The Dark Lady Players, one of the world's most experimental Shakespeare companies, perform the allegorical level of the Shakespearean plays to show that they were written by England's only Jewish poet the so-called 'Dark Lady', Amelia Bassano Lanier (1569-1645). Living as a hidden Jew (a Marrano or Converso) she was mistress to the man in charge of the English theater and the first woman in England to publish a book of original poetry.
This retelling of AYLI highlights the two characters called Jaques/Jakes (Elizabethan for toilet), and the character whose pocket watch identifies him as Sir John Harrington, the inventor of the flush toilet! The play turns out to be a Jewish toilet joke written using double allegories. What are these characters, a dunghill, and many references to excrement doing in this play? Why does As You Like It end with Jaques warning that Noah's flood is coming? Why are there other flood references, like Hercules cleansing the Augean stables of manure? Why does Touchstone go off to the ark with Audrey, who is named after St Ethelreda, the woman who was saved from a flood? Could this be the Last Day? And who is Touchstone (in Greek the basanos)?Could he be an allegory for Amelia Bassano herself?

The story of four people whose identities are changed by brain injury, and of the friends and relatives who must deal with these sudden strangers. Hugh suffers from severe amnesia which leaves his past and even his present erased, Lori suffers an aneurysm and wakes up from her coma a completely different person, Russ is in prison for a murder he doesn't remember committing (but what happens when he does remember?), and Mollie has seizures that the doctors want to control with a little rewiring in her brain...but what will that do to her soul?

La Muse Venale presents Guns, Shackles & Winter Coats, a harrowing journey of a soldier who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. This is one of the most powerful plays you will ever see. Guns, Shackles & Winter Coats is a very important, prescient play that will make people think and talk about the difficulties that veterans suffer through.

The world between the living and the dead become blurred when Count Nosferatu, a creature of pure evil, comes to London, infecting all he touches, and bringing death, hopelessness and the promise of eternal life. With an otherworldly cry of "Embrace the Dark and Live," this macabre, yet lyrical tale plays out as seen through the eyes of Mina Harker, the object of the Count's "affections," who may be unable to resist his siren calls of despair, death and seductive offering. This is the second of two plays Rabbit Hole Ensemble has performed on the Dracula myth. The first, "Land of the Undead", also adapted by Wood, was presented as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival's Next Step Developmental Series this past March.

Directed by Edward Elefterion

"If no one sees us or hears us, do we exist?" four unfold is an unconventional story with song witnessing the lives of four New York twenty-somethings and the life that is shaped and stolen away. The story centers on a year in Sam's life, an optimistic young songwriter, who has always taken life in stride. But it isn't until his world is complicated by the conundrums his dearest friends face, that he truly begins to reason crucial matters that had once seemed implausible. Together the four journey prominent societal issues that grace their lives with poignancy and power. As each uncovers a freeing light they are forced to embrace and accept life as they've never felt it before.

Seascape with Sharks and Dancer is set in a beach bungalow. The young man who lives there has pulled a lost young woman from the ocean. Soon, she finds herself trapped in his life and torn between her need to come to rest somewhere and her certainty that all human relationships turn eventually into nightmares. The struggle between his tolerant and gently ironic approach to life and her strategy of suspicion and attack becomes a kind of war about love and creation which neither can afford to lose. This is an offbeat, wonderful love story.

THE TRAGEDY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, a new drama by M. Stefan Strozier, is coming to Where Eagles Dare Theater (347 West 36th Street), April 13th-May 7th, 2006, Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. & Sunday matinees at 7 p.m. LINCOLN is Strozier's third play to appear off-off Broadway.

LINCOLN is a very well-wrought and focused play. Alan Kanevsky is directing a cast of 20 actors and a full crew. The play covers the last year of President Lincoln's life, and all of the events surrounding it. The play has one central, unmistakable theme, which is surprisingly relevant to 2006. In fact, this theme is most likely news to most people; unless, they are very familiar with the subjects of the American Civil War and Abraham Lincoln.

