|
| Share:
NEW GEORGES
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
IRONDALE CENTER
PRESENTS THE WORLD PREMIERE OF
ALICEGRACEANON
WRITTEN BY KARA LEE CORTHRON
DIRECTED BY & DEVELOPED WITH KARA-LYNN VAENI
ORIGINALLY COMMISSIONED FOR THE GERM PROJECT
PREVIEWS OCTOBER 18, 19, & 20
PRESS OPENING OCTOBER 22
OFFICIAL OPENING OCTOBER 23
OCTOBER 18 – NOVEMBER 9 @ THE IRONDALE CENTER
New Georges (Susan Bernfield, Producing Artistic
Director; Sarah Cameron Sunde, Deputy Artistic Director; Jaynie Saunders
Tiller, Managing Director) in association with Irondale Center (85
Oxford Street between Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street, Brooklyn) will
present the World Premiere of Kara Lee Corthron’s ALICEGRACEANON,
October 18-November 9. The production will be directed by Kara-Lynn
Vaeni and will feature Carolyn Baeumler (Lisa Kron’s The
Veri**zon Play at the Humana Festival), Eric Clem (The Elephant
Man at Williamstown Theatre Festival), Matt Dellapina (The Civilians’
In the Footprint at Irondale), Teresa Avia Lim (Quiara Alegria
Hudes’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful at Hartford
Stage), and Christina Pumagiera (Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar on
Broadway). The creative team will include Sound Design by Marcelo
Añez, Music Direction by Ralph Capasso, Set Design by Nick
Francone, Costume Design by Liam O’Brien, Installation Design
by Rachel Schapira, and Lighting Design by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew.
The production will also feature The Spectacle Brigade, a 10-member
chorus who facilitate inventive moments of theatricality and play smaller
parts; and a live band in the “role” of Jefferson Airplane. Special guest
musicians will sit in with the band during a break in the action at each
performance. A complete schedule will be available at http://www.newgeorges.org
.
A curious girl who falls down a rabbit hole. The lead
singer of an iconic ‘60s rock band. The poor, nameless star of a classic
druggie diary. Three oddly connected heroines inhabit three separate worlds,
playing out their stories exactly as expected. But when those worlds suddenly
collide – really, they collide -- they all start to wonder… who's really
controlling my destiny?
Corthron’s imaginary meeting of these three characters
is inspired by the ways they historically intertwine. It was Grace Slick’s
obsession with the works of Lewis Carroll (and the drug imagery she found
therein) which inspired Jefferson Airplane’s hallucinatory 1967 hit White
Rabbit, which in turn inspired the title of the best-selling 1971 teenage
memoir Go Ask Alice – published as the real diary of an anonymous
girl, but later revealed to be a work of fiction, a “cautionary tale”
by a do-gooding writer named Beatrice Sparks.
The production is designed to feel like a ‘60s-era "happening,"
an event which used familiar materials in new ways to make participants
question their approach to experience. The concept will extend throughout
the ample Irondale space -- including the balcony, where audiences will
enter the theater through an interactive installation, which explores the
backstory of the three protagonists. There, text from their stories mingles
with art-school style constructions; and soundscapes and live video create
the sense that everyone is a voyeur.
ALICEGRACEANON was originally commissioned
in 2010 as part of The Germ Project. As a response to the growing
trend towards small-cast, one-set plays, New Georges commissioned four
playwrights to write BIG plays, plays of “scope and adventure” that are
“unproduce-able” and that “encompass elements which extend and expand
the conventional playwriting repertoire.” In June 2011 they presented
a “germ” – a 20-minute excerpt – of each of the plays, at 3LD Art &
Technology Center. Kara Lee Corthron’s play AliceGraceAnon is the
first of these four original Germ Project plays to receive a fully staged
production.
ALICEGRACEANON, presented by New Georges
at the Irondale Center (85 Oxford Street between Lafayette Avenue
and Fulton Street, Brooklyn) will play a four-week engagement October
19-November 9; Tuesday through Saturday at 8pm with an additional performance
on Monday, October 22 at 8pm. Tickets ($25; $35 premium tickets; $10
on Tuesdays) may be purchased online at http://www.irondale.org
or by calling 866-811-4111. For more information or
to purchase group rates call New Georges at 646-336-8077.
