SELFIES AT THE CLOWN MOTEL to Open This Month at convergence-continuum

convergence-continuum continues its 2016 Season with the world premiere of local playwright Christopher Johnston's SELFIES AT THE CLOWN MOTEL.

Middle-aged Rob was a disheartened and despondent business consultant to circuses before he met Chloe, a pretty, young clown who walks the high wire without a net, on one of his business trips. They had hit it off and agreed to hook up later at the Clown Motel, a run-down lodging out in the Nevada desert. Selfies at the Clown Motel tells the story of their surprising, very strange, very funny and oh so scary encounter among the clowns.

SELFIES is directed by convergence-continuum's Artistic Director, Clyde Simon, and features John Busser, Leah Smith, Lauri Hammer, Jack Matuszewski and Gideon-Patrick Lorete.

SELFIES AT THE CLOWN MOTEL opens Fri, Aug 26 and runs Thurs-Sat at 8 pm through Sept 17 at the Liminis Theater, 2438 Scranton Rd, Cleveland 44113 in the historic Tremont neighborhood. Tickets are $15 general admission, $12 seniors (65+), $10 students. Reservations and information at convergence-continuum.org and 216-687-0074.

Christopher Johnston is a Cleveland playwright, director and freelance journalist. His plays have appeared at convergence-continuum (APORKALYPSE!, Spawn of the Petrosexuals) Cleveland Public Theatre (Sexually Explicit Material, The Mind Field, Theories of Relativity), Dobama Theater's Night Kitchen (Murder in Mind, Loud Americans: A Punk Saga) and Talespinner Children's Theatre (Finn McCool). His Yeats-inspired Irish dance play, The Mad Mask Maker of Maigh Eo (March 2006 at CPT) received an Honorable Mention in the Northern Ohio Live Awards of Achievement. His one-act, Last Light, was performed at the West 78th Street Theatre Lab in New York in 2010, while he was there to attend a writing workshop with Mac Wellman at The Flea.

He recently directed the critically acclaimed production of The Mighty Scarabs by Cornell Calhoun III, during the 100th season at historic Karamu House, where he also had directed Ceremonies in Dark Old Men by Lonnie Elder III (2014) and A Colored Funeral by Gregory Carr, which premiered at Karamu in April 2007. He has also directed productions for The Bang & The Clatter Theatre Co., Cabaret Dada's Black Box, Charenton Theatre Co., Cleveland Public Theatre, Dobama, IngenuityFest, Theater Ninjas, and The Ohio Theatre.

Johnston is the coordinator of The Playwrights Gym at Dobama, and he is a co-founder of The Dark Room new work development workshop at CPT and the Rauschenberg New Play Reading Series for convergence-continuum. He completed his playwriting internship at The Cleveland Play House during the 1989-90 season under Artistic Director Josie Abady.

As a journalist, Johnston has published more than 3,000 articles in numerous publications, including American Theatre, Balanced Living, Cleveland Magazine, Continental, Crain's Cleveland Business, The Plain Dealer, Progressive Architecture, Proto Magazine, Scientific American (online), Time.com, and Urban Design. He ghostwrote The Way I Saw It, the memoirs of the late Marc Wyse, co-founder of Wyse Advertising, which was published in 2014.

Johnston also teaches playwriting and creative nonfiction workshops at Cleveland State University. He has been a company member of convergence-continuum since 2007, and has served on its Board of Directors since 2015.

Selfies at the Clown Motel, the company's 78th production, is the fourth of six in the 2016 Season (our fifteenth). The company's season runs from February (during which we stage the NEOMFA Playwrights Festival) through December. The company seeks to create a core ensemble that continues to work together over the long term in exploring and developing its artistic voice, and performance and production practices, to create up-close, environmentally-staged productions that challenge the status quo and extend the boundaries of theatre.

The company's artistic home, in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, is the Liminis, an intimate, versatile, storefront performance space, with maximum seating of 40-50 depending on the set-up for each show. The company produces alternative/experimental theatre work by living playwrights, and completely transforms the Liminis for each show, immersing audiences into the world of the play in up-close productions.

The company now faces the possibility of losing its artistic home, as the Liminis Theater building is slated to be sold at the end of 2016. convergence-continuum is currently in the midst of a fund-raising campaign to buy and secure it for the company for the years to come.

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