'Middle East' Reading, with Work by Raffo, Etc., Adds Show

Back House Productions and Cherry Lane Theatre, will present The Middle East, In Pieces, directed by Thomas Caruso, as previously announced, on Thursday, August 17th at 8:00 pm, at the landmark Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street).  Due to a high ticket demand an extra performance has been added on the following evening: Friday, August 18th, also at 8:00 pm.  Both performances will be free and open to the public, to be followed by a post-reading dialogue with the audience.

Participating writers include Kia Corthron (Force Continuum), Israel Horovitz (Line), Anne Nelson (Savages), Heather Raffo (9 Parts of Desire), Betty Shamieh (Roar) and Beau Willimon.  The six short plays are billed as a response to the current developments in the Middle East.

Three of the plays were written specifically for the event.  Corthron's Power Lunch, which takes place in a quaint restaurant, imagines a pleasant chat between two women: Condie and Hillary.  Horovitz's Beirut Rocks is about American students stranded in a Beirut hotel awaiting evacuation.  Willimon's Dog River takes the form of e-mail exchanges between an Arab-American in Lebanon and his girlfriend back in the United States.  The idea for the entire evening came from Willimon, whose girlfriend's father was living in Beirut when the current conflict began.

The reading will also include excerpts from two new plays: Nelson's Petra, about two women—an American and a Saudi—who meet on a bus south of Amman, and Shamieh's The Black Eyed, as well as an excerpt from Raffo's critically acclaimed one-woman play 9 Parts of Desire.

Among the ten performers, on Cherry Lane's Mainstage, will be Mozhan Marnò, who performed the 2006 Berkeley Rep production of  9 Parts of Desire, and Anthony Veneziale, a founding member of the popular hip-hop improv group Freestyle Love Supreme.

The reading is free and open to the public, although a $10 donation to the Theatre is suggested.

Reservations are recommended and can be made by calling Megan Messmer at Cherry Lane Theatre: 212-989-2020 ext. 32, or online by e-mailing reservation requests to MiddleEastReading@gmail.com.