INTAR Season in Jeopardy Because of Zipper Closing

INTAR (Eduardo Machado, Artistic Director/John McCormack, Executive Director/Alina Troyano, Associate Artistic Director) is scrambling today to salvage its season, which was scheduled for two engagements, winter and spring, at the now suddenly shuttered Zipper Factory Theater. The first engagement was to begin February 11th and run through March 7th.

Rehearsals for the two one-acts have already begun.

In a statement today, Artistic Director Eduardo Machado said, " we are deeply saddened by these sudden developments. We had no idea this was even a possibility. Tickets were about to go on sale, the cast is in rehearsal, and we are suddenly out on the street. For a non-profit company like us, this is a devastating blow!" He went on to say "INTAR continues to look for a permanent home since the demolition of it's City owned theatre of 35 years to make way for the long aborning Clinton Green Project. INTAR anticipated a new home in the complex, but after it became clear the small company was expected to raise $12 million for the new space, they had to withdraw. The search for a permanent new home continues."

INTAR, one of the United States' longest running Latino theatres producing in English, works to:
- Nurture the professional development of Latino theater artists.
- Produce bold, innovative, artistically significant plays that reflect diverse perspectives.
- Make accessible the diversity inherent in America's cultural heritage.

Through an integrated program of workshops, productions of works in progress, and mainstage productions, INTAR continues to raise standards of the theater arts. INTAR brings to the public vital and energetic voices of both promising and accomplished Latino theater professionals, replacing stereotypes while giving expression to the diversity and depth of today's Latino-American community.

In Eduardo Machado's new play In Paradise an estranged husband shows up on his wife's doorstep. Carlos left Marilyn seven years ago for another man, but both the conflicts and chemistry between them feels as fresh as if they were never apart. Deserted by his lover, Carlos has returned to Marilyn for answers and salvation. As they delve into the remains of their shared history, the power struggle between them plays out through recrimination, eroticism, anger, and love. Can you help someone who betrayed you move forward, or will you always blame one single person for ruining your entire life?

In Nick Norman's lyrical new play She Plundered Him the boundaries of familial relationships are tested in new and dangerous ways. Calder, already on a mental precipice, is convinced that he saw something unseemly pass between his wife, Keep, and son, Anthony...but did he? As Calder's obsessive jealousy spirals out of control and Keep and Anthony lie to him and one another, the family unit threatens to break irreparably. Throughout, the playwright employs heightened classical language infused with harsh vernacular, and the results are harrowing and brutal. Nick Norman's devastating story presents a searing, challenging emerging voice to New York theatre.
Billy Hopkins directs a cast that features Leslie Lyles (as Marilyn) and Ed Vassallo (as Carlos) for In Paradise; and James Chen (as Anthony), Leslie Lyles (as Keep), and Mark Elliot Wilson (as Calder) in She Plundered Him.

Billy Hopkins (Director) For "Summer Shorts 2" at 59E59, Billy directed Leslie Lyles' The Waters of March (starring Amy Irving), Keith Reddin's Our Time is Up, and Roger Hedden's Deep in the Hole. In last year's "Summer Shorts," he directed Leslie Lyles' Rain, Heavy at Times, the Eduardo Machado/Skip Kennon musical Afternoon Tea, and Merwin's Lane by Keith Reddin. For the Ensemble Studio Theatre's Marathon of One Act Plays he directed The Great Pretenders by Leslie Lyles (starring Amy Irving), Roger Hedden's Been Taken and Terry Neal's Future (starring Sarah Jessica Parker), and The Big Squirrel by Keith Reddin (starring Janet Zarish and the then 6 year old Macaulay Culkin), as well as one-acts by Frank D. Gilroy, Shirley Kaplan, and David Mamet. Full-length credits include Mr. Hedden's Bodies, Rest, and Motion (Lincoln Center Theater) and Mr. Reddin's The Perpetual Patient (NYPW). He directed the feature film of Wendy Kesselman's I Love You, I Love You Not (starring Jeanne Moreau, Claire Danes, Jude Law, and Julia Stiles). As Casting Director, recent theatre credits include: The Black Monk (The Beckett), Edward Albee's The American Dream/The Sandbox (Cherry Lane Theatre); Artfxxers (DR2), Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell (Naked Angels); All Eyes and Ears (INTAR); Stitching (Wild Project). Highlights from Lincoln Center Theater include: House Of Blue Leaves, Speed the Plow, Anything Goes and Six Degrees of Separation. Recent film credits include Push (Sundance 2009); The Visitor; Anamorph; Tennessee (Tribeca Film Festival 2008); and Pineapple Express. Most notable film credits include: Fatal Attraction, Seven, Cider House Rules, JFK, Boys Don't Cry, Shakespeare in Love, Good Will Hunting, Unfaithful and Monster's Ball. Television: Roseanne; Sex and the City (Emmy Nomination); The Bronx Is Burning (Emmy nomination).

Nick Norman is an Argentine-British playwright born to a mother from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a British father who was raised in Uganda, where Nick's grandfather lived and worked as a priest. Though his parents met in Argentina, Nick received his education in England. Nick was educated at Eton College and Leeds University, where he studied English Literature. He first tried writing drama while on an undergraduate exchange to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in the summer of 2003. Returning to Leeds for the fall, he wrote and directed his first play Waiting for Good Blow. The play was performed twice on campus before representing the university at the 2004 Edinburgh Festival, running for the month of August at The Underbelly Theatre. That winter he submitted Waiting for Good Blow to TAPS (Training and Performance Showcase), an English arts foundation which accepts six writers a year and prepares them, through a series of workshops and mentorships, for a career writing for television. He was accepted on to the program and over that period wrote his first and to date only teleplay, Take Away Girl. In the Fall of 2005 he enrolled in the MFA playwriting program in the theatre division of Columbia University's School of the Arts, where he graduated this October. He wrote two full-length plays while at Columbia, Say Hello Children and She Plundered Him. Say Hello Children was produced at The Red Room theatre on East 3rd Street in the Summer 2006, She Plundered Him is being produced by INTAR this winter. His one-act plays include Guts, which was performed in May 2006, The Iron Maiden -part of a short play festival named "The Torture Project," and Foreign Fields -part of "The Patriot Project."

Eduardo Machado is the author of over forty plays including The Cook, Havana is Waiting, The Floating Island Plays, Once Removed, and Stevie Wants to Play the Blues. His plays have been produced at Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, Hartford Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf Theatre, Hampstead Theatre in London, American Place Theatre, The Cherry Lane Theatre, and Repertorio Español, among many others. Mr. Machado has served as an Artistic Associate at The Public, the Flea Theatre/Bat Theatre Company and The Cherry Lane Alternative, and he was playwright in residence at The Mark Taper Forum. He has received four National Endowment for the Arts grants, two Rockefeller Foundation Playwriting grants, and grants from The TCG Pew Charitable Trust and The Berrilla Kerr Foundation, among many others. His plays have been published by Theatre Communications Group and Samuel French. Mr. Machado is currently INTAR Theatre's Artistic Director in NYC, and is Head of Playwriting in the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. "Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home," a food memoir by Eduardo Machado and Michael Domitrovich, was released by Gotham Press in October 2007. Mr. Machado just completed a new play, That Night in Hialeah.

For more information and updates visit, www.intartheatre.org.

 

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