Metropolitan Playhouse Hosts 'Another Sky' 1/18-31

Metropolitan Playhouse hosts Another Sky, the theater's fifth annual Living Literature Festival of performances inspired by the lives and works of American authors. Another Sky is a collection of nine new works by artists and companies from across the US taking their inspiration from women of the long 19th Century. Performances take place daily from January 18 to 31 at Metropolitan Playhouse, 220 East Fourth Street.

Tickets may be purchased online at www.metropolitanplayhouse.org or by calling the theater at 212 995 8410 or TheaterMania at 212 352 3101.

Another Sky includes musical, poetic, one-act and full-length plays ranging from adaptation to biographical fantasy. Rather than an exhaustive survey of the literature of the period, Another Sky is a deep exploration of several well and lesser known women and their oeuvre. The shows are divided into five different programs, each consisting of one or two presentations. All in all, Another Sky includes nine individual performances by solo artists and theater companies, each presented four times over the festival. (Project descriptions and schedule follow.)
Authors included are Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine Beecher, Louisa May Alcott, Nellie Bly, Mary MacLane, Willa Cather, Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Sarah Emma Edmonds, and Sarah Rosetta Wakeman. The long nineteenth century, so named by historian Eric Hobsbawm, refers to the period from the French Revolution to The First World War: 1789 and 1914. We choose it for its inclusion of writers whose sensibilities were shaped in a singular era of American (and world) history.
Additional events include readings of salient works, and discussions with contemporary artists and scholars of women's writing in the 19th century.
Artist participants in the festival include Toni Schlesinger (past columnist for The Village Voice and the New York Observer; author of Five Flights Up); Rob Kendt ("Droll, urbane, sophisticated and musically omnivorous" - All Music Guide) Trish Harnetiaux (Inside a Bigger Box "[a] deep, meaningful one-act play." - The New Yorik Times); Normandy Raven Sherwood (National Theater of the United States of America); David Lally (Little Edie and the Marble Faun "[a] touching examination of memory and loss." - Backstage) Laura Livingston (The Purloined Detective, Inconvenient River, The First Lowering); Anthony P. Pennino and Yvonne Conybeare (The Devil and Tom Walker "one of the finest new musical comedies of the season"- nytheatre.com); Brenna Geffers ("gives [Woyzeck] a brilliant conceptual unification - Broadstreet Review); Andrea Pinyan (of Danny Askenazi's betwixt, beTween & be TWAIN); and Dan Evans and Lulu Lolo (Quoth, the Raven.)

Previous years' festivals were the Poefest (2006), Twainathon (2007), Hawthornucopia (2008-"exhilarating"--nytheatre.com), and Melvillapalooza (2009 "divine.... put the life and works of Melville in a new light" - New Theatre Corps). Metropolitan Playhouse explores America's theatrical and cultural moment. Metropolitan has earned accolades from The New York Times, The Village Voice, BackStage, and nytheatre.com. Recent noted productions include Anna Christie, Nowadays, Year One of the Empire, The Pioneer: 5 plays by Eugene O'Neill, Denial and The Melting Pot.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS FOLLOW

 

Program A
Work
Conceived for the Stage & Directed by Yvonne Conybeare, Original Music & Lyrics by Rob Kendt, Book by Anthony P. Pennino
Played by a band of singer/folk musicians, a ‘reading‘ of a two-act musical based on the lesser-known Louisa May Alcott novel Work: A Story of Experience. Christie Devon rejects marriage to the boy next door and seeks fulfillment and independence through "work that I can put my heart into... to be a useful, happy woman."

Program B
The Straitjacket, by Dan Evans
a LuLu LoLo Production
In Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1871, poet/recluse Emily Dickinson's sheltered life is interrupted by a traveling magician looking for a room to rent, while a notorious confidence man on the lam roams the neighborhood.

Nellie and the Madhouse, by Laura Livingston
The story of groundbreaking journalist Nellie Bly's effort to start her career... by getting herself committed to an insane asylum.

Program C
Real Housewives of the 19th Century, a full-length play by David Lally
Produced by The Oxy-Morons
In a bid to retain the power of the pen and subvert the "feminization of literature," American men of letters Poe, Twain, Hawthorne, and Melville lock up-and-coming Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson, Sarah Hale, and Harriet Beecher Stowe in a house ...forever. A whimsical satire by the author of Mr. Melville's Playhouse and Little Edie and the Marble Faun.

Program D
A Brief History of Cross Dressing in the Civil War, by Andrea Pinyan
produced by Radio Hound Productions
An odyssey in their own words, through journals, memoirs, and private letters, of three women who dressed as men to fight the Civil War: Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Sarah Emma Edmonds, and Sarah Rosetta Wakeman.

Mary MacLane: Confessionalist
A pair of new works inspired by Mary MacLane, journalist, gambler, Bohemian, prize?fight reporter, and filmmaker.
"Men Who Have Made Love to Me" by Normandy Raven Sherwood
MacLane watches her film ‘Men Who Have Made Love to Me' (recreated on stage) and contemplates mortality, solitude, and men.
"Oh, Dear, Sweet, Bitter Olive" by Trish Harnetiaux
A collage of "The Story of Mary MacLane", written when she was a 19 year?old living in the boomtown of 1902 Butte, Montana, with critics' review of its author's life, and her own self-discovery.

Program E
When the World Broke in Two: A Visit with Willa Cather, by Toni Schlesinger
ALastMinuteProduction
With a handy time machine, a 21st Century woman visits a young Willa Cather in 1900, and there discovers her own "disappearing century."

Uncle Tovah's Cabin, created by David Blatt, Ross Beschler and Brenna Geffers
a production of Wandering Rom Players
A Jewish classics scholar dives into Uncle Tom's Cabin to find an American culture that seems to embrace every other experience but his own.

Tickets are $18.00 per "Program." Student and senior discounts are $15.00. TDF vouchers are accepted. Visit www.metropolitanplayhouse.org for more information and to purchase tickets online or call
212 995 5302 for phone orders.