforth, Michael Puzzo and Justin Reinsilber
Set design: Raul Abrego
Costume design: Meghan E. Healey
Lighting design: Burke Brown
Composer: Andre Fratto
*there will be limited rush tickets available at all performances*
featuring Cara Akselrad, Maggie Burke, Elizabeth
Canavan, J. Eric Cook, Charles Goforth, Michael Puzzo and Justin Reinsilber
set design Raul Abrego / costume design Meghan E. Healey /lighting design Burke Brown / composer Andre Fratto
*there will be limited rush tix available at all performances
Arts.Theatre
Theater.Play
In a quiet, tree lined suburb of Rockville, Maryland, Suzanne Curtis, a nearly perfect wife and mother, is living a charmed life, with two beautiful adult children and a husband who adores her. She's worked very hard to achieve this tranquility, but shadows from her past now intrude upon the bliss, as events from long ago threaten to destroy it all.
Featured in the cast of this AEA Showcase Production are Dan Patrick Brady*, Evander Duck, Jr.*, Kyle Fowler, Alexandra Grossi, Tina Mavrikidis, Austin Mitchell, Nick Ruggeri *, Jack Tynan and April Woodall *.
*Member AEA
Wednesday, April 21—OPENING NIGHT
Promise Tomorrow Today by Lawrence Dial
AlphabetCity, Avenue D. The winter of 2001-02. A historic hip-hop on-air radio battle: Jay-Z vs. Nas. Witness a fractious reunion between a would-be rapper, his reluctant friend, and in between, a troubled young hustler who can’t remember where her days went.
Thursday, April 22—DOUBLE FEATURE
Museum Piece By William Fowkes
A disruptive incident at MoMA brings three strangers together one Saturday afternoon. In this comedic tale, they are drawn to the museum for very different reasons and have oddly different experiences once they get there, leading to the unavoidable conclusion.
Making Moves By Dina Laura
It’s never too late to get to know your roommate... even after you’ve already been kicked out of the apartment. Dawn and Nicole are two strangers who share the same address, but come from different worlds. See what happens when two people are forced to confront themselves, their relationships and an overweight cat with an anxiety disorder.
Friday, April 23—DOUBLE FEATURE
Piñero Resurrected By Michele Cuomo & Ian Gonzalez Phillips
Lying in a hospital bed during the final hours of his life, legendary poet Miguel Piñero suddenly finds himself transported back to the Lower East Side. This time he’s not there to be Saint Miguelito, patron saint of lost junkies and cons, but just Miguel.
Confessions of a Homo Thug Porn Star By James Earl Hardy
What’s it like being the world’s most revered and recognizable “homo thug” porn star? During a break on a movie set, Brooklyn born and bred Tiger Tyson bares his soul – and his skin – to a reporter.
Saturday, April 24
VII Deadly Sins By Kash Goins
A story about a group of college friends who reunite for the first time in 10 years. At the hosts' brand new home, during a moment of pre-celebration between two of the friends, an unexpected violation occurs prior to the rest of the group's arrival that leads to the revelation and reaction to what has occurred; and what undoubtedly follows.
Wednesday April 28
The Choice By Riccardo Costa
Tom is about to make the hardest decision of his life--in a matter of survival, he’s cast against his will in therole of God. Who deserves salvation? And who’s already been saved? Tearing apart one another’s lives will drive Tom and his guests to a conclusion that none expected.
Thursday April 29—DOUBLE FEATURE
After-Loss By Mel Nieves
Dealing with the loss of his beloved wife, a man struggles as he contemplates whether another morning without her is worth seeing.
Waiting For The D By Lina Sarrello
An abstract, and sometimes, comical view of the mystery of death. Taking place on a night like any other, on a New York City subway platform; four people from different walks of life cross each other’s paths, causing moments of mystery, tenderness, and utter chaos.
Friday April 30—DOUBLE FEATURE
Glass By Imran Javaid
An in-depth exploration of the political failures and aspirations of a nation “much like Pakistan” through the humorous lens of an idealistic newsroom that is surrounded by unremitting violence but finds inspiration in a nascent movement led by the nation’s lawyers for the rule of law.
Chakalaka By Cesi Davidson
Taking place on the present day anniversary of the death of the great composer Vivaldi, Annie, an African American/Italian Studies scholar visits her local 24-hour supermarket Chakalaka. Helped by the cashiers to release the memories that have prevented her from moving on with her life, the market becomes the catalyst for Annie, a rape victim.
Saturday May 1
And You Don’t Stop By Nicole Kearney
A hip hop parable that sets a trio at a crossroads when they discover that a record label that has showninterest really only wants one of them, Supreme, the emcee. Unknown to him, the label plans to pervert his image. He unwillingly goes on a journey guided by the messenger and the four elements of hip hop to help him regain his self and return to his hip hop roots.
