MTC Announces Beyond The Stage Talkback Series For HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE

Manhattan Theatre Club's Broadway premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive opens tonight, Tuesday, April 19, at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

A series of talks have been announced for How I Learned to Drive as a part of the company's Beyond the Stage program, which creates a platform for continuing conversations after the curtain has dropped on MTC's Friedman and City Center stages. With a focus on community partnerships and audience engagement, Beyond the Stage uses panel discussions, podcasts, playlists and off-site programming to highlight how powerful storytelling affects an audience immediately after viewing and the lingering big ideas that deepen our understanding of humanity.

Beyond the Stage: Talk Series - Recovery Through The Arts is a series of three conversations examining how the arts can be used as a tool for processing events and healing.

Recovery Through Dance

Wednesday, April 27, immediately following the evening performance

Join us after the performance for a conversation with Yasemin Özümerzifon, Senior Director of Community Action, Devin Oshiro, Senior Community Action Artistic Manager and Emily Tellier, Senior Community Action Manager of the dance and social justice organization Gibney on the role of dance in healing trauma. Move to Move Beyond, an evidence-based Gibney Community program, offers the transformative power of movement to survivors of gender-based violence and their families. Gibney is a dance company, a performing arts hub, and a social action incubator located in New York City with a mission to tap into the vast potential of movement, creativity, and performance to effect social change and personal transformation. Gibney Community, a pillar of Gibney, works at the intersection of arts and social action. The organization has a 23 year history of being committed to working directly with communities impacted by intimate partner violence and preventing gender-based violence through various programs, rigorous research, and advocacy.

Recovery Through Writing

Available Online Starting Monday, May 2

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel and multi-award-winning author Dr. Judith Lewis Herman (Trauma and Recovery) will have an intimate discussion about Dr. Herman's work and the impact it had on Vogel's writing process for How I Learned to Drive. The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Marilyn Pendelton, Founder and CEO of Your Voice Heard, LLC.

One additional talk, Recovery Through Photography, will also take place live and in-person after a performance at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Panelists and dates will be announced at a later date at www.manhattantheatreclub.com.

This Broadway premiere of Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece How I Learned to Drive reunites the two original stars with their award-winning director in a new production. Tony Award winner Mary-Louise Parker (Proof) and Tony nominee David Morse (The Iceman Cometh) head the cast of this remarkably timely and moving memory play about a woman coming to terms with a charismatic uncle who impacts her past, present and future life. Also returning is original cast member and Tony Award nominee Johanna Day, who is joined by Alyssa May Gold and Chris Myers. Directing is Mark Brokaw (Heisenberg).

The creative team for How I Learned to Drive includes Rachel Hauck (scenic design), Dede Ayite (costume design), Mark McCullough (lighting design), David Van Tieghem (original music & sound design), Lucy Mackinnon (video design), Stephen Oremus (music direction & vocal arrangements), Deborah Hecht (dialect coach), and James FitzSimmons (production stage manager).

How I Learned to Drive was originally produced by the Vineyard Theatre in 1997 and transferred to a commercial Off-Broadway production produced by Daryl Roth and Roy Gabay. It opened to critical acclaim and won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play; Outer Critics Circle Award; OBIE Awards for David Morse, Mary-Louise Parker, Mark Brokaw, and Paula Vogel; Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Play, Outstanding Director, Outstanding Lead Actor, and Outstanding Lead Actress; Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play; and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding New Play, Outstanding Actor in a Play and Outstanding Director of a Play.