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MARCH 4 TO 21
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"REVOLUTION!"
(LIST: THEATER)
This theatre spectacle, featuring Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre and guest artists, examines revolutions throughout the history of mankind as a backdrop for the extraordinary peaceful 1989 Velvet Revolution in former Czechoslovakia. It wil be performed in the tradition of Central European medieval street and traveling circus shows, using puppetry, object theatre and circus arts. Czech and Czech-American theatre artists join together to offer their particular perspectives on the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and an overview of the very idea of revolution through the ages. The piece is written and directed by Pavel Dobruský and Vít Horejš. Guest artists from The Czech Republic will include Michal Bumbálek, Bára Milotová and Sergej Sanza (Facka/The Slap Theater members), Pavel Strouhal (Project WINGS Director), and Hana Kalousková. Supported by Agentura Dell’arte (Czech Republic) and GOH Productions (NYC).

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/revolution!.htm

MARCH 4 TO 21
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"LIVING IN A MUSICAL"
(LIST: OFF-OFF BROADWAY)
"Living in a Musical," with book and lyrics by Tom Attea, music by Arthur Abrams and direction by Mark Mercante, is a contemporary story of a young man who is a song-and-dance talent in the tradition of Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. Not surprisingly, finds that today’s rock- and rap-dominated world has no place for him.  To console himself, he creates an imaginative world in which he lives: the world of the classic American musical.  We see his comforting but fragile illusion most clearly 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, in the persons of two new neighbors, a man and woman, who are having a raucous argument in the hallway just outside of his apartment.  He rescues the woman from her lover's verbal and physical mistreatment, 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. 

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/living_musical.htm

MARCH 11 to 28
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"WONDER BREAD"
(LIST: THEATER)

So that one of his daughters could see the world, the father of Polish-born actress Danusia Trevino had to work hard, save and borrow. To get Danusia her first airline ticket to New York, he bribed the ticket clerk (a lady with a purple beehive and a golden tooth) with a pig. The first time Danusia arrived here to visit relatives in Valley Stream, NY, she ate a peck of fresh fruit and drank a gallon of Tropicana (no pulp). She couldn't sleep wondering if she would put her Wonder Bread in the toaster the next morning, or eat it soft. Her story of coming to America, and coming into herself here, is "Wonder Bread," a solo show.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/wonder_bread.htm

MARCH 25 TO APRIL 11
LA MAMA E.T.C.
"THIRST: MEMORY OF WATER"
(LIST: OFF-OFF BROADWAY)
Puppet theater has an uncanny ability to take on big themes, and such will be the case when Jane Catherine Shaw, co-director of the Voice 4 Vision Puppet Festival, takes on world drought in "Thirst: Memory of Water," her newest puppet theater work. It's a big subject, but Shaw is trying to make it manageable by concentrating on themes of women and water because, as she writes, "around the world women are carrying (literally) the burden of maintaining life by walking for water." The piece is based on such literary sources as first-person writings about Ethiopia, testimonials from Haiti, Tanzania, the Jenin Camp on the West Bank, Taiwan and Japan; newspaper accounts from Saudi Arabia; the Hindu Deluge Story, Leonardo Da Vinci's Treatise on Water and Book Six (The River Styx) of The Aenead. Features elevated rod puppets (with puppeteers dancing underneath), shadow puppets, a giant inflatable baby puppet and images from the NYC Sand Hogs (who are digging the third giant NYC water tunnel as you read this). Texts have been assembled through The Common Language Project, 1h2o.org, wateraid.org, a Chinese women's org, an activist named Kathy Kelly and the cast. Music composed by David Patterson. Choreography by Hillary Spector. Lighting design by Jeff Nash Lighting Design. Set design by Gian Marco Lo Forte. Puppets, costume design and construction, script and concept by Jane Catherine Shaw in collaboration with the all woman cast of Sophia Remolde, Ora Fruchter, Spica Wobbe, Margot Fitzsimmons, Kristine Haruna Lee and Cybele Kaufmann.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/thirst.htm

APRIL 16 TO MAY 2
LA MAMA E.T.C.
"SCYTHIAN STONES"
LIST: THEATER AND WORLD MUSIC
Yara Arts Group will summon ancient epics and rituals from traditional weddings in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan for "Scythian Stones," a new, experimental World Music-Theatre piece with choreography. The piece features the famed Ukrainian singer Nina Matvyienko and musicians from Kyrgyzstan. Virlana Tkacz directs. Yara Arts Group has made multiple trips to both Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan to create interdisciplinary dramatic pieces based on regional epics. This piece will be developed in Kiev from March 5 to 27, after which the company will return to NYC and rehearse here with Yara Artists.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/scythian.htm