SPECIAL EVENT SCHEDULE:
Saturday, April 24 @ 3:00pm and 6:00pm, Theater for the New City
Lessons on the A Train
Lessons On The A Train is an original coming-of-age story about a group of urban teenagers growing up in modern day NYC. It’s put in motion one day on the A subway train where Bronx girls, Julissa and Lyria, find freedom to explore life choices when they encounter the candy-toting Raheim. *This event is open and free to the public. Space is limited, so RSVP to nsantiago@arcos-ny.com.
"Wonder Bread" is a fairytale-like odyssey about a farmer’s daughter from behind the Iron Curtain. Escaping her poor village in Poland, where she helped her family grow tomatoes, she flew here first for a three week vacation and subsequently came back to stay. Eventually she achieved the secure married life in America that her parents had wanted for her, but realized that it was not exactly what she desired. At 28, she met Iggy Pop and experienced teenage rebellion. She rejected her past, painfully tried to reinvent herself over and over, only to realize one truth: there is no hope for happiness without the acceptance of one’s roots.
In the play Trevino, with the aid of minor props, shuffles about 20 characters in the autobiography, fluttering effortlessly from one to another. Along the way, we get to know her Polish parents and family particularly well. Her characters also include various people who held authority over her in the new world, including a Burger King manager and her first boyfriend, who tried to kill her. The tale mixes comedy and the harsh reality. Amid her struggles and desperation, there is an overall sense of gratitude for being here (common to most Polish immigrants) and a genuine amazement at small things about America, like having oranges every day.
Trevino's autobiographical slice of life has been developed at the HB Ensemble. It was initially read in 2005 at Wow Cafe and the Lee Nagrin Gallery and was subsequently workshopped at Gretchen Cryer Workshop, Manhattan Theatre Source and Center Stage NYC. Trevino performed a 60-minute work-in-progress at HB Playwrights Foundation as part of Immigrant Heritage Week 2008, sponsored by the Mayors Office. Subsequently, there was a 90 minute work-in-progress staged at HB Studio. More recently, an excerpt was performed at the Players Club at a Gala Benefit celebrating Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.
This Theater for the New City production is a treasured opportunity for Ms. Trevino because it brings the play back to the East Village, which she regards as its inspiration and her "second home" (after Poland). Having moved to the U.S. in 1981 ("I got a fluke visa. It was a month before martial law was declared in Poland in response to the Solidarity movement."), she lived on Avenue B for 14 years during her "belated adolescent rebellion." During that period, she played bass guitar with an East Village Punk band named Fur and hung out with Anthony and the Johnsons. She also frequented shows at TNC, but her creative efforts were all in Punk Music. At the time, the East Village was something of a Polish neighborhood. Finally, in '96, she couldn't deny any more what her true calling is and left the band for the world of theater. She started writing this show. Now she says, "Oh my God, I am home again. It feels really right." She stresses that TNC's commitment to its neighborhood probably contributed to her career change.
The piece is performed in the tradition of Central European medieval street and traveling circus shows, using commedia dell' Arte, puppetry, object theater and circus arts. Czech and Czech-American theater artists have collaborated to offer an overview of the very notion of revolution based on their particular perspectives on the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Dobruský and Horejš began with script scenarios on the subjects of the Titanomachy (when the Olympian gods overthrew the Titans), the Agrarian Revolution (when organized agriculture started and animals were domesticated), the Spartacus Rebellion, the 15th century Hussite movement of peasants in Czech lands, the American, French, Industrial and Russian Revolutions; the Counterculture, the Computer Revolution and the Czech Velvet Revolution. The performance was developed primarily through improvisation in a month of workshops in Prague this February. The result is a collection of "acts," one for each topic, that range in style from dance theater to pure commedia to rhythm dances to narrated scenes and dialogue scenes, all containing a great deal of acrobatics. Much of the evening is performed on stilts. The puppets are primarily marionettes made from wood blocks whose "clop clop clop" against the stage floor allows them to double as rhythm instruments.
"Revolution!?" is written and directed by Pavel Dobruský and Vít Horejš. Set, costumes and lighting are by Dobruský. The performers are Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre members Theresa Linnihan, Ronny Wasserstrom and Vít Horejš, together with three guests from the Czech Republic: stilt walkers/performers Adela Jiracková and Sergej Sanza, and acrobatic dancer Hana Kalousková.
Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre made an auspicious Theater for the New City debut last season with "The Very Sad Story of Ethel & Julius, Lovers and Spyes, and about Their Untymelie End while Sitting in a Small Room at the Correctional Facility in Ossining New York." The company is excited to return to Crystal Field's theater, a venue which embraces new work and enables socially-engaged performances like "Revolution!?" to reach receptive audiences at affordable prices.
