THE MAN IN THE NEWSPAPER HAT Begins 3/5, Runs Thru 4/1

MANYTRACKS is pleased to announce the world premiere of THE MAN IN THE NEWSPAPER HAT by Hayley Heaton, directed by Katrin Hilbe. THE MAN IN THE NEWSPAPER HAT plays a three-week limited engagement at the 45th Street Theatre (345 W 45th St). Performances begin Thursday, March 5th and continue through Wednesday, April 1st.

The Man in the Newspaper Hat is a fictionalized portrayal of what went into the creation of Elizabeth Bishop's poem, "Visits to St. Elizabeths." Bishop wrote this poem during her visits with the controversial poet, Ezra Pound who was remanded to St. Elizabeths in 1946 after having stood trial for treason where a special jury found him incompetent. Each scene is built upon aspects of Bishop's poem and follows both characters as they come together, "poet to poet”.

The production features scenic design by Elisha Schaefer, costume design by Meredith Neal and lighting design by Joan Racho-Jansen. Andy Cohen is the sound designer and Arienne Pelletier is the stage manager.

The Man In The Newspaper Hat plays the following schedule through Wednesday, April 1st:

Thursday, March 5 at 8pm
Friday, March 6 at 8pm
Saturday, March 7 at 8pm
Wednesday, March 11 at 8pm
Thursday, March 12 at 8pm
Friday, March 13 at 8pm
Saturday, March 14 at 8pm
Sunday, March 22 at 2pm
Monday, March 23 at 8pm
Tuesday, March 24 at 8pm
Wednesday, March 25 at 8pm
Sunday, March 29 at 2pm
Monday, March 30 at 8pm
Tuesday, March 31 at 8pm
Wednesday, April 1 at 8pm

Tickets are $18.00. Advance tickets can be purchased online at www.Theatermania.com, or by calling 212-352-3101. Tickets may also be purchased in person at the theater’s box office, half hour before Showtime.

For more information about The Man In The Newspaper Hat, visit www.ManyTracks.org.

ELIZABETH BISHOP (Poet) was an American poet and writer, increasingly regarded as one of the finest 20th century poets writing in English. "Miss Bishop" — as she preferred most people to address her — was notoriously shy. She did not seek or particularly enjoy literary publicity. Though highly regarded by fellow poets (John Ashbery described her as a "poet's poet’s poet"), it was only after her death in 1979, and particularly after the 1994 publication of One Art, her collected letters, that Bishop's reputation grew well beyond the small critical fame that she enjoyed in her lifetime. Elizabeth Bishop was awarded the Houghton Mifflin poetry award in 1946 and, in 1956, the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poetry, North & South - A Cold Spring. She later received the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as two Guggenheim fellowships. In 1976, she became the first woman to receive the International Neustadt Prize for Literature, and remains the only American to be awarded that prize.

HAYLEY HEATON (Playwright) Hayley Heaton is a poet transitionally living in Salt Lake City after spending the last four years of her life living in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Utah, Heaton was educated at the University of Utah, as well as Cambridge University where she spent a brief stint studying the plays of William Shakespeare and the poems of John Donne. She received her MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from The New School in 2007. Her chapbook, hubbub, was published in 2004 and her poems can be found in the online archives of “La Petite Zine” and “Sub-Lit” and are forthcoming in the Boog City Reader in 2009. She has also published an educational book for children with the Princeton Review. Heaton has always been interested in writing for the stage and is attracted to work that blurs the lines between poem, play, and/or art. Her work is devoted to exhibiting different ways to read a painting, hearing a poem in a piece of drama, or writing poems in dialog form. She finds the rigid definitions of what a poem should be, what a play should be, or what a piece of art should be limiting and seeks to redefine and erase those lines. Her most recent endeavor, The Man in the Newspaper Hat, takes its subject from a poem by Elizabeth Bishop,"Visits to St. Elizabeths," and explores what goes into the making of a poem through imagined dialogs between Ezra Pound and Elizabeth Bishop. Heaton is currently working on two new plays, both based on poems, and a collection of ekphrastic poetry.

KATRIN HILBE (Director) Katrin directs Opera, Operetta, Contemporary Musical Theatre and plays, both in Europe and in the US. She is the principal assistant director for the opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, and is currently directing three plays for the 8 Minute Madness Playwrights Festival, produced by Turtleshell Productions. Katrin is an alumni of the Directors Lab West of 2007, a member of the Jewish Theater of New York and of the WorkShop Theater Company. She holds a masters degree in Philosophy, Musicology and English/American Literature from the University of Berne (Switzerland) and is both a citizen of the USA and the Principality of Liechtenstein, where she grew up. Katrin is the founder and Artistic Director for ManyTracks, and is proud to be producing and directing their first production, The Man In The Newspaper Hat.

EZRA POUND (Poet) American poet, editor and critic, considered one of the originators of 20th Century literary modernism. A fiercely individual rebel (W.B. Yeats called him a "solitary volcano") Pound challenged many of the common views of his time, all along maintaining that poetry is the highest of arts. He was a tireless and generous advocate of fellow writers whom he considered worthy, including T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Elizabeth Bishop's own mentor Marianne Moore. Devastated by the slaughter of World War I, Pound sought economic explanations for the carnage, theories of an increasingly anti-Semitic character. In the nineteen-thirties, living in Italy, he embraced Mussolini and Fascism. His broadcasts over Rome Radio in the forties led to his arrest and, when he was found unfit to stand trial for treason, to his being remanded to St Elizabeths, a Federal mental hospital in Washington where Bishop visited him in 1949. Pound's major work was the Cantos, which was published in ten sections between 1925 and 1969, and then as a one-volume collected edition, The Cantos Of Ezra Pound I-CXVII (1970).

MANYTRACKS (Producers) This is ManyTracks’ first time out as a theatre company. Its mission is “Different Tracks to making Theatre”, and suggests not only a creative openness as far as the type or genre of work we are interested in – be it straight theater, musical theatre, solo performances, dance or a mix, but also pertains to our interest in exploring different ways on how theatre pieces are conceived.

When it comes to selecting material, ManyTracks has no political agenda, no beliefs other than the steadfast conviction, that it’s the questions that matter, not the answers. The world is a complex place, and for every position, there exists its polar opposite. Rather than taking sides, ManyTracks is interested in pursuing projects, which focus on presenting these conundrums that make our world.