CASABLANCABOX Begins Tonight at HERE

HERE proudly presents CasablancaBox, a HERE Resident Artist Production, as part of its 2016-2017 producing season. Written by Sara Farrington and directed by Reid Farrington, this original multi-media play will have 23 performances, in a premiere production, April 5 - 29 at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue, just below Spring Street).

CasablancaBox lifts the veil of the eponymous classic film to reimagine the stories behind the legends. Rife with glamour, war, censorship, sexism, racism, addiction and the refugee crisis of 1940s Hollywood, CasablancaBox is madcap and affecting, moving and political, romantic and relevant. With an intricately woven multi-narrative script by Sara Farrington and elaborate original video score by director Reid Farrington, this new theatrical work is a transformative "making of" tribute to the movie you thought you knew. Performance runs 90 minutes.

Employing simple wooden canvas flats, period costumes and 16 performers playing over two dozen characters, CasablancaBox toggles between high-tech and low-tech, transporting audiences to a bustling 1940s movie set. This backlot drama, inspired by a roving camera style, delves into myriad stories behind the iconic film Casablanca - stories of risk, sacrifice, brilliance and chance - in an exploration into the accidental nature of great art, through a contemporary lens.

This production features Roger Casey*, Kevin R. Free*, Catherine Gowl*, Lynn Guerra*, Annemarie Hagenaars, Gabriel Hernandez I*, Rob Hille*, Zac Hoogendyk*, Toussaint Jeanlouis*, Matt McGloin*, Adam Patterson*, Stephanie Regina*, Gabriella Rhodeen, Kyle Stockburger, Jon Swain* and Erin Treadway*; with Set/Video Design by Reid Farrington, Lighting Design by Laura Mroczkowski, Video Engineering by John Erickson, Choreography by Laura K. Nicoll, Additional Direction by Marina McClure, Sound Engineering by Travis Wright, Stage Management by Alex B. West* and Dramaturgy by Peter McCabe.

*Appears courtesy of Actor's Equity Association

Sara Farrington (Playwright) is a New York based playwright, MFA from Brooklyn College with Mac Wellman. She is a current HARP Artist at HERE Arts Center to create CasablancaBox. Recent plays include: Cosmicomics (The Flea, upcoming), Leisure, Labor, Lust (The Mount, ongoing), The Return (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Near Vicksburg (Incubator Arts Project, Walkerspace, Foxy Films, The Wild Project), Requiem For Black Marie (Incubator Arts Project, Foxy Films, Stella Adler Studios) and Mickey & Sage (Incubator Arts Project, Foxy Films, Great Plains Theater Conference, NTI @ O'Neill Center, ShelterBelt Theater, Omaha, NE). Sara is currently working on a piece inspired by Sinclair Lewis' Main Street. Sara's work has been supported by The Venturous Fund, The New York State Council on the Arts, The Axe-Houghton Foundation and The Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation. She is a MacDowell Colony fellow, graduate of Connecticut College and NTI @ The Eugene O'Neill Center, worked at The Wooster Group and acted at The Jean Cocteau Rep. Mickey & Sage is published by Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. Sara is an avid reader, runner and history lover. She and husband Reid Farrington live in Maplewood, NJ and have two little boys, Jack & Levi. www.ladyfarrington.com.

Reid Farrington (Director; Set/Video Designer) is a theater director, new media artist and stage designer. Recent work: CasablancaBox (HARP Commission from HERE Arts Center); The Return, about the accidental destruction and assembly of Tullio Lombardo's Adam (commissioned by and performed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015); Tyson vs. Ali, a hybrid theater sports event (PS 122 Coil Festival 2014); Reid Farrington's A Christmas Carol, which mixed live performers with video projected characters from 35 different film versions of the Dickens' classic tale (Abrons Art Center in 2011 & 2012); The Passion Project, based on the film The Passion of Joan of Arc (PS/K2 festival in Copenhagen, Denmark 2007, w/ subsequent productions at 3LD, and tours to Budapest, Vancouver and Regina, SK) and Gin & "It", based on Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (Wexner Center for the Arts, 2010). His work has been supported by NYSCA, NYFA, Jerome, ETC, Franklin Furnace, Greenwall. From 2001-2008, Reid was a technical artist for The Wooster Group where he designed video and created hardware and software systems for the integration of video and sound for six of the company's productions: To You, the Birdie!; Brace Up!; Poor Theater; House/Lights; WHO'S YOUR DADA?! and Hamlet. He has toured his work and five Wooster productions to Copenhagen, Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Brussels, Athens, Vancouver, Budapest and Columbus, OH. Reid has held creative residencies at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, the 3LD Art & Technology Center and Abrons Art Center. By day, he works as Audio Visual Manager at The Whitney Museum. He and wife and playwright Sara Farrington have two boys, Jack and Levi. www.reidfarrington.com

CasablancaBox plays April 5 - 29: Wednesday - Saturday at 8:30pm; and Saturday & Sunday at 4:00pm. Earlybird Tickets through April 5: $25.00. General admission tickets after April 5: $30.00. VIP Reserved Tickets: $45.00. Tickets can be purchased at www.here.org or by calling (212) 352-3101 or at the HERE Box Office (5PM until curtain on show days). For more, please visit www.here.org.