His comforting but fragile illusion is most clearly represented by his apartment, where photos and mementos from the musical world of the 1930’s and 1940’s abound. The musical explodes dramatically when the world of heavy-metal rock unexpectedly intrudes on his otherwise rather placid life. One night, outside his doorstep, he rescues a young woman who is being verbally and physically mistreated by her lover, a heavy-metal bandleader. She moves in with her new hero, setting the stage for a conflict not only in terms of love interest but also between styles of singing and dancing, between the elegant life as portrayed in the musicals of the 1930’s and 1940’s and the earthier life of today’s rock-and-rap world. The musical merrily dramatizes the joys and sacrifices of going your own way and believing in your dreams.
"Living in a Musical" is the sixth collaboration of Tom Attea (book and lyrics), Arthur Abrams (score) and Mark Marcante (director). Their works have been called “Delightfully funny!” (Robert Hicks, The Villager) and “Witty! In the tradition of the Fantastiks” (The Greenwich Village Press). Tom Attea had collaborated with Arthur Abrams in the early 1980's in the playwrights' unit of the Actors' Studio, where both were under the tutelage of Charles Friedman. Friedman had been a show doctor in the '30s and a great friend of George S. Kaufmann and Moss Hart. Attea first came to TNC at Abrams' urging to contribute skits for a revue named "It's an Emergency, Don't Hurry," which dealt with the world's lethargy in responding to urgent issues. Mark Marcante was director. Attea, having been trained by a gifted theatrical mentor, was eager for a theatrical outlet as a relief from his TV writing. TNC provided talented collaborators. Stimulated by the experience of that first revue, Attea went on to write a musical a year with Abrams, all of which were directed by Marcante.
Then Arthur Abrams was hit by a car and wound up in critical condition in the hospital. To give him a new reason to live, Attea went to Abrams' bedside and proposed a musical based on "La Traviata" about a young hooker who worked on Central Park South who wanders up to Lincoln Center and falls in love with a tenor from the Met. The encouragement worked; Abrams recovered enough to write the score to Attea's libretto and book. It turned into "Lincoln Plaza, a large and electric production with a cast of 27 which was short-circuited when its leading lady, for whom there was no understudy, had to leave the show early. It was just before critics were to come. Saddened by this and by Abrams' lengthy need for additional recovery (he's fine now, thanks), Attea became sad and reflective. He laid out from theater writing for five years, thinking deeply about life. Now he's back to writing about it.
It was five years until Attea's next project dawned. He relates, "I began to think about a new musical. I considered how people who have affection for the traditional theater and in particular the traditional musical must feel alienated from mainstream rock and rap. I wondered if there was a way to provide them with a beautiful and satisfying metaphor to which they would be attracted. Yet I wanted it to be fair to people who do like mainstream contemporary music, whether or not they also like the theater. That’s when I got the idea for "Living in a Musical.'"
Attea adds, "Crystal Field deserves credit for being a steady champion of us and of all people who write for the theater and hope to make a distinguished contribution. She has been kind enough to be a steady champion of mine. In fact, I don't know another person in the Off-Broadway venue who is as supportive of emerging talent, and I don't know, in this competitive and political world, if I could have found another artistic director or theater as inviting and supportive as the one she administers. She is to creators of theater every bit as great a mentor as Lee Strasberg used to be for actors at the Studio."
The actors are Kyle Fowler, Alexandra Grossi, Sal Mannino, Robb Gibbs, Clare Tobin, Bob Homeyer, Andrea Andert, Rachael Ma and Julie Megan Smith.
Set design is by Mark Marcante. Costume design is by Pauline Colon. Lighting design is by Alexander Bartenieff. Sound design is by Richard Retta.
The play is primarily the story of the the young NYC professional, Beth, as she sacrifices her television career and relationship to follow an elderly female Yoga guru. The fallout leaves Beth’s boyfriend, Charlie, and her best friend, Jennie (the yoga teacher), struggling to reconcile Beth’s choice with their own lives. "Lotus Feet" asks whether the freedom and mysticism of the East has a place within the goal oriented pragmatism of the West. It also depicts the consequences of spirituality in the modern world.
Playwright Michael Domitrovich has a keen eye for the discontents of New York's trendy thirtysomethings. In 2007, TNC presented his "breakthrough" play, "Artfuckers," directed by Eduardo Machado, which shone a revealing light at the habitués of New York's gentrified Art community as they struggle to balance their new-fangled elitism with old-fashioned if trendier bohemianism. The play subsequently had an off-Broadway run at the DR2 Theatre in Union Square in the winter of 2008. According to Domitrovich, "Theater for the New City allows its artists to do the dangerous and daring, which is very freeing as a playwright."
