Plays by Neil LaBute, Caridad Svich and More Set for GUN CONTROL THEATRE ACTION WEEK 2013, 5/27-6/2

NoPassport Theatre Alliance & Press and The Vicious Circle announce GUN CONTROL THEATRE ACTION WEEK 2013 - a week of international performances and readings from the anthology 24 GUN CONTROL PLAYS, intended to raise awareness and discourse around the immediate need for Gun Control legislation.

Featuring 24 plays by such well respected authors as Neil LaBute, Caridad Svich, Winter Miller, Lynn Manning, Oliver Mayer, Saviana Stanescu and many others, the series of plays will be performed by theatre companies, individual artists and local performing troupes throughout the week of May 27 - June 2, 2013.

The cycle launches into action on Memorial Day, paying respect to those tragically lost to mass violence, including those lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Colorado cinema shootings of 2012. Tickets to all performances and readings during this Gun Control Theatre Action Week will be free of charge. Performance dates, times and locations will be regularly added to www.theatreaction.org.

Artists from around the world are invited to participate in Gun Control Theatre Action Week 2013, free of charge. There is no limitation on the location, size, or scale of the reading or production. Artists may perform some or all of the plays in the order of their choosing. To organize a own reading, artists are asked to contact meredith@theviciouscircle.org for more information. A complete list of the plays and playwrights is available at www.theatreaction.org.

"The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut this December 2012, prefigured by gun-related tragedies sustained in Aurora, Colorado, may be viewed (perhaps by some) as tragic, isolated incidents," says Caridad Svich, the conceiver of the Theatre Action. "But it is important to consider how stricter gun control laws may have prevented their occurrence. How do we as a nation in the U.S. reconcile incidents of senseless violence against our citizens, be they young or old? Since the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, the massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007, and the shooting that targeted Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011 (to name only three gun-related events in recent US history), national discussion in the arts and media, and halls of law and governance has turned toward how to cope with increased violence in our society and 'easy' access to guns. Calls for gun control arise in our culture every time devastating tragedies of this nature occur. Fourteen years after the Columbine massacre, we still ask ourselves what to do? As citizens and artists, let us raise our voices in protest and mourning; every step we take toward the making of work that encourages a more just society counts."

Commissioned by NoPassport Press in January of this year, just weeks after the Sandy Hook shootings which saw the massacre of 20 children and 6 adults, GUN CONTROL THEATRE ACTION 2013 generated two dozen new plays to examine the need for gun control. The plays were first produced as an evening of readings by force/collision in collaboration with Theater J in Washington, D.C., to coincide with the March on Washington for Gun Control, organized by Molly Smith, Artistic Director of Arena Stage, and Suzanne Blue Star Boy.

A new incarnation of readings, co-produced by force/collision, NY Madness and NYTR with NoPassport, is set for April 29, 2013 in New York City as a Pen and Swill event at New Dramatists, hosted by resident playwright Chiori Miyagawa, and featuring performances by Kristen Connolly, Greg Keller, Bhavesh Patel, Craig muMs Grant, Yvette Heyliger, Jody Christopherson, Jocelyn Kuritsky, Reyna de Courcy, Noah Galvin and Laura Zam.

The Gun Control Theatre Action Week of May 27-June 2, 2013 is meant to spread this movement around the world swiftly and pointedly, to raise the conversation to a new level spur the worldwide community to take decidedly imperative action to restrict the sale of high-capacity semi-automatic weapons and their ammunition.

Plays include:

Change by Elaine Avila
Dad's Guns by Neil Blackadder
Irony of the Second Degree by Kyle Bostian
50 Guns by Alex Broun
Everyday Villainy by Gab Cody
(Extract from) Testimony by Tameka Cage Conley
The Next Time by Cecilia Copeland
Hello My Name is Joe by Amina Henry
Bridge to Baraka: The Pen Instead of the Gun by Yvette Heyliger
What are we going to do about little brother? by Zac Kline
Cecily by Neil LaBute
Rand by Jennifer Maisel
Electric Midnight Emergency Call by Lynn Manning
Gun Play by Oliver Mayer
Happiness by Chiori Miyagawa
Orangutans Don't Kill by Winter Miller
(Extract from) The Nature of Captivity by Matthew Paul Olmos
Gun Culture by Ian Rowlands
A Poem for Sandy Hook by August Schulenburg
Hurt by Saviana Stanescu
The Wake by Caridad Svich
Gun Control by Chris Weikel
See Dick and Jane Get Ready For School by Gary Winter
Right After Virginia Tech by Laura Zam

NoPassport was founded by playwright Caridad Svich in 2003. It is an unincorporated, artist-driven, grass-roots theatre alliance & press devoted to cross-cultural, Pan-American performance, theory, action, advocacy, and publication. NoPassport exists a virtual and live forum for the exchange of work and dreams, a network between theatres and the academy, and a mobile band of playwrights, directors, actors, producers and musicians. The mentoring of younger artists is also a key component of NOPE's (as we playfully call ourselves) mission. For more information, visit nopassport.org.

The Vicious Circle was founded by Meredith Lynsey Schade, Tony Speciale and Jerry Marsini to create new, ensemble-based works. Past productions have included the development of the play Unnatural Acts by The Plastic Theatre, and Soulographie: Our Genocides, a series of 17 plays written by Erik Ehn on human rights issues, the latter of which was produced across the nation over the course of two years, culminating in a two week marathon at La MaMa in November 2012.