Strozier is the founder of La Muse Venale Acting Troupe, which is producing LINCOLN. The large cast features off-off Broadway's greatest actors. If you are in search of talent, LINCOLN is an excellent way to find it. LMV's primaries will be available after the play for discussion, along with the cast and crew, in one of John Chatterton's studios.

La Muse Venale, Inc. has produced nine plays at myriad of theatres, and in different, prominent festivals in New York City. LMV is a NY State Board of Education-approved, not-for-profit organization. Part of our mission is to bring theatre to those who do not normally experience it. Therefore, we have performed our plays in homeless shelters over 10 times, as well as in public parks. LMV is a young and growing theatre company, which has become a place where artists work together, again and again, to create our plays.

Tickets to LINCOLN are available at www.smarttix.com. For more information, please visit our Web site: www.lamusevenale.org. To obtain a press or industry comp, please contact the producer at lamusevenale@gmail.com. Thank you!

This is a gritty contemporary, urban play, about an interracial relationship between two people who are struggling with their own identities. It was produced on Broadwat in 1992, with Ron Eldard currently in DOUBT, and Cynthia Nixon oof Sex and The City, and Rosie Perez.

A scientist in Victorian England finds his ordered life turned upside down in this erotic
mystery when he suffers a personal tragedy predicted by a medium and receives a
visitation from a long-dead love during a seance. Determined to test the validity of
spiritualism, he begins a series of experiments that may end up costing him everything he
holds dear.

Presented by John Chatterton and the La Muse Venale Acting Troupe
Costumes, set, and visual effects designed by Roi Escudero "Bubi."

An Equity Showcase

Three actors resurrect the poetry and personas of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, and Edgar Allen Poe. The theatre, in all its trickery, makes their poetry larger than life -- and greater than Death!

Selma fills her days by working as a stripper and taking care of her aging mother. Mama is determined to make a love connection between her daughter and their new neighbor, Michael. "Simply Selma" is a touching comedy/drama about relationships and sexual politics.

SPY SURFS is a serialized mythic opera told instrumentally with surf & spy music, using computer generated vocalizations & multi-disciplined image events. Serialized mythic opera is a story form that keeps getting added to much like a soap opera. This is performed by musicians who neither sing nor speak, but play composed music couched in the vocabulary of surf (beach) & spy (film noir) music. Since the performers do not sing, computer generated voices are used to tell the story. All of this is framed in the theatric setting of modern media projection systems as opposed to traditional sets.

The work exposes the audience to the metaphysics of actual experience via the conduit of fine art performance mechanisms thinly disguised as consumer level popular acculturated music and visual work which allow the biomechanical effect to be technologically enhanced so that it may reach into the precognitive state of experience as decision in order to reveal the meta and micro relations easily apparent to even the most casual participant.

Nearly 50 shows in three weeks, ranging from comedies to musicals to dramas to solo shows

Playing at Five different venues - all on the same block:

The WorkShop Theatre Mainstage and Jewel Box Spaces
312 West 36th Street, 4th Floor

Where Eagles Dare Theatre and Where Eagles Dare Studio Theatre
347 West 36th Street, Ground Floor and 12th Floor (Studio)

Smash Studios
307 West 36th Street, 18th Floor

All theatres are located between 8th & 9th Avenues.

Can you hear them? Two girls who are just out of high school talk about...their dreams. One wants to be the first white female MC to earn the respect of the biggies. The other, she just wants to be American. But what exactly does "American" mean? Miss Prime educates Krisi in When Silence Explodes: Fetus.

whensilenceexplodes.com

A one-woman performance based on River Huston's experiences as a sex columnist, dominatrix, marijuana farmer as well as an arrest for obscenity, running a marathon, surviving two terminal illnesses, cellulite and back fat, writing books, being named poet laureate, earning several degrees, (that's Dr River Huston to you), dating, marriage, moving to the country and financial ruin. This show is a unique experience because it gives you a glimpse into the life of a woman who despite all odds has overcome some harrowing life challenges and managed to find humor in all of it.

