THE SECRET OF LIFE, LOST TRIBE and More Featured in Target Margin Theatre's Winter Lab

Target Margin Theater (David Herskovits, Artistic Director; John Del Gaudio, Artistic Producer) continues the 2013-14 season with their winter 2014 TMT Lab: Yiddish Version curated by TMT Artistic Producer John Del Gaudio. TMT's Lab offers a sampler of works from the canon of Yiddish theater and literature, to remind us all how diverse and sophisticated Yiddish culture was, and how great its loss.

Target Margin Theater is currently on a creative arc exploring Yiddish culture, a two-season initiative titled Beyond the Pale. The TMT Lab will include the work of playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists, including the three great crowns of Yiddish literature - Sholem Aleichem, Y.L. Peretz and Mendele Moykher Sforim. The TMT Lab has the left, the right, the enlightenment, introspectivism, sweatshop poets from the Lower East Side, and modernist writers from Eastern Europe.

All performances will be performed in English beginning Wednesday, February 12, 2014 for a limited engagement through Saturday, February 22, 2014 at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street).

John Del Gaudio, curator and TMT Artistic Producer, had this to share about the February Lab, "We are excited by the variety, the sophistication, the surprises we have discovered in this material. Much of it comes from that rich late 18th/early 19th century period that brought the birth of the avant-garde. So of course we here at Target Margin gravitate towards these texts and their challenges to form, content and the status quo. We could not have asked for a better setting than the Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side; we can't wait to awaken the ghosts of Yiddish culture as we present 5 uniquely inspired productions."

Tickets are priced at $15 and are available at www.TargetMargin.org or by calling (212) 352-3101. To RSVP for the Special FREE Event, please email: info@targetmargin.org

"The TMT Winter Lab" schedule at Abrons Arts Center is:

February 12 - 16, 2014
Two One-Acts

The Secret of Life
Based on the play by Leon Kobrin
Lead Artist: Andrew Simon

A play the critics called a "commonplace, negligible, misconceived allegory" in 1919 gets a new production that will try to cut most of the words. A Yiddish Theater Hip-Hop Ballet.

Three Gifts for Lenny Bruce
A play by Jim Knable
adapted from "The Three Gifts" by Y.L. Peretz
Lead Artist: Susan Hyon

Lenny Bruce dies and gets stuck in a Yiddish folk tale where his life's good and bad deeds are weighed... and balance perfectly. So now he has to go back to his mother's past, his stripper ex-wife's pasties, and his own obscenity trial to collect the good deeds that will tip the scales-- or maybe Lenny's got another plan.

February 13 - 17, 2014

Lost Tribe
Lead Artist: Michael Leibenluft

A poorly-planned dinner party is overtaken by a journey towards companionship. A play about loss, loneliness, and the trouble with being nice. Text by Alex Borinsky. Original music by Joe White. And an undercurrent of inspiration from Mendele the book peddler's Yiddish novella The Travels and Adventures of Benjamin III.

February 19 - 22, 2014
Two One-Acts

At The Rich Relatives: An Anachronistic Operetta
Adaption of Celia Dropkin Short Story
Music by Jeff Aaron Bryant
Lyrics by Mallery Avidon and Jeff Aaron Bryant
Lead Artist: Mallery Avidon

A (loose) adaptation of Celia Dropkin's short story. Natural Disaster. Class Warfare. Teenage Revolutionaries. Music.

Good Night World
Lead Artist: Sanaz Ghajarrahimi

Set in the Interwar Period (1919-1939), a group of young poets called 'The Gang' find themselves in the center of New York City as the Roaring Twenties ushers in prosperity with a cultural edge. Expressionism, exploration, and experimentation, our gang of three are bound to burn themselves out. Based on the poetic and dramatic Yiddish source material from that era, Good Night World begs the question: how do we begin to hope when we know what is to pass?

SPECIAL FREE EVENT

Thursday, February 20 at 7:30 p.m.
An Evening with TMT's Mary Neufeld

Target Margin concludes the 2013-2014 season with a new work adapted from a central play of Yiddish history: Uriel Acosta: Doubt is the Food of Faith,created and directed by TMT Artistic Director, David Herskovits. Apostate, believer, lover, teacher-Uriel Acosta is all of them. And he is too much for the Jews of Amsterdam in the 17th century. When they excommunicate him a struggle ensues in the soul of every thinking, feeling being. Uriel challenges us all. Performances are set to begin March 14, 2014 for a limited engagement through April 5, 2014 at The Chocolate Factory (5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens).

For additional information, please visit the website at www.targetmargin.org

Target Margin Theater for twenty-three years has been at the forefront of New York's alternative theater scene and has been praised for its bold and sometimes wild interpretations of classic dramas and lesser-known works. TMT has presented ambitious re-thinkings of plays by Shakespeare, Chekov, Brecht, Gertrude Stein, and Beaumarchais, among others. TMT has also created original works and new music/opera over the years and has served nearly 1,000 artists (mostly emerging) through its annual Lab. The company's production of Mamba's Daughters received the Obie Award and was a sensation of the 1999 Spoleto Festival, and its recent epic production of Goethe's Faust received critical acclaim. Recent productions include The (*) Inn at Abrons Arts Center and Uncle Vanya and The Tempest at HERE.

Abrons Arts Center is the performing and visual arts program of Henry Street Settlement. The Abrons supports the presentation of innovative, multi-disciplinary work; cultivates artists in all stages of their creative development through educational programs, commissions, and residencies; and serves as an intersection of cultural engagement for local, national, and international audiences and arts-workers. Each year the Abrons offers over 250 performances, 12 gallery exhibitions, 20 residencies for performing and studio artists, and 100 different classes in dance, music, theater, and visual art. The Abrons also provides New York City public schools with teaching artists, introducing more than 3,000 students to the arts.

Henry Street Settlement, founded in 1893, serves 50,000 New Yorkers each year with social service, arts and health care programs from 17 program sites on Manhattan's Lower East Side.