Domitrovich's one act, "On Island," premiered at "Summer Shorts 2" at 59E59 in August 2008, before traveling to Martha’s Vineyard. His short play "Real World Experience" was part of the first "Summer Shorts" at 59E59 in August 2007. His plays "Dirtfag," "Caregivers," "Goatgod" and "Godbrothers" have been presented in BlueBox Productions’ "Sticky" at Galapagos in Williamsburg and at the Bowery Poetry Club and La MaMa. His play "Women with a Purpose" was performed at Dixon Place. "In Other News..." was read as part of the Ensemble Studio Theater Octoberfest. Domitrovich is co-author of Eduardo Machado’s food memoir, "Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile’s Hunger for Home," which was published in October 2007 by Gotham Press. "Dirtfag" was published in the 2009 New York Theatre Review. Domitrovich has been a guest columnist for "Paper" Magazine. He received a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
The actors of "Lotus Feet" are Christina Pumariega ("Catch 22" at the Lortel, "All Eyes and Ears" at Theatre Row) as Beth, Quinlan Corbett (The Intiman production of "Little Dog Laughed") as Charlie, and Lori McNally ("Reservoir Garfunkel" at EST) as Jennie, with Mary Dana Abbott, Cheri Paige, April Martucci, and Haley Roth as the ensemble of Yogis.
The creative team for Lotus Feet includes Stefanie Sertich (choreography), Nathaniel Deverich and Hunter Hebert (scenic design), Maruti Evans (lighting design), and Brian McCorkle (sound design).
The piece was originally developed by The American Place Theatre. The archives of the Theatre reveal that the part was originally offered to Marty Feldman and Alan Arkin. Directed by Martin Fried, with Herb Edelman as Pelican, it was presented by The American Place Theatre in 1970. Clive Barnes, writing in the New York Times, described it as a comic commentary on Gogol's "Diary of a Madman," built on a daring concept, funny and touching. Barnes credited actor Herb Edelman and director Martin Fried with bringing off a tour de force. Fried subsequently directed Ben Gazzara in the part on Broadway in 1975 in a double-bill with Eugene O'Neill's "Hughie." Barnes deemed Ben Gazzara's Broadway double-bill "a smashing evening of theater."
The piece was originally written in 1970 as a solo turn for one actor. Jonathan Slaff's performance is likely to be more comedic than that of any previous actor in the part.
Director Stanley Allan Sherman has enlarged the play's concept slightly by adding live actors to replace sound effects and dummies in making the background life of the hotel. Using the playscript as a commedia dell' arte scenario, a two-person ensemble of David Zen Mansley and Rachel Krah will enact the hotel patrons with live voices back stage and will add comedic surprises.
Belle Of The Ball Bearings is a one-woman musical with book by Elizabeth Battersby, lyrics by Caroline Murphy, and music by Youn Young Park. They set the musical in 1995, when computers were just coming in and New York was a little more interesting. It's inspired by Ms. Battersby's life experience as a bike shop owner, a bike racer, bike messenger, spinning instructor, and soulmate to everyone who lives life on two wheels. For every bike you fix – there is another one that's broken. It all comes down to having the right tools, and knowing how to use them.
This show is a collection of family members in this 75 year old bike shop, all played by Battersby. Like a western saloon, a roadhouse diner or a bar at a train station, a bike shop can be a place for unique and memorable personalities. The show includes messengers, moms, bike mechanics, a rabbi and a rich variety of other neighborhood types.
Now you can ride your bike to the theater and not worry about locking it outside. In fact, you can keep your eye on it during the show. It'll be parked onstage and made part of the set.
The tragedy is the story of Rogelio and Sergio, siblings who live together in San Francisco. They were born in Mexico City to old money and brought to the U.S. in their childhood by their now-deceased parents. Sergio, the younger brother and a budding novelist, was abused as a child. Rogelio, his older brother and a successful painter living with AIDS, was unable to intervene and stop the crime. Weakened by fulminating cryptococcal meningitis, he seeks to atone for this before he dies.
As the play opens, Rogelio informs Sergio that he's decided to both stop painting and discontinue the use of the medication that's preserving his life. Terrified by the implications of this, Sergio tries to dissuade him, and when he fails, resorts to seducing him. The brothers slowly and unwittingly shut out the outside world, sepulchering themselves in their apartment. Their new arrangement delivers initial comfort, but soon the doors of their past fly open. The brothers' childhood traumas are revealed to be driving both of them to risky self-sacrifice.
The cast features TONY KING as Sam, DANIELLE SUDER as his Wife, JESSICA DAY as Sybil, his Associate Producer, SAMANTHA MASON as his Secretary, and OLIVER THRUN as Jack, the Actor.