The OBIE-winning HERE (Kristin Marting, Artistic Director and Kim Whitener, Producing Director), named a Top Ten Off-Off Broadway Theatre by Time Out New York, is a leader in the field of producing and presenting new, hybrid performance viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines-theater, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual and installation, spoken word and performance art. Standout productions include Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique and Arias with a Twist, Hazelle Goodman's On Edge, Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle's all wear bowlers, Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Corey Dargel's Removable Parts, Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, Kamala Sankaram's Miranda and Robin Frohardt's The Pigeoning, among many others. In 2008, following an extensive renovation, HERE re-opened the doors to its long-time downtown home for the arts, where it continues as a vibrant, welcoming haven for artists and audiences alike.

The HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) has been HERE's signature development and producing program since 1998. HARP commissions, develops and premieres new hybrid performances. Productions developed at HERE challenge existing boundaries between disciplines. Through HARP, the Resident Artists are given the unique opportunity to develop their projects for up to three years through free works-in-progress showings, workshop presentations in HERE's annual CULTUREMART festival, culminating in full-scale productions.

Each season, HERE premieres several of these Resident Artist productions as mainstage works. These innovative projects are grown in a diverse artistic community where artists receive career development resources and hands-on training. HARP has been widely recognized as a unique model for artistic development for the field to emulate. In honoring HERE with the 2009 Ross Wetzsteon Award, the OBIE Committee noted, "it's become increasingly hard for artists to find a place to take risks, a safe haven where they can develop daring new work. One theater has regularly bucked the trend, making its mission to ensure that artists have a home for their research and development, and that theatregoers can sample the exciting results."

HERE is also home to the cross-disciplinary productions of Artistic Director Kristin Marting. Currently in development is Assembled Identity featuring Purva Bedi and Mariana Newhard. Exploring ethnic ambiguity, race and identity, this duet uses original and found text, live cinematography, and contemporary music to explore the science of identity, including genomics, genetics, eugenics and cloning, all of which impact our culture.

HERE proudly hosts adventurous artists, companies and productions, whether emerging or acclaimed, through its SubletSeries. It also presents work from New York, across the country, and around the globe through the Dream Music Puppetry Program (co-curated with Basil Twist), and the acclaimed PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival of opera-theater and music-theater, co-produced with Beth Morrison Projects.

HERE's 2016-2017 Season launched with Ship of Fools, a Dream Music Puppetry Program production by Resident Artist Jessica Scott (October 12 - 22, 2016); and continued with Chiflón, El Silencio del Carbón, a Dream Music Puppetry presentation by Chile's Silencio Blanco (February 23 - 26, 2017). Up next, following CasablancaBox, is Dark Circus, a Dream Music Puppetry presentation by France's STEREOPTIK (May 30 - June 4, 2017); and the final production in HERE's current season, The Reception, a HERE Resident Artist production by Sean Donovan & Sebastián Calderón Bentin (June 13 - 24, 2017). The season also includes the two annual highlights, PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now (January 5 - 15, 2017), the premier global festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre in New York City, co-produced by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE; and HERE's annual CULTUREMART Festival (March 15 - 25).

HERE's programming is made possible with public funds from: the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and the Office of New York State Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick. With additional support provided by The Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund of The Scherman Foundation; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New York Theater Program; the Mental Insight Foundation; Howard Gilman Foundation; the Mertz Gilmore Foundation; The Shubert Foundation; Jerome Foundation; the Fund for the City of New York; The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; FACE Contemporary Theater Foundation; the Jim Henson Foundation; the Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts; Goldman Sachs Gives; Select Equity Group; mediaThe foundation; Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation; the Leon Levy Foundation; the Axe-Houghton Foundation; and HERE's generous community of individual donors. PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now receives leadership funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; with other generous support from The Charles and Cerise Jacobs Fund for New Opera, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, The Reed Foundation, Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation, The Ted Snowdon Foundation, the Gladys Kreible Delmas Foundation; The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., Amphion Foundation, the Fresh Sound Foundation, and Opera America's New Works Exploration Grant. PROTOTYPE receives generous corporate support from Edison Properties.
Additional support for CasablancaBox provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, and the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation.