MiddleMaddle Ensemble Presents CHASING HEAVEN, Opens 8/13

MiddleMaddle Ensemble is proud to present Chasing Heaven as part of the 15th Annual New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC). Chasing Heaven had a reading in LaMaMa's 2010 Shadow reading series and was one of the last projects nurtured at LaMaMa during the tenure of the legendary founder and Artistic Director Ellen Stewart. A subsequent production in January 2011 in the Harlem Renaissance Living Literature Festival, part of Metropolitan Playhouse's Obie Award-winning 2011 season, had sold out houses and was a hit of the festival.

Chasing Heaven will be performed for five performances only in the CSV Flamboyan Theater (FRINGE VENUE #2) at the CSV (Clemente Soto Velez) Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street, between Rivington and Delancey on Saturday, August 13, 4:15 PM to 5:30 PM; Sunday, August 14, 4:00 PM to 5:15 PM; Saturday, August 20, 7:00 PM to 8:15 PM; Wednesday, August 24, 8:45 PM to 10:00 PM; Friday, August 26; 9:45 PM to 11:00 PM.

Chasing Heaven is an examination of our uncomfortable national conversation on race as manifest in the American performing arts. At the same time, Chasing Heaven is also about the ties between us that help bridge the gaps.
Signs of the times: A simply staged production of Porgy and Bess is extended due to popular demand at Chicago's Court Theatre in June 2011...Porgy and Bess is retooled as a musical theatre piece by a female, African-American, Pulitzer Prize- winning playwright...Broadway star Audra McDonald and a stellar cast are set to perform the shorter, presumably more racially sensitive version of George Gershwin's "folk opera" Porgy and Bess in Boston and then on Broadway.

Even as the country debates sanitizing classics such as Huckleberry Finn by removing "the N word," controversial stage classics are being polished up, made more politically correct, and salvaged for their entertainment value. Shows such as Anything Goes, Flower Drum Song and Annie Get Your Gun have had their original books refashioned in the last few years by modern day playwrights because the songs and plots of these shows were so universal, enjoyable, well-crafted and family friendly that producers couldn't help returning to them to delight today's audiences.

In Chasing Heaven, middle-aged African American playwright Kinshasa "Tree" Morton, in a career and personal slump, is commissioned by the family foundation of Tin Pan Alley composer/lyricist/book writer Joshua Gerwitz to update his epic Negro folk opera, originally titled Chasin' Hebbin. Kinshasa has made a career of calling Gerwitz' work into question, but when the ghost of Gerwitz arrives to challenge Kinshasa's notions of authenticity, political correctness and showbiz, questions are raised that have life--and afterlife--changing results.

The show features two-time Audelco winner Christine Campbell as Kinshasa Morton, and Brooklyn's Gallery Players favorite Greg Horton as cantankerous composer Joshua Gerwitz. Daniel Carlton and Linda Kuriloff round out the cast, playing multiple memorable characters. Chasing Heaven also includes two original songs by PeterDizozza and Leah Maddrie, "Fascination with Dancing" and "Chasing Heaven." Chasing Heaven's dramaturg is the composer and music historian Trevor Weston, Ph.D. The show's costume coordinator is Kimberly Sumner.

MiddleMaddle is a new theatrical company dedicated to the work of author Leah Maddrie, the recipient of a Sloan Foundation grant for her play Dark Energy Stuns Universe, and a two-time semifinalist for the Eugene O'Neill Playwriting Conference.

For Information / Tickets visit: www.FringeNYC.org or call 866-468-7619.

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