Theater for the New City Appreciation Day to Be HeldToday

In 2013, the year Theater for the New City burned its mortgage, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer declared January 26 to be Theater for the New City Appreciation Day. This year, the theater is celebrating with festivities on that day beginning at 7:00 PM. There will be a benefit bake sale, performances by Kitty Lunn and the dance/percussion troupe COBU and a special presentation by playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie. Before and after the performances, there will be Karaoke and the audience is invited to participate. Admission is free.

The bake sale will kick off fundraising to replace the theater's broken handicapped lift in order to facilitate access to the theater complex's lower level theater and bathrooms. Everyone in the theater community is encouraged to bake something, then come to sell it. Separate contributions will also be accepted.

ARTISTS APPEARING
Kitty Lunn is founder of Infinity Dance Theater, a non-traditional dance company featuring dancers with and without disabilities. She has developed a wheelchair dance technique strongly rooted in and growing out of classical ballet and modern dance.

COBU is a dance/percussion troupe with the motto "Dance like Drumming, Drum like Dancing." Its explosive fusion of Japanese Taiko drumming and funk tap dance is created and directed by six year STOMP veteran Yako Miyamoto.

Playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie is author of such classic plays as "America Hurrah" and "The Serpent." His adaptations include four major plays of Chekhov, Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" and Genet's "The Balcony." Other notable plays include "The Tibetan Book of the Dead," "Struck Dumb" (for Joseph Chaikin), "Bag Lady" (for Shami Chaikin), "The Traveler" and "Ancient Boys." He is founder of Shantigar, a not-for-profit educational foundation in MA dedicated to theater, meditation and healing.

The event begins at 7:00 PM and is free to the public. Theater for the New City is located at 155 First Ave., at E. 10th Street. For more info, contact Theater for the New City at 212-254-1109.

ABOUT THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
Theater for the New City (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York's most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC's Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Vin Diesel, Oscar Nuñez, Laurence Holder, Romulus Linney and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and COBU, the Japanese women's drumming and dance group. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company's 1997 production of "Between Life and Death," which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 42 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.