Brooklyn College Presents the 12th Annual Weasel Festival Hosted by the Public Theater

The Department of Theater at Brooklyn College is one of New York City's outstanding institutions in the training of theater artists. With the assistance of a generous grant from the Tow Foundation, the Department of Theater in conjunction with the MFA Playwriting Program, headed by co-coordinators Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney, will present the annual Weasel Festival, hosted by The Public Theater. The festival of new works, previously produced by the playwrights, will feature performances of full length plays written by Corinne Donly, Katie Hathaway, Zach Rufa and Eryk Aughenbaugh all of whom are recent graduates of the MFA Playwrighting Program at Brooklyn College.

As the only department within the City University system to offer a comprehensive selection of graduate programs in Theater (Acting, Design & Technical Theater, Directing, Performing Arts Management), we capitalize on our New York City location and the expertise of our nationally recognized faculty in order to give our students an excellent yet financially accessible education in the art, craft, study, and appreciation of theater. In doing so, this year's Weasel Festival will feature current students and alumni of the Brooklyn College Graduate Acting Program and be designed by current students from the renowned MFA Design and Technical Theater program.

Smart, imaginative and eclectic, the festival will present four new works in two programs. 'Program A,' directed by Polly Noonan, will feature Don't Eat Cherries by Kathryn Hathaway and Wood Calls Out To Wood by Corinne Donly. The Fall of All Atomic Angels by Zach Rufa and Stripperers written by Eryk Aughenbaugh and directed by Dan Rogers will be featured in 'Program B.' Partnership between The Public Theater and Brooklyn College is made possible by The Tow Foundation.

Eryk Aughenbaugh is an artist and writer who has worked with performer, playwright and founder of 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr & Perf. Co., Sibyl Kempson. He has also worked with Sarah Michelson, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, and the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, among others. This is their first production.

Corinne Donly's work has been seen at The Bushwick Starr, The Toronto Theatre Centre, Montreal's Usine C, Dixon Place, and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. Their plays have received development support from SPACE on Ryder Farm, the Canadian Arts Council, the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, the Himan Brown Award, and the Harold Clurman Center for New Work. Donly holds an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College, an MA in Integral Ecology, and a BFA in acting from NYU's Experimental Theatre Wing.

Katie Hathaway is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Her plays and musicals have been performed and developed at Ars Nova, The Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, The Flea Theater, New Dramatists, The Bushwick Starr, Dixon Place, The Prelude Festival, New York Musical Theatre Festival, Joe's Pub, the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, and the Yale Institute For Music Theater. She is a MacDowell Colony fellow, New Georges affiliated artist, an alumna of Barnard College, and received her MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College. Her latest play that she co-wrote with Lilla Goettler, Ex Habitus will be performed in August at the Corkscrew Theater Festival. She is also a music teacher at Saint Ann's School.

Polly Noonan's (director) credits include: Melancholy Play: a chamber musical by Sarah Ruhl (Piven Theatre Workshop, extended), A Beautiful View by Daniel MacIvor (Out Front Series at AFT), The Language Archive by Julia Cho (Piven), Dear ElizaBeth By Sarah Ruhl (Poetry Foundation, the Fortnightly Club of Chicago), Goodbye Stranger by Carrie Luft (Steppenwolf, extended), The Hitchhiker by Roald Dahl (Williamstown Theatre Festival, directing fellowship 1997), Youth is Wasted by Dan Rybicky (Playwright's Collective, NY), Extravaganza Fat Pad (created and directed an original show developed with the New Criminals for the Rhino Festival and Around the Coyote, extended to a month long run at The Remains Theatre). Also: Directors Lab West 2015, Lincoln Center Directors Lab 2015, SDCF Observership Class 2015-16.