Walter Corwin has had many plays presented at the Theater for the New City and is on the staff. His play Gum was performed at the PublicTheater. His works have been performed in the La MaMa Experiments Series.
"The Sourdough Philosophy Spectacle and Circus" is about the need for human fermentation. It takes a lesson from how apple cider is made. Our republic teases us with the possibility of democracy, but citizens are raised like military apple orchards, pruned down to their predictable minimums, yielding controlled fruits that lack the ecstasy of nature. However, human fermentation occurs in parts of the human body that are not governed by the government, like the guts and the gutsy parts of the brain. Fermented citizens are corrupted by the ecstasy of nature and from that corruption, derive strength to corrupt military-orchard citizens. The show is run by a bunch of cooks, specialists in cooking the various stews and pancakes of our everyday first world existence.
Both shows will be performed by the Bread & Puppet Company and a large number of local volunteers, who will also be part of The Brass Band. The theater will be decorated with the unique Bread and Puppet collection of powerful black-line posters, banners, masks, curtains, programs and set-props. Once again, all pieces will be created by Schumann with input from the company. Both plays will be accompanied by a brass band, singing and miscellaneous gongs and horns. Schumann will sculpt and paint all of the major masks and puppets.
The family version, "The Sourdough Philosophy Circus," is also about the need for human fermentation, but the concept is also applied to dancing zebras and turkeys and free range cows. The cooks are featured again. Additonal commentary is provided by the Rotten Idea Theater Company. Music is by the Sourdough Philosophy Brass Band.
Both shows will be performed by the Bread & Puppet Company and a large number of local volunteers, who will also be part of The Brass Band. The theater will be decorated with the unique Bread and Puppet collection of powerful black-line posters, banners, masks, curtains, programs and set-props. Once again, all pieces will be created by Schumann with input from the company. Both plays will be accompanied by a brass band, singing and miscellaneous gongs and horns. Schumann will sculpt and paint all of the major masks and puppets.
The theme will be how our world is reflected in the eyes of the Puppet. The panelists (now in formation) will include Peter Schumann, head of Bread and Puppet Theater; Vit Horejs, head of the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater; Jane Catherine Shaw, co-artistic director of the Voice 4 Vision Puppet Festival; John Bell, theater journalist and puppet theater artist; and Eileen Blumenthal, author of "Puppetry: A World History," the latest authoritative book on puppet theater.
The panel will be moderated by Crystal Field, Executive Director of Theater for the New City.
The Audience will be invited to participate with questions for the panel. Admission is free.
Please consider attending what I hope will be an exciting and informative evening.
It is estimated that 2% of the U.S. Population are adoptees, so between their with biological parents, adoptive parents, and siblings, about 1 in 8 Americans are directly touched by adoption. Most adoptees and birth parents have, at some point, actively searched for biological parents or children they have been separated from. Their most common reason is genetic curiosity: a desire to find what a birth parent or child looks like, their talents or personality.
Jason's wife, Illyria, is an attorney whose biological clock is ticking strongly. The couple are dealing seriously with the issue of finally ending their honeymoon and having children. But Jason is fearful of "unseen" genetic problems. He carries on a relentless search for his birth mother behind his wife's somewhat disapproving back. His stated obsession with genetics may be his bottom-line motive, or it may be a smoke screen for deeper, more Freudian concerns. That enigma is the nexus of a play that peers into the character and needs of the modern American couple.
Jason's dilemma is explored through a series of alternately comic and serious scenes and dreams, some of which are inter spliced with chapters from his wife's dreams. In one, a bee's dance to find its mate is a metaphor foreshadowing Jason's finding his genetic parents. Jason pulls every trick in the book to seek out his birth mother, including a deception to manipulate the secretary of the agency that to placed him with his adoptive parents.
When Jason ultimately meets his mother in an elders' home, she is moody and incoherent, reinforcing his fears of mental illness in his genes. She dances for him as the bee would, illustrating that his knot of feelings will not easily be untied. When she is revealed to be a normally colorful New Orleans eccentric and not insane, Jason feels comfortable in finally starting a family with Illyria.
Each character in "For Flow" is a musician and during the course of the play, when egos clash and stories are told, freestyle battles, live DJ sets, and blues riffs color the soulful journey that these characters share. The play adopts a structure and themes that are parallel to "Waiting for Godot," but not its characters. "Their relationships are not actually Beckettian," says author Kesav M. Wable. "They're not as eccentric, but they are quire literary."
