WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP Staged Reading Set for Manhattan Theatre Club's Creative Center, 9/7

Troubled souls grapple with diphtheria, infant mortality, and cocaine addiction, among other obstacles, in Lizzie Vieh's new drama, Wisconsin Death Trip, based on the book by Michael Lesy. The play will have its debut reading at Manhattan Theatre Club's Creative Center on Sunday, September 7th. Another developmental reading will follow on Monday, September 8th, at ART/NY's Bruce Mitchell Room. Both readings will begin at 7PM.

James Rutherford will direct a cast that includes Georgia Cohen (The Guthrie), Charise Greene (Theatre for the New City), Karl Gregory (Fault Line Theatre), Brough Hansen (Northern Stage), Ben Kahre (Peccadillo Theater), Caroline Kaplan (Berkeley Rep), Lizzie King-Hall (Asolo Rep), Jason Loughlin (Roundabout), Lauren Lubow (Trinity Rep), Haas Regen (Fiasco Theater's "Twelfth Night"), and Rudi Utter (Shakespeare Festival St. Louis). The actors will portray more than three-dozen sundry residents of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, at the turn of the twentieth century.

According to press notes, Wisconsin Death Trip mixes vivid poetic language with deliciously dark humor, and explores themes of loss, sickness, alienation, drug addiction, and sexual yearning. While most events are filtered through the perspective of tireless newspaperman Frank Cooper (Utter), the heart of the drama is found in our intimate encounters with characters such as Anna Myinek (Lubow) and Ward Rausch (Loughlin), two homeless tramps on-the-go; and Vera Arlington (Kaplan), a wealthy daughter of a landowner who marries beneath her status, kills herself after her only baby dies, and returns as a ghost. These stories offer glimpses into the resoluteness of the human spirit in the face of utter destruction.

For a reservation please e-mail ElizabethRVieh@gmail.com

Sunday September 7th at 7pm - MTC- 311 West 43rd Street, 9th Floor

Monday September 8th at 7pm - ART/NY, 520 8th Ave, 3rd Floor