John Leguizamo and More Set for SummerStage's 2014 Season

City Parks Foundation announces the 2014 season of SummerStage, New York's largest free performing arts festival, bringing over 100 free performances to 14 parks throughout the five boroughs. With performances ranging from American pop, Latin and World music to dance, comedy and theater, SummerStage fills a vital niche in New York City's summer arts festival landscape. Since its inception twenty-nine years ago, more than six million people from New York City and around the world have enjoyed SummerStage. The festival runs now through August 24th.

This year, SummerStage theater-goers will welcome Urban Theatre Movement's Handball, an explosive take on gentrification in New York City set in a public park. SummerStage Theater presented by Time Warner will also welcome The New York Neo-Futurists, who will perform their critically acclaimed, energetic signature show of original short plays, Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Also not to be missed is Ghetto Klown Emmy Award winner John Leguizamo's wickedly funny one man show.

The complete SummerStage theater schedule follows. For the most up-to-date scheduling and line-up for all SummerStage programming, follow us via the below links and visit www.SummerStage.org for festival information. Twitter: @SummerStage. Facebook: www.facebook.com/summerstagenyc. Instagram: SummerStage.

About City Parks Foundation - City Parks Foundation (CPF) is the only independent, nonprofit organization to offer park programs throughout the five boroughs of New York City. We work in over 750 parks citywide, presenting a broad range of free arts, sports, and education programs, and empowering citizens to support their parks on a local level. Our programs and community building initiatives reach more than 600,000 people each year, contributing to the revitalization of neighborhoods throughout New York City.

---

SummerStage 2014 Schedule
Shows taking place at our Central Park location are noted in blue. Doors open one hour prior to listed show times.

Monday

Jul 28

8:00 PM

John Leguizamo's Ghetto Klown directed by Fisher Stevens in association with Westbeth Entertainment

Central Park

MN

Tuesday - Saturday

Jul 29 -Aug 2

8:00 PM

Urban Theatre Movement's Handball By Seth Zvi Rosenfeld Directed by Brenda Banda

Marcus Garvey Park

MN

Tuesday - Saturday

Aug 5 - Aug 9

8:00 PM

Urban Theatre Movement's Handball By Seth Zvi Rosenfeld Directed by Brenda Banda

Marcus Garvey Park

MN

Monday

Aug 11

8:00 PM

Urban Theatre Movement's Handball By Seth Zvi Rosenfeld Directed by Brenda Banda

Central Park

MN

Wednesday - Saturday

Aug 13 - Aug 16

8:00 PM

The New York Neo-Futurists Presents Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind

East River Park

MN

SummerStage Artist Information

John Leguizamo's Ghetto Klown directed by Fisher Stevens

in association with Westbeth Entertainment

Emmy Award winner John Leguizamo, who has appeared in more than fifty films and was also seen on Nickelodeon series "The Brothers Garcia," as well as on "ER" and "Miami Vice," is also one of the nation's most accomplished stage performers. "Ghetto Klown" is the next chapter in John Leguizamo's popular personal and professional story. It is his fifth one-man play, his third on Broadway, and follows in the uninhibited tradition of his "Mambo Mouth," "Spic-O-Rama," "Freak," and "Sexaholix ... a Love Story." In Leguizamo's trademark style, the piece explodes with energy, heating up the stage with vivid accounts of the colorful characters that populate his life. He takes audiences from his adolescent memories in Queens to the early days of his acting career and on to the sets of major motion pictures. Leguizamo explains, "Ghetto Klown" is all the things I say to my therapist and my manager, but would never want the general public to know. It's cheaper than a lawsuit and I get to take a bow at the end. It's like Wiki leaks but with no international manhunt. Yet."

Urban Theatre Movement's Handball By Seth Zvi Rosenfeld Directed by Brenda Banda

Website: http://urbantheatremovement.com/

Urban Theatre Movement's Handball, written by Seth Zvi Rosenfeld and directed by Brenda Banda delivers an explosive take on gentrification in New York City. The play tracks a park filled with characters as unique and diverse as the city itself. Tempers flare as new transplants work to make their mark while old residents struggle to maintain their way of life. Over the course of two hot, summer days we watch a once lively, buoyant park become extremely tense as each character struggles to find their way and survive while witnessing their neighborhood falling apart. Stories become intertwined, power is shifted and change reveals itself to be inevitable. Handball tells the story of modern-day urban America and the people struggling to find their way in it.

The New York Neo-Futurists Present Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind

Website: http://www.nyneofuturists.org/

The New York Neo-Futurists are an ensemble of dynamic writer/director/performers who are best known for their critically acclaimed, energetic signature show of original short plays, Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Once called "The Snapchat of Theater", with its ever-changing "menu" of plays, TML is a race against the clock to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes in an order determined by the audience! All our plays are presented from a perspective of absolute honesty, do not ask the audience to "suspend their disbelief", and often include audience interactions. A non-illusory collage of the comic and tragic, the political and personal, the visceral and experimental, Too Much Light endeavors to tell dynamic stories while embracing chance, change, and chaos. Developed out of a format that has been a success in Chicago since 1988, the Neo-Futurists put down roots in NYC in the mid 90's and have been growing strong ever since. After a grand re-birth in the city in 2004, NYNF has created over 3300 new plays for Too Much Light, as well as many longer form works, and continues to present award-winning, topical and vital work every weekend at the Kraine Theater and around the New York independent theater community. Sometimes true life really is stranger than fiction...