Inspired by Aristophanes, "Lysistrata's Children" is an original work conceived by Suraci and devised for and with the teenage cast. Like "The Me Nobody Knows" and Broadway's current "Spring Awakening," it is a play performed by young people for adults to see. It explores issues of war and peace, violence and non-violence through the power dynamics of child/parent relationships. In Aristophanes' original, Athenian wives denied their husbands sex in order to persuade them to make peace. In Suraci's ingenious adaptation, children withhold love from their parents until they sign an oath of "Victory over violence" and join the children's quest for peace. There is sly comedy in the children's manipulation of their parents' behavior and in the parents' responses to their children's demands.
The play was originally workshopped and produced in 2006 with students of Friends Seminary on Stuyvesant Square. It was presented by Theater for the New City last fall. Last season, Milton E. Polsky, writing in "The Chronicles," a publication of the NY State Theatre Education Association, called the piece "deftly and imaginatively written," noting, "The audience members were deeply moved by the production they enjoyed and the truth they perceived emanating from the stage." The review ended with a call for the play to be published. Howard Kissel, reporting on last year's TNC production in the Daily News, wrote that for the parents, the experience went deeper than simply "seeing my kids in a show." For the young cast, it was affirming that "anybody can make a difference."
The show's website is www.lysistrataschildren.com
Originally written at The Crucible for American Theater Workshop and making its Off-Off-Broadway debut at The Theater for the New City, "Adam of the Apes" is sure to leave audiences laughing in spite of themselves, with much to discuss and debate after the show.
For kids of all ages, there will be matinee shows Saturdays and Sundays at 3:00 pm. Entitled "The Divine Reality Comedy Circus," it features the Grand Forgiveness Society of Glover, VT, the triumph of the small farmer, advice on where to get really cheap drinking water, a celebratory ballet by a flock of roosters, the Rotten Idea Theater Company's distillation of political issues and much more, all accompanied by the Bread & Puppet Circus Band. Some of the circus acts are politically puzzling to adults, but accompanying kids can usually explain them.
Their growing popularity makes it seem that the girls could actually bring their segregated city together through their music. But after an appearance on a popular television show, Betty & The Belrays are offered a major record deal from a white label on the condition that they will have to stop singing about racial issues. The girls are faced with hate mail from their own community and an agonizing career choice: should they stop singing about racial issues and sing for the white record label?
This production is kid-friendly and recommended for audiences aged ten and up.
When Women's Air Corps pilot Wanda Worthington returns home from World War II, she quickly grows bored with the life of a housewife. Soon she takes to the rooftops of New York City as the patriotic crimefighter All American Girl. Is post-war America ready for a "Girl Crimefighter"? Will she find love with the mysterious vigilante The Scarlet Skunk? Find out in Kryptonite Hearts!
KRYPTONITE HEARTS played to standing room only audiences at the Midtown International Theatre Festival's Reading Series, in the Summer of 2006. Theater For The New Cityis proud to present the first full production of this new play written by Charles Battersby, Directed by James Duff, and featuring Lizzie Pepper as All American Girl, with Charles Battersbyas The Scarlet Skunk.
A black comedy that proves that the afterlife can be a super-cool place - think Christopher Durang meets Saturday morning cartoon!
The play deals notably with the forbidden love between Cao Zhi and Zhen Mi, the captive widow of a rival warlord. Cao Zhi was the youngest son of Cao Cao and a brilliant poet. Zhen Mi was unjustly chosen by his father to be wife of his brother, Cao Pi, the future Emperor. Cao Zhi immortalized Zhen Mi in verse as Luo Shen, the spirit of the River Luo.
The complete lineup and schedule will be posted online at www.theaterforthenewcity.net on or after May 18.
The second one act, "Four Better Or Worse?", is an experiment in the spiritually absurd-nuff said, words cannot describe this fast-moving Beckett-esque, French farce-like romp, complete with alien life and spirit possession.
The improv segments feature cult puppet heroine and holocaust survivor Edith the Head, as well as a three character scene performed solo by Evan Laurence.
Music by Alicia Svigals
Puppet design by Harry Rainbow
lurk darker themes of obsession, exploitation and regret. At its heart, "Rue" is about the fragility of beauty, our basic need for human contact and why we should be forgiven for chasing these so compulsively.
"Follies of Grandeur" resurrects the Ivar theater, the strippers who performed there and the men who loved them, as it follows the career path of a young drifter who finds a home on the Ivar stage.
February 2 – 19 Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., Sunday at 3:00
Reservations Advised: 212 254 1109 or buy direct at TheaterMania.com
traditional music from the Iroquois and Native Peoples of the Northwest Coast,
the Southwest, the Plains, and the Arctic regions. Between 25 and 30 dancers will assemble for the event.
