Evening Crane Presents World Premiere Of Four-Act Drama

Evening Crane Theatre will present the world premiere production of Four Seasons by Michael Seebold on February 1st, at Triskelion Arts' Muriel Schulman Theater in Brooklyn.

The heightened language play interweaves four separate but thematically linked narratives across backdrops of Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer, painting scenes at once lyrical, wistful, and eerie.

"Four Seasons takes you to a place somewhere between heaven and earth," comments lead actor Weronika Helena Wozniak. "It's like an odd dream you didn't know you would enjoy."

The characters Wozniak portrays in the show range from a would-be thief to a young composer, but despite surface differences, she finds similarities between each of the roles: "Quibilah, Claire, Erica, and Willow are unique passionate women who are taken over by nostalgia. They each draw a thin line between reality and fantasy."

Traces of the fantastical arise throughout Four Seasons, as characters variously meet and speak to the Wind, dine along a seashore known for sightings of an otherworldly sea-monster, and investigate the fate of a medieval painting with a violent past.

The cast features Christopher Ellis, Elizabeth Claflin, Shanna Nichols, Victoria Preston, Noémi Sárog, and Reid Watson, with each actor portraying several characters across the four acts.

Claflin, last seen with Evening Crane Theatre in a Halloween production of Malefic Wonder, adds: "The stories told in this show are compelling and give me the opportunity as an actor to work on some interesting characters that are very different from most you see on stage today. How often do you get the chance to play a windchime? Michael's use of language is also really beautiful both to perform and listen to."

Ellis, who appeared last year with Evening Crane in the lead role of Byron's 1821 tragedy Sardanapalus, identifies themes of "yearning" at the core of Four Seasons, adding: "The characters and the words give me a chance to explore that magical and deeply human need. I'm blessed to continue doing what I love with people who share that same desire. The need to create and shine our light in a sometimes dark world."

Four Seasons was first presented in New York as a stage reading two years ago, and has undergone some revision since. Seebold calls the revised script "narrower and more precise" than its original draft. "Themes emerge more directly now, however abstract the subject of each act remains."

Wozniak, who hails from Poland, started her career in New York in 2016, and has also appeared several times with Evening Crane, most recently alongside Ellis at The Davenport Theatre in last year's Sardanapalus, in which she played the dual roles of Pania and Zarina, Queen of Assyria. An artist and volunteer at The Tank in Manhattan and a new member of Heights Players in Brooklyn Heights where she closed her most recent show, Sidney Kingsley's Detective Story, Wozniak characterizes Four Seasons by its central elusiveness:

"It's a very mysterious play and I think that's why I enjoy it so much."

Tickets for Four Seasons start at $7 general admission and are on sale now: https://www.triskelionarts.org/evening-crane-theatre.

 

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