ABOUT FACE Set for Brick Theatre in December

bout Face, an exploration of the Russian-Jewish immigrant psyche by Essie Martsinkovsky, will be presented at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn this December. The production will be produced by Audra Arnaudon and directed by Anna Strasser.

As About Face begins, seven-year-old Lina, her parents, and grandmother Zina have just arrived in America after years of persecution under the Soviet Union. Nine years later, Lina has become a teenager with a rebellious streak, struggling to cement her identity as an American while pushing away any association with her Russian heritage. Meanwhile, Zina remains tormented by her memories of life under the KGB, and unwittingly enacts her own history of oppression and fear onto her granddaughter. But even as the two women push each other away, they find themselves drawn back together in this ruthless yet comical journey through the no-man's-land that separates immigrants from the American heartland surrounding them.

This world premiere reunites an accomplished team of collaborators: writer Essie Martsinkovsky, director Anna Strasser, and producer Audra Arnaudon brought Martsinkovsky's I Was Loved By A Rat to the New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) in 2013. Strasser and Arnaudon most recently brought Chemistry to the 2014 FringeNYC and FringeNYC Encore Series, where it won the festival's Excellence in Playwriting Award and was hailed as "Hilarious and heartbreaking" (Theatre is Easy) and "A terrific piece of theatre" (nytheater now). About Face was written through the support of the COJECO BluePrint Fellowship, a highly selective yearlong program for Russian-speaking Jewish adults ages 25-40 to explore personal and collective identity through the creation of community projects.