KARA LEE CORTHRON (Playwright) plays include JULIUS
BY DESIGN (Fulcrum, Penumbra Theatre), ETCHED IN SKIN ON A SUNLIT NIGHT
(InterAct Theatre, 6/12), HOLLY DOWN IN HEAVEN (Forum Theatre, Washington,
D.C., 10/12; Princess Grace Award), SPOOKWATER, LISTEN FOR THE LIGHT, ELECTRIC
PERSEPHONE IN THE SCORPION'S DEN, and WILD BLACK-EYED SUSANS. Other awards/honors
include: The Vineyard Theatre’s 3rd Annual Paula Vogel Playwriting Award,
two NEA grants (with InterAct and Naked Angels), the Helen Merrill Award,
Lincoln Center’s Lecomte du Nouy Prize (three-time recipient), an E.S.T./Sloan
Commission, the Theodore Ward Prize, the New Professional Theatre Writers
Award, two MacDowell fellowships, residencies at Skriðuklaustur (Iceland),
the Millay Colony, and Ledig House and she was twice finalist for New Dramatists
membership. Current commissions: South Coast Rep, New Georges, and Naked
Angels. Her plays have been produced and/or developed at the African Continuum
Theatre (D.C.), ArsNova, CenterStage (Baltimore), Electric Pear, E.S.T.,
Horizon Theatre (Atlanta), the Kennedy Center, Naked Angels, New Dramatists,
New Georges, NYTW, The Orchard Project, Page 73, Penumbra, PlayPenn Conference,
The Shalimar, TheatreWorks (Palo Alto), the Vineyard Theatre, and Voice
&Vision among others. TV: writer for NBC’s KINGS (2008-2009). Kara
is a Juilliard alumna, instructor at Primary Stages’ Einhorn School of
Performing Arts, a New Georges Affiliated Artist and member of the 2010-2011
Ars Nova Play Group, ‘Wright On! Playwrights Group (co-founder), Blue
Roses Productions, the Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America.
KARA-LYNN VAENI (Director) directorial work has
been seen at HERE, BAM, The National Theatre of Prague, The Guggenheim
Works & Process, New Georges, Dallas Theater Center, Yale Repertory
Theatre, Irondale Center, 3LD Art & Technology Center, 2G, NYC Fringe,
The Flea Theatre, The Wild Project, The Duplex, Montana Rep and the Maltz
Jupiter Theatre in Florida. Her innovative staging and use of contemporary
dance for Opera Slavica’s Rusalka won her an extended invitation to perform
from the Artistic Director of the Czech Center in New York. She is a Resident
Director for the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at NYU, the Literary
Manager of New Georges, a faculty member at Hofstra University and the
University of MA-Amherst, and an Alumna of the Women’s Project Directors
Lab. She received her MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama in
2004 where she also received a Presidential Public Service Fellowship and
the Julian Kauffman Prize for Directing.
NEW GEORGES founded in 1992, has premiered 37 new
full-length plays and 11 festivals of new work; hundreds of original works
have passed through New Georges' workspace, The Room, on their way to venues
in New York City and beyond. In addition to producing regular seasons,
the company is a play and artist development organization, providing essential
resources and opportunities to a community of adventurous artists. Their
production of Eisa Davis' Angela's Mixtape was one of The
New Yorker's "Best Off-Broadway Shows of 2009;" and Jenny Schwartz's
God's Ear was a Time Out New York "Top Ten of 2007" and
transferred to the Vineyard Theatre in 2008. Plays premiered at New Georges
have been published by Faber & Faber, Samuel French, Dramatists Play
Service, Playscripts, Smith & Kraus, Seagull Books and Vintage, and
have received Susan Smith Blackburn and Kesselring prizes. In addition,
New Georges produced early works by many notable playwrights, including
Lisa D'Amour, Tracey Scott Wilson, Diana Son, Cusi Cram, Sheila Callaghan,
Heidi Schreck, Leigh Fondakowski, Catherine Filloux, Kate Moira Ryan and
Carson Kreitzer. Honors include an OBIE Award as well as awards from
New York Women's Agenda, Princess Grace Foundation/USA, Jonathan Larson
Performing Arts Foundation, Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays,
and FringeNYC. In 2009, The L Magazine named New Georges among its "Best
of NYC;" and a study published by TDF, OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: The Life
and Times of the New American Play, lists New Georges as one of the top
10 theaters nationwide named by playwrights as a leading producer of their
plays.
IRONDALE CENTER the first performing arts space
to open in the Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District is uniquely and entirely
run and maintained by the Irondale Ensemble. A beautiful and historic space,
the Center is an old Sunday school building attached to the Lafayette Avenue
Presbyterian Church. The church boasts an incredible history in its own
right being a shelter proving through history a commitment to positive
social activism.
|
|