APRIL 22 TO MAY 2
LA MAMA E.T.C.
"PANDIBULAN: BATHING BY THE MOONLIGHT"
LIST: DANCE
A new work by Kinding Sindaw, led by Potri Ranka Manis: a company that re-creates the traditions of dance, music, martial arts, storytelling, and orature of the indigenous peoples of the Philippines. This piece is based on folklore from the Yakan people of Southern Philippines. A Yakan woman, half a world from home dreams of tales from her youth as she works as a caregiver to others. Tales of her ancestors, stories of the sea, dazzling dreams of dragons who swallow the sun and magical struggles for the earth and sky at once sustain her and make her long for the simple pleasures of her village and home. The piece is a unique interweaving of traditional Yakan tales with the contemporary issues of modern life for a caregiver with her feet on two continents.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/pandibulan.htm

APRIL 30 TO MAY 23
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"LAUGHING IN THE WIND: A CAUTIONARY TALE IN MARTIAL ARTS"
(LIST: OFF-OFF BROADWAY)
Yangtze Repertory Theatre of America (www.yangtze-rep-theatre.org) presents "Laughing in the Wind: a Cautionary Tale in Martial Arts," based on a book by Jin Yong which is one of the Chinese-speaking world's best known martial arts novels. The play is adapted and directed by Joanna Chan, Artistic Director of Yangtze Repertory Theatre. It exposes the tragic consequences of ruthless power struggles. Jin Yong is China's most popular writer of the Martial Arts genre.

No further info is available as of this writing.

MAY 6 TO 23
LA MAMA E.T.C.
WITNESS RELOCATION IN "FIVE DAYS IN MARCH" BY TOSHIKI OKADA, TRANSLATED BY AYA OGAWA, DIRECTED BY DAN SAFER
(LIST: THEATER)
Witness Relocation (www.witnessrelocation.org), "A dance-theater anarchist's Utopia" (Performing Arts Journal), adapts a noted recent work by Toshiki Okada that is a winner of the prestigious Kishida Kunio Drama Award. Okada, founding director of "chelfitsch" (always spelled with a small "c") theater company of Japan, creates plays in slangy Japanese with a unique choreography that is described as a "noisy" corporeality. This play is the story of two Japanese hipsters who meet in a post-rock show during the days before the U.S. began its war in Iraq. They engage in a one night stand that stretches into a five-day love tryst, oblivious to the world-shaking events about to happen. Their obsession over a love affair succinctly captures the irony and impotency of Generation Y in Japan today. A unique fusion of forms connects Witness Relocation and Okada's chelfitsch company. In this production, Witness Relocation will apply its uniquely American pop culture dance/theater methodology to make the play resonate for an American audience. Cast of seven; music by Dave Malloy.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/5days.htm

MAY 6 TO 16, 2010
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"GENERATION (BU)Y"
(LIST: OFF-OFF ROADWAY)
Written and directed by Philip Suraci, "Generation (bu)Y" will be written and performed for an audience of both adults and children over the age of 9. The intent of this production is to raise awareness of the effects of and spur reflection upon marketing and advertising to children. Adults will be asked to think about the future they will create by regarding children as consumers and our culture’s relentless materialism. "Generation (bu)Y" will examine strategies used by marketers such as the belittlement of parents and adults (parent/child alienation) and the exploitation of child needs of acceptance by peers.

While pursuing a masters degree in educational theater (NYU 2004), Suraci was deeply impressed by the depth and complexity of thought of relatively young people (ages 10-13). When these students and their words were placed in a dramatic context, Suraci found the result to be powerful, provocative and beautiful. Society pays little heed to the personal beliefs of children. Though children are often unencumbered by fears and obstacles encountered by adults, their views, their purity of thought and purpose, are disregarded by the jaded, realist perspectives of their elders. In this sense, children are the most ordinary of people—voices overwhelmed by society’s power structure.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/generation_buY.htm

MAY 14 TO 16
THEATER 80 SAINT MARKS
"A PALO SECO" WITH REBECA TOMÁS
(LIST: DANCE)
Rebeca Tomás, an emerging Flamenco dancer and piano player, will make her solo debut with "A Palo Seco," an evening of Flamenco and innovative music. The production will be performed by Tomás, two dancers, two singers and four musicians. Rebeca Tomás, a Manhattan-based performer, has freelanced as a solo dancer and company performer and produced her own original works. She has been deemed as "a fierce performer" (Explore Dance) and "a postcard image of the feminine Flamenco dancer" (Kansas City Metropolis). Since summer 2008, she has been touring with the internationally renowned company Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/rebeca_tomas.htm