Highlights of this year's celebration will include a Hoop Dance performed by Raymond Two Feathers (Cherokee) and "Dancing Wolf" Michael Taylor (Choctaw/French). For the fourth time, the Pow Wow will include a dance from the Inuit people of Alaska, called The Caribou Dance. Highlights will also include a Butterfly Dance (a Hopi custom which gives thanks for the beauty of nature), a Grass Dance and Jingle Dress Dance (from the Northern Plains people), a Fancy Dance and a Shawl Dance (from the Oklahoma tribes). Featured performers will also include Joe Cross, a storyteller from the Caddo Tribe (Oklahome), the Heyna Second Son
Singers (various tribes) and Mitoka Eagle (Santo Domingo/Pueblo).
$10 general admission to all evening shows, whose running time is 2:00. MATINEES ARE KIDS' DAYS: At all 2:00 pm performances, children under twelve accompanied by a ticket-bearing adult are admitted for $1.00 (adults $10). Running time 1:30.
The story of Ancient Rome's greatest writer, who run afoul of the emperor Augustus, who forced him into exile without his family, books or any of his wealth, to die years later in a little fishing village near the Black Sea
with narratives that are simultaneously autobiographical and universal.
For the grownups, it'll be "National Circus and Passion of the Correct Moment" December 8-23.
For kids of all ages, it'll be matinee shows of "Cardboard Celebration Circus" December 10-11 and 17-18. The theater will be decorated with the unique Bread and Puppet collection of powerful black-line posters, banners, masks, curtains, programs and set-props.
"National Circus and Passion of the Correct Moment" is a two-part evening, beginning with a circus. It's a prologue, with half a dozen little acts including The Rotten Idea Theater Company (populated with "Kaspers" -- fresh, insurrectionist, Punch-type characters), a "Russian Computer Dance," and a tongue-in-cheek playlet on what makes a protest. Schumann borrows the structure of the Passion Play for the second--and longer--part. The idea is to dramatize the mind of post-9/11 America, with its yearning for retaliation, as a puppet epic.
"Cardboard Celebration Circus," the kids' show, brings back many of Bread and Puppet's favorite kid-acts: Pinky the big elephant, The Rotten Idea Theater Company (with Kaspers); birds (black and white), a Tiger Act, a Stilt Act, and even some acts that are spectacular but not necessarily for kids.
1. "THE ADVENTURES OF CHARCOAL BOY"
by Sarah Provost (creator, puppetry director), Eric Novak (creator, design director) and Elyas Khan (composer, musical director, narrator). 12/1 -12/3 at 9:30; 12/4 at 4:30.
"The Adventures of Charcoal Boy" is a fantastical musical theater piece in which organic and industrial objects are brought to life as puppets. The story follows a tree branch, struck by lightning, who wakes to an unfamiliar world. This charred stick begins his journey, yearning to be a tree again. When he learns to draw with his charred feet, his seeming predicament proves to be a useful talent.
2. "PORTRAITS - NIGHT & DAY"
by Karen Kandel. 12/1 - 12/3 at 8:00 pm; 12/4 at 3:00.
"Portraits - Night & Day" is the first in a series of intimate journeys into the lives of a family of women. Embracing unconscious connections to ancestor spirits where time has no meaning. Portraits..." is a multi-scale installation/performance piece with masks, objects, lots of fabric, text, movement and music ranging in style from the literal to the abstract.
3. "MRS. WRIGHT'S ESCAPE"
by Amanda Maddock. 12/8 & 12/10 at 9:30; 12/9 & 12/11 at 8:00.
"Mrs. Wright's Escape" is a full-length puppet show regaling some of the history of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, his wife Olgivanna, his family, and his architecture school known as the Taliesin Fellowship. The show features tabletop puppetry, a few shadows, object manipulation, and live music all presented from the perspective of the Taliesin "apprentices."
4. NIKOLAI GOGOL'S "THE NOSE"
12/8 & 12/10 at 8:00; 12/9 at 9:30; 12/11 at 4:30.
In a society built on lechery and deceit - where love is rewarded with lies, and corruption rules the day - one nose has the courage to cut itself off from its face to spite its man and strike out on its own.
"The Nose" is conceived and directed by Alissa Mello, with puppet design by Michael Kelly, and story adaptation by Andy Roth.
5. "Puppet Art Attacks" 12/11 at 8:00 (special price: $5)
A puppetry slam of 3-5 minute "short works of genius" by a variety of puppet artists.
directed by Mahmoud Shah Salimi and Joanna Sherman
As the three reach into their own pasts, they not only begin to find similarities, but also begin to understand the psychological and social fabric behind their political beliefs. Using humor, music, poetry and dance the play unfolds toward its sorrowful yet hopeful ending. Over the course of one memorable night the process of mutual understanding and forgiveness begins, halts, gets rejected, but is ultimately embraced by the pained characters.
The play uses English, Hebrew and Arabic dialogue between the three characters and is interspersed with choral odes, performed by onstage musicians and adapted by Shulman from various translations of Aeschylus' "Agamemnon." It also employs Indonesian shadow techniques that are shared with Egyptian puppetry.