River combines her comedic talent as a standup with storytelling abilities that she has honed the last 15 years of talking with audiences as diverse as Japanese research scientists, monks, Texans and elderly gay men who want to spice up their sex life. She is able to incorporate her poetry in a way that even people who don't like poetry will find moving, interesting and engaging. If you have had a bad day or bad decade this show will make you laugh.

River Huston is an award winning poet, journalist, performer and activist. She is the author of three books of poetry, "Jesus Never Lived Here", "The Bones of Susan" and "In Which I Lost 1000 Pounds" and in 1995 was named The Poet Laureate of Bucks County. River was awarded the Dorthea Lange/ Paul Taylor award for "A Positive Life: Portraits Of Women Living With HIV" and is the creator of "Goddess: A New Guide to Feminine Wisdom". River is working on her forthcoming memoir, Thirteen Dogs and a Goat, which will be out in the spring of 2006.

She has been performing many incarnations of her one-woman show, Sex, Cellulite and Large Farm Equipment: One Girl's Guide to Living and Dying around the country from Boston to Omaha for the last 4 years in various venues including college campuses in almost every state, prisons, rehabilitation centers, theaters, cafes, bookstores, national and international conferences on health, women's issues and communicable diseases.

She has recently been working with coach, Cheryl King, who teaches internationally in Denmark, England and Wales, as well as in NY and Los Angeles and performs her own one-woman show, "not a nice girl" in theaters nationwide and abroad. Cheryl has helped River shape Sex, Cellulite and Large Farm Equipment into a truly polished, hilarious and moving performance.

Cosmos/Ethos: From Bris to Abyss is composed of the solo works of Robin Goldfin (The Ethics of Rav Hymie Goldfarb) and Aaron Petrovich (A Cosmic Mishap in an Accidental Universe in America). In Ethics, a rabbinic lover of art question the misrepresentation of Jewish penises in art and finally reveals a deeper truth hidden beneath the canvas. Aaron Petrovich then awakens beneath the canvas of reality to an accidental universe organized entirely by chance in an impassioned monologue composed entirely of questions.

Excerpt from Nytheatre.com Interview:

What's your show about?

First of all, Cosmos/Ethos is a presentation of two solo works, so we're answering these questions together. In the first show, Robin plays a rabbi who loves art, God and his children but is unprepared to deal with a gay son, even though the rabbi does pay particular attention to the representation of penises in art. The play is the father's journey to love and accept his son: a little comic, a lot tragic—entirely Jewish. On the other hand, Aaron plays a man who is fairly well convinced that he would have stood a better chance with Jesus had Jesus farted in illustration of the human soul. Cosmic Mishap is an irreverent, relentless pursuit of meaning from a character who is losing a grip on tangible reality and trying to make sense of the purpose of living. Both shows, in fact, are irreverent, without losing compassion. It's a double bill ideal for anyone who is interested in exploring, along with us, the nature of the human condition. That's what drives us, anyway.

What's special about your show?

Cosmic Mishap is composed entirely of questions. We've never encountered a show like that—we don't think you have, either. We like questions. Ethics also asks plenty of them, with a Jewish intonation. And we're pleased to announce that it also includes a slide show of original watercolors by artist David Silverman, interspersed with images by Michelangelo.

What can audiences expect?

Audiences can expect passionate and compassionate writing and performances. We love the questions and we love language and out of them we make good theatre.

1962: Judith begins her career as an actress at a college in Indiana.

1988: In Manhattan, Martin and his partner Ken prepare to adopt a child. Telling both stories simultaneously, The Mermaid reveals how the actions we take influence people we may never know.