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Contents, June 2008:
HOLD THE WEDDING, THEY'VE GOT A SHOW TO PRODUCE
JERUSALEM-BORN "ACTIVIST" PLAYWRIGHT TURNS
TO DADA
YOU MEAN, THEY DO THAT IN MEMPHIS TOO?
TNC SETS SUMMER STREET THEATER TOUR
A MOTHER'S OPERA ON THE EXPERIENCE OF 9/11
GO WEST, ANGRY YOUNG WOMAN, GO WEST
LOCO 7 + ELIZABETH SWADOS + LEBANESE NOVELIST
ELIAS KOURY
RETURN ENGAGEMENT FOR "LYSISTRATA'S CHILDREN"
INTENSIVE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE WORKSHOP
NEW FROM JIM NEU
HOLD THE WEDDING, THEY'VE GOT A SHOW TO PRODUCE
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| Matthew J. Nichols and Britney Burgess in "Professional Skepticism" last season. |
The co-artistic directors of Zootopia Theatre Company, Britney Burgess and Matthew J. Nichols, announced their engagement at a benefit last month. The couple met at Brandeis, as classmates in the MFA Acting program. When they graduated in 2004, they moved out to New York City and founded their theater company, which is devoted to new work. Zootopia will present its second production, the world premiere of "Still the River Runs" by Barton Bishop, June 19 to July 6 at Center Stage, NY.
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| STILL THE RIVER RUNS -- Steve French, Jaron Farnham. Photo by Jonathan Slaff. |
When's the wedding date? They answer, "We haven't set a wedding date yet. We've got a show to produce!"
To-date, the company has selected plays of high literary quality. Their upcoming "Still the River Runs" by Barton Bishop is a hilarious and moving portrait of two estranged brothers on a mission to heist their deceased Paw Paw's body and put him to rest in the wilds of their old hunting grounds. Bishop combines the Southern Gothic mode of Cormac McCarthy with the gentle wit of Mark Twain in this exciting new work.
JERUSALEM-BORN "ACTIVIST" PLAYWRIGHT TURNS TO DADA
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Misha
Shulman |
Misha Shulman, a former Education officer in the Israeli army and now an American citizen, has received high critical praise for his realistic, layered and eloquent plays appealing for understanding behind Israelis and Palestinians. With "Brunch at the Luthers," he has forsaken dramatic realism for Dada to explain the Western consciousness, which he sees as ruled by such surrealistic influences as Bush, Bin Laden, Trump, Hurricane Katrina and the tragic situation in Africa.
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| BRUNCH AT THE LUTHERS -- Joanie Fritz Zosike and Mort Kroos as the title characters. |
The play gives us a day in the lives of an absurd middle-aged couple. The simple act of having someone over for brunch taps a torrent of artificial excitement, crisscrossed language and Burlesque. There are reasons why an activist playwright would pen a French farce cum Dada cum Ionescoesque romp. Shulman explains, "I think part of where this play came from was from the situation of the world, its wars--in Iraq and never ending in my homeland [Israel]--and a sense of needing to respond to it with nonsense, as Ionesco did, like the Dadaists did to World War I." The play will be acted by DADAnewyork, one of the most comedically-muscular troupes now working; Shulman directs. Its June 19 to July 13 at Theater for the New City.
YOU MEAN, THEY DO THAT IN MEMPHIS TOO?
 |
Edward
Miller |
Edward Miller is author of "Make it So," a lively tale of humor and intimacy set in Memphis, TN. In this seriocomic family drama, Lester Morgan, the eldest sibling in an estranged middle-class Black family, struggles to reunite his brothers and sisters in time for their father's funeral. His obstacle is the family matriarch, Bertha, whose vindictive and controlling behavior stifles any hope for relationships among her children.
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| MAKE IT SO -- Leonard Dozier as the eldest sibling; Beverly Bonner as the matriarch. |
Mr. Miller was the nephew of several larger-than-life aunts who collectively inspired the character of Bertha and whose households are reflected in the clan of this play. He finds the mayhem behind the happiest of families to be delightfully provocative, a phenomenon he describes as "universally Southern." He grew up in Memphis among polite, churchgoing people who always attempted to forge strong bonds and hid dysfunction in their families. So his colorful characters wear their religiosity on their sleeves but forget it in private. "Certain tenets of the Bible get lost with them," he chuckles, "like Christian charity, forgiveness and not coveting your neighbor's spouse." The piece is directed by Sharon Fogarty and is presented June 19 to July 13 at Theater for the New City by Making Light and Little Rascals Productions.
TNC SETS SUMMER STREET THEATER TOUR
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| TNC's 2003 street theater production, "The State of the Union." |
Theater for the New City's award-winning Street Theater Company opens its 32nd annual tour August 2 with "It's the Economy Stupid, or Scandale!" a rip-roaring musical which will tour City streets, parks and playgrounds throughout the five boroughs through September 14. The production, free to all New Yorkers, has book, lyrics and direction by Crystal Field and musical score composed by Joseph Vernon Banks.
A MOTHER'S OPERA ON THE EXPERIENCE OF 9/11
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| Cover of "A Mother’s Essays From Ground Zero" (Phoenix Books, 2001) |
"Calling: An Opera of Forgiveness," conceived by Wickham Boyle, is composed by Doug Geers and based on Boyle's book, "A Mother’s Essays From Ground Zero" (Phoenix Books, 2001). The work filters the experience of 9/11 through a novel perspective: the protective instincts of a TriBeCa mother. Wickham Boyle is the former Executive Director of La MaMa and founder of the theater group Under One Roof.