Dan Rogers (director) is co-founder of AntiMatter Collective and former General Manager of Vampire Cowboys Theater Company. He is a proud graduate of the Brown/Trinity MFA Directing program and a Drama League Directing Fellow. Projects include A Campfire Requiem, a song cycle by Rick Burkhardt at HERE, Old Bones, an immersive multimedia journey through Brooklyn by Elise LeBreton, and sixsixsix by Gregory S. Moss, a black mass staged in a 20,000 sq. ft. warehouse. Upcoming: Pericles at the Brick, an adaptation of Brideshead Revisited at Dixon Place, and The Future Perfect by Adam Scott Mazer, AntiMatter's next project in collaboration with the Harvard Anthropology Department. More at danrogersdirects.com.

Zach Rufa's plays include The Only Goal That Ever Matters to Any Running Boy (Dixon Place, NYC), Ten-Thousand Perfect Lives (O'Neill Theater Center National Theater Institute); Fade (Finalist for Best Play-Between Us Productions Take Ten Festival, NYC); Pieces of Glass (Alan Minieri Award for Best Overall Production-Turnip Theater Co. 15-Minute Play Festival, NYC); Defying Stars (UglyRhino, NYC) among others. He is also an actor, director, and designer, and has assistant directed for Young Jean Lee, Erik Ehn, Taibi Magar, Jane Nichols, and Kenneth Prestininzi. BA: Brown. MFA: Brooklyn College zachrufa.com

Since 1998, Brooklyn College's Playwriting Program has been directed by Obie Award-winning playwright Mac Wellman, whose own recent work includes Muazzez at The Chocolate Factory as part of the 2014 P.S. 122 COIL Festival and 3 2's; or AFAR at Dixon Place. His books of poetry include Miniature (2002), Strange Elegies (2006), Split the Stick (2012) from Roof Books, and Left Glove (2011) from Solid Objects Press. His novel Linda Perdido won the 2011 FC2 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction. Obie winner and Guggenheim Fellow Erin Courtney (13P's A Map of Virtue; Kaspar Hauser: A Foundling's Opera) is a former graduate and now co-coordinator of Wellman's MFA program. Other celebrated alumni include Annie Baker, Clare Barron, Chad Beckim, Thomas Bradshaw, Kelly Copper, Sarah DeLappe, Sybil Kempson, Young Jean Lee, Kate E. Ryan and Tina Satter among many others.

Brooklyn College's Department of Theater-Kip Marsh, chair; Mary Beth Easley, artistic director-is one of New York City's leading institutions in the training of actors, directors, designers, dramaturgs, performing arts managers, and theater technicians. The Department offers undergraduate degree programs leading to the Bachelor of Arts in Theater, the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting, the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design & Technical Theater, the Master of Arts in Theater History & Criticism, and the Master of Fine Arts with concentrations in Acting, Directing, Design & Technical Theater, and Performing Arts Management.

ABOUT The Public Theater:

The Public Theater, under the leadership of Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham, is the only theater in New York that produces Shakespeare, the classics, musicals, contemporary and experimental pieces in equal measure. In over 10 years at The Public, Eustis has created new community-based initiatives designed to engage audiences like Public Lab, Public Studio, Public Forum, Public Works, and a remount of the Mobile Unit. The Public continues the work of its visionary founder, Joe Papp, by acting as an advocate for the theater as an essential cultural force, and by leading and framing dialogue on some of the most important issues of our day.

Creating theater for one of the largest and most diverse audience bases in New York City for nearly 60 years, today the Company engages audiences in a variety of venues-including its landmark downtown home at Astor Place, which houses five theaters and Joe's Pub; the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, home to Free Shakespeare in the Park; and the Mobile Unit, which tours Shakespearean productions for underserved audiences throughout New York City's five boroughs.

The Public's wide range of programming includes Free Shakespeare in the Park, the bedrock of the Company's dedication to making theater accessible to all; Public Works, an expanding initiative that is designed to cultivate new connections and new models of engagement with artists, audiences, and the community each year; and audience and artist development initiatives that range from the Emerging Writers Group to the Public Forum series. The Public's work is also seen on tour throughout the U.S. and internationally and in collaborations and co-productions with regional and international theaters.