MAY 27 TO JUNE 6
LA MAMA E.T.C.
"RED MOTHER" (LIST: THEATER)
"Red Mother" is a one-woman show written and performed by the acclaimed Muriel Miguel, co-founder of Spiderwoman Theater. It is the story of Belle who, with her horse and companion, Blue Fred, travels across what was once Indigenous land. Based on Brecht’s "Mother Courage," it weaves traditional dance with humor and satire, Brechtian themes with Kuna demon and ghost stories, exploring legacy and memory through the eyes of an old Indigenous woman. Murielle Borst directs. The 60-minute piece is full of earthy humor, yet stinging pathos. "Red Mother" explodes the fiction of Indigenous women as virtuous, noble, "earth mothers," a stereotype that has been perpetuated both by the dominant culture and the Native population for centuries. Belle, the Red Mother, speaks for and to the failed mothers, the prostitutes, and the addicts: women living on the fringe whose very existence contradicts the myth of the Native "earth mother."

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/red_mother.htm

JUNE 3 TO 27
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"MY BOYFRIEND IS A ZOMBIE," WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY WILLIAM ELECTRIC BLACK
(LIST: OFF-OFF BROADWAY)
This is a new 1950's bopping musical, a kind of "Grease meets Zombieland" about a girl named Paula who falls in love with a zombie. Book, lyrics and direction by William Electric Black, music co-composed by William Electric Black and Gary Schreiner.

Author/director William Electric Black directed TNC's sensational "Lonely Soldier Monologues: Women at War in Iraq" last season. The play is being revived by La MaMa Feb. 5-7 this year. Too bad if you missed his previous musical at TNC, "Betty and the Belrays" (2007), in which three white female singers challenged a racially divided society by singing for a black record label.

Since 1999, Black has penned and directed a series of "jazzicals" in which classical and modern stories were adapted with modern music. These have been produced at TNC and La MaMa. His theater projects have also been produced in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Writing as Ian Ellis James, Black has won seven Emmies as a writer for "Sesame Street." His educational TV projects have also been produced by Topstone Productions, Lancet Media, Nickelodeon, Scholastic Productions, Warner Cable, and Winchester TV & Film, London. Black composed songs for Queen Latifah, Erykah Badu, Patti Labelle, and Arrested Development when they made special guest appearances on Sesame Street. He has received several Best Play Awards, been published by Benchmark Education, The Dramatic Publishing Co., Smith & Krauss, and received a Bronze Apple for directing (National Educational Video Award). Black has had two film scripts optioned, "Slave Ball" for Silver Pictures/Warner Brothers and "Road Runner" for MCA Records, Jerome Ade, Producer. He has also written, directed, and produced two independent features.

Black is curator of the Poetry Electric reading series at La MaMa, which fuses music, movement, sound, and dance with the spoken word. Black is also an adjunct professor at NYU's Tisch School, where among other things, he teaches techniques performance of plays based on literary works.

No further info on "My Boyfriend is a Zombie" is available as of this writing.

JUNE 11 TO 28
"WUTHERING HEIGHTS," THE MUSICAL
MINT THEATER
(LIST: THEATER)
Paul Dick's musical drama is based on Emily Bronte's timeless tale of starcrossed love. The passion of Heathcliff and Cathy is set to a semi-operatic score; book, music and lyrics are by Mr. Dick. Matt Gurtschick directs. Musical director is Michael Sheetz.

Paul Dick is author of over 15 musicals; many are based on classic sources, including "Madame Bovary" (directed by Elizabeth Falk, 2007), "A for Adultery" (based on The Scarlet Letter) and "Knock at the Door" (based on the Sean O'Casey novel). Others are based on more contemporary sources, such as "Tania" (based on Patty Hearst, presented by NY Theatre Workshop), "White Widow" (based on the play "Mafia" by Mario Fratti) and "Anytime, Anywhere" (a story of gay soldiers in Vietnam). Mr. Dick is an Off-off Broadway original; his earliest works were presented by the WPA Theater when it was located on 333 Bowery. (Does that take you back?) He participated in Lehman Engel's BMI Workshop and his musicals were championed by Alan Schneider.

No further info is available as of this writing.

AUGUST 8 TO SEPTEMBER 5, 2010
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
DREAM UP FESTIVAL
From August 8 to September 5, 2010, Theater for the New City (TNC), under the direction of Crystal Field, Artistic Director, will present its first "Dream Up Festival," a theater festival that is open to submissions from artists across the country and abroad. It is curated by the theater's Literary Manager, Michael Scott-Price. The festival will be a month long anthology of wide-ranging and original theatrical visions embracing drama, poetry, music and dance. The festival hopes to offer at least 20 shows on its lineup. Up to now, Theater for the New City has primarily served local theater artists. The Dream Up Festival opens up the theater to the country at large and to artists from overseas. Its founders feel this is especially needed now in a time of declining donations to the arts, grants not being awarded due to market conditions, and arts funding cuts on almost every level all across the country and abroad.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/dream_up.htm

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