The opera has been created over the last eighteen months and iterative portions have been presented at the Composer’s Collaborative in Greenwich Village, The Spark Festival in Minneapolis, the Sonic Divergence Festival at Northwestern University, and at Princeton University’s Taplin Auditorium. Libretto by Boyle is based on her book. Other collaborators include architect Marty Kapell and lighting designer Burke Brown. The production runs September 12 to 28 in La MaMa's First Floor Theater.
There will be a benefit Thursday, June 26th from 6:30-9:30 pm at 38 North Moore Street, with exceptional gifts in the silent auction!
GO WEST, ANGRY YOUNG WOMAN, GO WEST
After multiple sold-out limited engagements in New York and Sydney, Australia, "Angry Young Women In Low-Rise Jeans With High-Class Issues," the raucous comedy written and directed by filmmaker turned playwright Matt Morillo, will open a six-week run at the Hudson Mainstage on Hollywood's Theater Row on October 3, 2008.
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In the last two years, "Angry Young Women" has had three sold out runs in NYC (two Off Off Broadway and one Off Broadway) and two separate four-week runs in Sydney, Australia. It is making its title an idiom in New York and Australia and has amassed an enthusiastic fan base on two continents. The play, Morillo's first, was published this spring by Samuel French, along with Morillo's second play, "All Aboard the Marriage Hearse."
The play, a light-to-serious look at the psychology of nervous urban goddesses, parades a series of foxy, witty and anxious women who bear the expectations of the world like an itchy muffler. They go head to head with such issues as Electra complexes, bikini waxes, low-rise jeans, oversexed mothers, thongs, brazen teenagers, men's sexual fantasies, side effects of birth control drugs, mean teenagers on the subway, sympathy sex and the artistic integrity of penises and vaginas in independent films. The show bills itself as "An Outrageous Comedy," and its postcards declare "Even though it's a play, it doesn't suck."
LOCO 7 + ELIZABETH SWADOS + LEBANESE NOVELIST ELIAS KOURY
Federico Restrepo (Loco 7) will team up with Elizabeth Swados and Lebanese novelist Elias Koury in "Room to Panic," the final section in a three-part theatrical work exploring the many dimensions of the immigrant experience. Performances will be October 3 to 19 at La MaMa.
 |
 |
This
painting by Restrepo will be the basis for a puppet character
in "Room to Panic" |
"Open
Door" (2006) photo by Jonathan Slaff |
Mr. Restrepo started this trilogy in 2002 with a piece entitled "9 Windows," which was a portrait of the displaced immigrant - a man fleeing his homeland and entering the USA for the first time. The second piece, "Open Door," premiered in 2006 with a score by Elizabeth Swados. It framed current political and social realities of immigrants in New York City and the United States around a theatrical cavalcade of extreme social behavior danced and expressed with bigger-than-life puppetry, music and video art.
In "Room to Panic," the company will look toward the future and explore popular youth culture and the allure to become American. The resonating impact of immigration will be staged with the language and imagery of a comic strip. There will be giant puppets, dance, video, a multilingual narrative, and music by prominent composer Elizabeth Swados incorporating text and lyrics written by famed novelist Elias Khoury of Lebanon. The central theme of the text will the journey of immigrants and the feelings they experience as they journey toward assimilation.
RETURN ENGAGEMENT FOR "LYSISTRATA'S CHILDREN"
The message of peace is sometimes best delivered from the mouths of babes. To share an outstanding show of last season with a larger audience, Theater for the New City will bring back "Lysistrata's Children," a comedy written and directed by Philip Suraci, November 6 to 23.
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| Kids mobilize their parents in developmental performance at Friends Seminary, 2007. Photo by Carol Rosegg. |
Inspired by Aristophanes' "Lysistrata," this play is an original work conceived by the director for a teenage cast. The play explores issues of war and peace, violence and non-violence through the power dynamics of child/parent relationships. Though serious in theme, the play is a comedy, as children attempt to control their parents' behavior and parents try to deal with their children's demands.
This play is performed by teens for adults to see. Although it is acted entirely by children aged nine to 14, the nature of the performance does not allow it to be treated as an amateur performance or a "family event." The writing is cunningly astute, even Thurberesque. Its description of family life resonates particularly upon parents. The piece could actually make you believe that in the pursuit of peace, children could be more successful by witholding love than Athenian women by witholding sex. The arguments for war (mostly, that it is a necessary evil) melt away before children's logic.
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INTENSIVE COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE WORKSHOP
Roving Classical Commedia University and Mask Arts Company will hold a Commedia dell'Arte Summer Intensive Workshop June 22 to July 3 at pierStudios at Pier 40, Hudson River & Houston St., NYC. This workshop is geared to the professional performer, actor, director, student and teacher. For more information, contact: Stanley Allan Sherman at 212-243-4039.
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| Black-Eyed Susan, Jim Neu. |
Jim Neu and Black-Eyed performed a new short piece by Neu called "Rick and Cora" on Memorial Day Weekend at Theater for the New City's Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, to enthusiastic audience response.
Neu's newest play, "Gang of Seven," will premiere at La MaMa on December 4, 2008 and run for three weeks. The play is about a rogue focus group. They are so turned on by sharing their private opinions in public that they begin meeting on their own.
"Gang of Seven" reunites the cast, writer and director of last year's hit, "La Vie Noir."
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Jonathan
Slaff & Associates
55 Perry Street, Ste. #1M, New York, NY 10014
(212) 924-0496 - pr@jsnyc.com.
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