Christina Masciotti's SOCIAL SECURITY Runs Through This Weekend at Bushwick Starr

The Bushwick Starr and terraNOVA Collective are proud to present the world premiere of acclaimed playwright Christina Masciotti's newest work, Social Security. The play centers on June, a retired pretzel factory worker, who finds herself deaf after forty years with machines, widowed, and stranded in the urban muck of Reading, PA. She forges ahead gamely, aided by her robust will to find the good in life, and attended, for better or worse, by a few neighbors. Her landlord, once a community pillar, insinuates himself into what remains of her affairs with Machiavellian panache, while a younger neighbor from down the block selflessly chaperones her trips to the grocery store. But June, generous in her affections and unworldly-wise, seesaws between these two unlikely alliances, and her yearning for ordinary human companionship only drives her further into danger.

The production will unite downtown stars: Cynthia Hopkins, T. Ryder Smith, and Elizabeth Dement under the direction of Paul Lazar. "Social Security asks: what do people owe to strangers?" says Masciotti. "If you have no family, how viable are your other options?" Lazar interjects, "But the play is not as straight as meets the eye." Masciotti explains, "The characters' DNA warps each line, and those little perversions gradually extend to the structure of the story."

"There's also a cruel humanity to the play that I find entirely true to life," adds Lazar. "And I feel I am in the presence of a kind of language that is at once entirely real and entirely heightened." Masciotti asserts, "I want to deliver, line-by-line, an authentic voice, so the full force of character can come through. Speech is a great equalizer in the sense that any of us, when we speak, imprint ourselves onto what we say. I want to keep that individuality intact and undiluted - partly, as a form of recognition. Who we are means something. It matters. And theater, as a medium where we come together in a room and listen to each other, can honor that. People who deserve to be heard, can be. "

In his direction of Social Security, Lazar incorporates a dichotomy of styles. He notes, "The writing seemed allergic to a naturalistic presentation like no other writing I've encountered. The physical life of the play is not working in concert with its verbal life, but in contrast with it." Masciotti continues, "If the writing is photo-real, the set probably doesn't need to be anyway. When all the orienting details are in the lines, a burden is actually lifted in terms of what needs to be established visually. Instead of the characters being cocooned within the world they describe, they can drift into an alternate universe that includes all of us."

Location:

The Bushwick Starr theater: 207 Starr Street, Brooklyn, NY [between Irving and Wycoff]

Directions:

Via Subway take the L Train to Jefferson Street, exit at Starr Street, walk against traffic on Starr, and the theater is 3/4 of a block on the right.

For detailed driving directions visit: www.thebushwickstarr.org/DIRECTIONS

Tickets are $18.00 at www.thebushwickstarr.org

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