The choral odes are scored by Israeli musician Yoel Ben-Simhon (composer; appearing on tenor, oud, guitar and percussion). He is an Israeli Jew of Moroccan descent. Art direction and set design are by New York artist Celia Owens. Lighting design is by Itai Erdal, who is from Israel but now based in Vancouver.
Brenda (played by Shelley Dague) is beautiful, intelligent with a successful career, but wonders why she is still alone. Her married friends set her up with various men within the Jewish community, however each one seems to carry a message of isolation. Although she wants to share her life with someone, she also wants to share her life with an accepting community of people.
Music & Lyrics: Avi Kunstler
Book & Additional Music/Lyrics: Matt Okin
Assistant Director: Eytan Bayme
Musical Director: Yitzy Glicksman
Freely based on Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder
In a plot packed with psychological and moral ambiguities, a famous aging architect is confronted by a mysterious young woman out of his past. Their encounter builds through a series of emotional twists and turns to a climax in which he is rejuvenated, but at the cost of his life. Over all the action hovers the question: has she come to save him, to destroy him, or both at the same time?
Freely based on Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder
In a plot packed with psychological and moral ambiguities, a famous aging architect is confronted by a mysterious young woman out of his past. Their encounter builds through a series of emotional twists and turns to a climax in which he is rejuvenated, but at the cost of his life. Over all the action hovers the question: has she come to save him, to destroy him, or both at the same time?
Even those who lived through China's Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) could not have anticipated what would come next. The Great Leap Forward was an extraordinary scheme conceived by Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong to accelerate dramatically China's economic development. It led to an estimated 30 million deaths by starvation.
Using a handful of fictional characters based on her own experience, Ms. Dai (1938-1996) allowed a glimpse into the harrowing journey of the privileged class (the intellectuals) from youthful conviction and unquestioning commitment to Mao's vision of the utopia, through, in the author's own words, "the painful groaning of a twisted soul, and the sparkle of a living spirit in darkness," to a terrifying awakening to their own humanity."
The play views the Cultural Revolution through the eyes of three people in a love triangle: two men, Ho and Zhao, and a woman, Sun. Although they have the bonds of love and friendship and are united in the struggle for a new China, the Maoist system forces them into positions against each other in a sequence of horrible betrayals.
This year's festival is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Mel Gussow and Arthur Miller.
The festival will be three days of theater and theater-related events, employing two theater spaces at TNC plus the block of East Tenth Street between First and Second Avenues. On Saturday, May 28 there will be a day-long, block-long outdoor carnival of musical attractions and a community arts fair with food and crafts vendors. The list of attractions includes artists presently residing on the Lower East Side, arts groups performing there, prominent writers and artists whose work has dealt directly with the Lower East Side experience and plays written especially for this festival. The distinct ethnic communities of the Lower East Side are amply represented, including the Latin American, African American, Chinese, Indian, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Native American, Polish and Ukrainian communities.
Liza's gawky charm and G.L.'s zany obeisance to religious symbols make these two people seem preciouosly mismatched. As they declaim together upon their world, there is a rare theatrical joy in their acute dialect and the overriding imagery of the cow culture, in which Lyza's similarity to Cyndi is not missed. G.L. and Lyza have never spoken until Lyza decides one day to desecrate the town's nativity scene. Once they are acquainted, she begins to exert an almost magical power over him. There unfold sessions of prophetic sex, bull riding scams, a search for the true Elvis, and cows that rise from the dead.
Lyza turns G.L. into a millionaire in Act Two and there is a dramatic changing of places: the zaftig one becomes thin, the sinner becomes devout, the self-less becomes selfish, the unbeliever believes--they exchange each other's relationship with God. G.L. is eventually gored by the one-horned bull, but Lyza becomes so emotionally close to her pet cow, Cyndi, that they become nearly one and the same. This ultimately drives G.L. to an act of desperation that is a striking denouement. The play ends up as a comic tragedy that affects us all.
Highlights of this year's celebration will include a Hoop Dance performed by Raymond Two Feathers (Cherokee) and "Dancing Wolf" Michael Taylor (Choctaw/French). For the third time, the Pow Wow will include a dance from the Inuit people of Alaska, called The Caribou Dance. Highlights will also include a Butterfly Dance (a Hopi custom which gives thanks for the beauty of nature), a Grass Dance and Jingle Dress Dance (from the Northern Plains people) and a Shawl Dance (from the Oklahoma tribes). Featured performers will also include the Heyna Second Son Singers (various tribes) and Mitoka Eagle (Santo Domingo/Pueblo). There will be a new modern dance work put to modern American music (flute music and drumming) by Tom Pearson (Creek/Cherokee).