LaGuardia Performing Arts Center Presents Rough Draft Festival 2018

This year's Rough Draft Festival at LaGuardia Performing Arts features a vast array of new work that are various stages of development

Rough Draft Festival is one of a kind series curated by LPAC's Associate Director Handan Ozbilgin. The projects are at various stages of development and are tantamount to a finished product. A window into the creative process, The Rough Draft Festival is a celebration of artists/organizations and their work under development. Rd features a wide array of artists whose work is at various levels of development. Each year we strive towards being bigger and better while giving a voice to meaningful works.

Performance Schedule:

Monday March 26th - April 21st

Performances at 7PM

Visit http://siteline.vendini.com/site/lpac.nyc/rough-draft-2018-first-page for details

Location: Rough Draft Festival is performed at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center at

LaGuardia Community College 31-10 Thomson Ave. E-241 in Long Island City. 7 train to

33 St / Rawson St.

Tickets: $10

The Yacoubian Building (Staged Reading)

A play by Kareem Fahmy

Based on the novel by Alaa Al Aswany

Directed by Kareem Fahmy

Original Music by David Dabbon

Performances: Monday March 26th at 7pm/ Tuesday March 27th at 2pm in the Little Theatre

Based on the novel that became an international sensation, "The Yacoubian Building" is set in Cairo, chronicling the lives of Egyptians of different religions, sexual orientations, and class backgrounds. The titular apartment block becomes a microcosm of an Egypt infested with corruption, discrimination, and despair. A love letter to the Middle East, the play conjures an Egypt before the Arab Spring, still on the brink of change, deeply divided but full of hope.

Paradise Lost

Directed by Eamon Foley

Co-Choreographed by Sophie Andreassi

Performances: Wednesday March 28th and Thursday March 29th at 7pm in the Blackbox Theatre

Paradise Lost is an immersive experience lead by dance, computer software, and live cinematography, in which the audience's bodies and imaginations are active participants. Derived from John Milton's epic poem of the same name, Paradise Lost chronicles the fall of man from the perspective of a brooding, young Lucifer. His attempt to cut ties with God initiates our transformation from complacent purity toward a more complicated, flawed existence. We remain caught between the diametric forces of good and evil, embodying a different beauty.

On loss and Mice and Monsters and Love

Written by Emily Zemba

Directed by Lauren Z. Adleman

Performances: Tues April 3rd , Wed April at 7pm in the Little Theatre

Join Claire and Hugh as they balance both: expertly avoiding emotional baggage, navigating painful interactions with over-the-top exes, and concealing small furry corpses in strategic hiding places. But as the body count rises, Clare and Hugh struggle to ignore the secrets between them (that and the overpowering stench of rotting flesh). Is romance the greatest exterminator of them all? Or is this one infestation that won't be contained...

Salesman??

Conceived by Michael Leibenluft & Jeremy Tiang

Written by Jeremy Tiang

Produced in association with Gung Ho Projects with support from the 14th St Y

Performances: Thurs April 5th, Friday April 6th and Saturday April 7th at 7pm in the Blackbox Theatre

Cultural collisions abound as Arthur Miller and Ying Ruocheng, a titan of Chinese theater, mount a Mandarin production of Death of a Salesman in Beijing. What happens to a classic American play when it's removed from its original context, and how far can China understand the American dream in 1983, just a few years after the Cultural Revolution? A tale of two very different societies making contact through theater, based on actual events.

*In Mandarin and English*

How We Hear

Directed by Emily Lyon

Performances: Friday April 6th at 7:30pm & Saturday April 7th at 5:30pm in the Little Theatre

From Abraham Lincoln to Trump's Twitter feed, How We Hear is an experimental piece about how our political discourse has changed in response to technology. The piece asks, particularly when debating such weighty issues as civil rights, how we can value and protect nuance in a world of 140 (or 280) characters?

Dreamscapes

Directed by Noelle Ghoussaini

Co-Created by Noelle Ghoussaini & Heather Holmes

Performances: Monday April 9th & Tuesday April 10th at 7pm in the Little Theatre

Who says dreams have no meaning? Who told you time is linear and not divine? This here is vivid. This here can lead us toward... "Where are you going?" To find the key to our house, our home. Do you want to look? We seek wholeness in a fragmented world. Aw, c'mon little dreamer, just adapt. Let us plant a flag in your brain and call the whole thing our conquered territory. Wait. Stop... what?

Rokera: The Musical

Written by Tatiana Suarez-Pico

Directed by Estefanía Fadul

Performances: Wednesday April 11th & Thursday April 12th at 7pm in the Blackbox Theatre

Brooklyn-born Lulu, Mickey, and Bella want to be superstars, but they also want to go to college, and date, and go crazy because that's what you do when you're 18. When Lulu's mom decides to go back to her native Colombia for mysterious reasons, Lulu's world is turned upside down. Mickey and Bella come to Lulu's aid, but soon they're facing problems of their own. Rokera is about growing up and growing tough; a transformative rock musical.

Gonzo

Written by Laura Winters

Directed by Noam Shapiro

Performances: Friday April 13th & Saturday April 14th at 7pm in the Little Theatre

On the eve of Alba's eighteenth birthday and first professional porn shoot, her role model Chantal returns to Miami determined to make a comeback. When a new girl's arrival complicates Chantal's plan, their shared house transforms into a battleground over what gets filmed and who gets screwed. Laura Winters' new play is a frank and funny look at sex and feminism in the digital age.

Songs About Trains

Created by Radical Evolution

Directed by Rebecca Martinez & Taylor Reynolds

Performances: Tuesday April 17th at 7pm & Wednesday April 18th at 3pm & 7pm in the Blackbox Theatre

"Songs About Trains" is a celebration of the many cultures that contributed to the building of the cross country rail system in the United States. Through music and performance, "Songs About Trains" grapples with the thorny realities of immigration, labor, Manifest Destiny, and pillaging of Native American land that are central to our history, and uplifts the victories of a multicultural, multilingual workforce that made our country what it is today.

Stepchild: A New Musical

Music & Lyrics by David James Boyd

Book by David James Boyd & Chad Kessler

Concept by David James Boyd, Chad Kessler and Kori Rushton

Directed by Kim Weild

Director of Artistic Sign Language- Alexandria Wailes

Musical direction by Dan Pardo

Performances: Wednesday April 18th at 7pm, Thursday April 19th at 3pm & Friday April 20th at 7pm in the Little Theatre

In this sweeping musical tale, Orella is born deaf at the brink of the Italian Renaissance. Her journey takes her through a childhood of poverty, an adolescence in hiding, and a young adulthood at an asylum for the "cursed". However, her drive to learn and her courage to communicate with Sign Language unites a broken kingdom, and Orella is ultimately crowned the world's first proud Deaf queen.