'THE PROTESTANTS' Opens At Brick Lane Theater 1/23/09

The Brick Theater, Inc. and The Old Kent Road Theater present THE PROTESTANTS; A Southern Gothic Epic

PERFORMANCES: Fri 1/23 through Sat 2/14, Thu-Sat, 8pm (w/matinee Sat 1/31, 2pm) - $18

PREVIEWS: Fri 1/16, Sat 1/17 & Thu 1/22 - $10 at The Brick, 575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn one block from the Lorimer stop of the L train / Metropolitan stop of the G train

Tickets available at the door or through theatermania.com (212-352-3101 or toll-free: 1-866-811-4111)

When Scottie, the eldest, returns home to Virginia from his NYC sojourn for the marriage/departure of his chronically negligent mother, he discovers his biologically-ruined brother wilting, his emotionally-untethered brother firing, and his baby ‘brother' Tippy becoming a woman and the family's final hope. Tippy's tough-as-nails best-bud Ruby, a Nurse fallen from the pages of Chekhov, and Scottie's cosmopolitan girlfriend Virginia round out this frenetic yet heart-blooming world.

Told in evocative, free-wheeling scenes, The Protestants penetrates the rural, central Virginian landscape with characters of big desire, personality, and problem-one part The Royal Tenenbaums, one part Faulkner. It delivers a South where pain and humor intertwine, with both aiming for the last laugh; where the need and the notion of God lurks throughout to order and illuminate things forgiven, things forsaken.

The Old Kent Road Theater (OKRT) is proud to return to The Brick, site of their festival hits The Children of Truffaut (Pretentious Festival) and Death at Film Forum (The Film Festival: A Theater Festival). The OKRT has also produced at the New York International Fringe Festival, Midtown International Theatre Festival, and the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator Program. Its plays have been noted for their ‘vibrant characters...heartfelt passion, and spirited volleys of non sequiturs' (Village Voice) and described as ‘pure inspiration' (nytheatre.com) and ‘downtown theatre at its best' (New York Cool.com).
Eric Bland, writer/director, received his MA in Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His play Death at Film Forum will be published in the NYTE anthology, Plays and Playwrights 2009.
The Protestants features Siobhan Doherty, Scott Eckert, Gavin Starr Kendall, Maggie Marion, Victoria Tate, and Hollis Witherspoon. The design team includes Abernathy Bland (Art/Set), David H. Turner (Sound), and Amanda Woodward (Lights).

The Brick Theater is located at 575 Metropolitan Avenue (between Union Avenue and Lorimer Street) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on the L & G subway lines (L: Lorimer stop; G: Metropolitan stop). For more detailed directions & further information, see http://www.bricktheater.com.

The Brick and its non-profit company, The Brick Theater, Inc. were founded in September of 2002 by Robert Honeywell and Michael Gardner. Formerly an auto-body shop, a storage space and a yoga center, this brick- walled garage was completely refurbished into a state-of-the-art theater complex, with a large sprung floor and professional lighting and sound package.

The Brick has been home to numerous critically acclaimed original productions, including three years of the New York Clown Theatre Festival, Richard Foreman's Harry in Love, The Film Festival: A Theater Festival (featuring Death at Film Forum and The Stubborn Illusion of Time), Babylon Babylon, Notes From Underground, Bitch Macbeth, The Debate Society's A Thought About Raya, Secrets History Remembers, The Pretentious Festival (including Every Play Ever Written and Macbeth Without Words), The Present Perfect, Bouffon Glass Menajoree, Strom Thurmond Is Not a Racist/Cleansed, The Death of Griffin Hunter, the Havel Festival, Sexadelic Cemetery, Greed: A Musical Love $tory, The Kung Fu Importance of Being Earnest, The $ellout Festival, Adventures of Caveman Robot, Total Faith in Cosmic Love, The Baby Jesus One-Act Jubilee, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, The Moral Values Festival (featuring Dear Dubya, World Gone Wrong, My Year of Porn), Tupperware Orgy, Bizarre Science Fantasy, Who is Wilford Brimley? The Musical, Jenna is nuts, Habitat, In a Strange Room (based on William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying), Fallout Follies, Assurbanipal Babilla's Assyrian Monkey Fantasy and stagings of Chekhov's Three Sisters, O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon, Maria Irene Fornes' Abingdon Square and the Brooklyn premiere of legendary Polish playwright Stanislaw Witkiewicz's The Pragmatists.