The Public is located on property owned by the City of New York and receives annual support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. In October 2012 the landmark building downtown at Astor Place was revitalized to physically manifest the Company's core mission of sparking new dialogues and increasing accessibility for artists and audiences, by dramatically opening up the building to the street and community, and transforming the lobby into a public piazza for artists, students, and audiences.

The Public is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony Award-winning acclaimed American musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat, and on tour with The Gabriels, Fun Home, and Hamilton. The Public has received 59 Tony Awards, 169 OBIE Awards, 53 Drama Desk Awards, 54 Lortel Awards, 32 Outer Critics Circle Awards, 13 New York Drama Critics Awards, and six Pulitzer Prizes. www.publictheater.org.

FESTIVAL DETAILS:

Tickets for the Weasel Festival in The Public's Shiva Theater are free, but must be reserved in advance by calling (212) 967-7555, or online at www.publictheater.org, or in person at the Taub Box Office at The Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street. The performance schedule is as follows:

Program A

Don't Eat Cherries With Kings written by Kathryn Hathaway
Wood Calls Out To Wood by Corinne Donly
Directed by Polly Noonan
Dates: Fri. July 14th, Tues. July 18th & Thurs. July 20th @ 7:00 PM; Sat. July 15th & 3:00 PM

Wood Calls Out To Wood

Wood Calls Out to Wood is a painting translated into a play, a landscape turned into a soundscape. It is a precise and deeply silly experiment in the possibilities of combination--of single syllables combining to make words and single people combining to make couples. The audience first encounters the play as they would a picture hanging on a distant wall, in large swaths of color and pattern. When taking a closer look, however, strange Boschian beings begin to emerge: Two horses in a neigh-scent relationship, a vacant treehouse in need of a tenant, and a man with a grape for a head.

Don't Eat Cherries With Kings

This Boschian etude is a love poem for an ailing friend - Reality - who is always asking questions like, "Do I even matter anymore?" With their ear for deconstructed cacophony, the post-pop band 'Ensemble Doom' plays the hits while pathological lying is normalized onstage before your very eyes. Tortured musicians torture everyone around them in this garden of generation xyz disquietude.

Program B

The Fall of All Atomic Angels written by Zach Rufa
Stripperers written by Eryk Aughenbaugh
Directed by Dan Rogers
Dates: Sat. July 15th, Mon. July 17th, Wed. July 19th & Fri. July 21st @ 7pm

The Fall of All Atomic Angels

A bunch of nuclear bombs or maybe angels just fell out of the sky and the world is probably ending, but Skylar isn't too concerned. After all, they've just found the coolest club you've never heard of, frequented by all kinds of cool-ass cripples like Skylar. Oh, and there's Lucy. Lucy has wings, and the best drugs this side of paradise. As Skylar struggles to keep the party going, it becomes apparent that some dreams are addictive, that it's oh-so-easy to overdose on a feeling, and that not all angels have the best of intentions.

Stripperers

In this polyphonic comedy, three young tobacco strippers discover a mysterious painting-but they don't know what it means. As they decode the painting, they unravel an alternate world in which gender is fluid, state affairs are conducted on horseback, and people gather poolside for daily entertainments.

Full Program Schedule Below:

Program A Friday, July 14 Don't Eat Cherries With Kings & Wood Calls Out To Wood 7pm

Program A Saturday, July 15 (mat) Don't Eat Cherrie With Kings & Wood Calls Out To Wood 3pm

Program B Saturday, July 15 (eve) The Fall of All Atomic Angels & The Stripperers 7pm

Program B Monday, July 17 The Fall of All Atomic Angels & The Stripperers 7pm

Program A Tuesday, July 18 Don't Eat Cherries With Kings & Wood Calls Out To Wood 7pm

Program B Wednesday, July 19 The Fall of All Atomic Angels & The Stripperers 7pm

Program A Thursday, July 20 Don't Eat Cherries With Kings & Wood Calls Out To Wood 7pm

Program B Friday, July 21 The Fall of All Atomic Angels & The Stripperers 7pm