convergence-continuum to Stage LOBSTER ALICE, 3/14-4/5

convergence-continuum opens its 2014 Season with the Cleveland premiere of Lobster Alice by Kira Obolensky. It's 1946 and Alice Horowitz, coffee-bearing secretary, wants life to be interesting. John Finch, an animatorat work on Disney's Alice in Wonderland, wants Alice. When the great and outrageous Salvador Dali arrives at the studio to work on a short animated film (this part is actually true), life becomes curiouser and curiouser. Dali scandalizes the conservative Finch; Alice, coffee-bearing secretary, becomes Alice, girl down the rabbit hole; and Finch and Alice both experience the very surreal whimsies of the human heart.

Lobster Alice is directed by convergence-continuum's Artistic Director, Clyde Simon, and features company actors Tim Coles, Grey Cross, Beau Reinker and newcomer to the Liminis stage, Sarah Hess as Alice.

Lobster Alice opens Friday, March 14 and runs at 8 pm, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through April 5 at the Liminis, 2438 Scranton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113 in the historic Tremont neighborhood. Tickets are $15 general admission, $12 for seniors and $10 for students. Reservations and information are available at convergence-continuum.org or 216-687-0074.

Kira Obolensky is a playwright and writer who lives in Minneapolis. New work includes Force/Matter, with Shawn McConneloug, The Oldest Story in the World, created collaboratively with Theatre Novi Most; Cabinet of Wonder: an impossible history (Open Eye, Minneapolis. Gas and Electric Arts, Philadelphia Barrymore best new play nomination); Raskol (commissioned and produced by Ten Thousand Things Theatre and featured on critics' end of year lists); and Modern House, finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburne Prize. Kira is a Guggenheim Fellow and has also received fellowships and grants from the Henson Foundation, NEA and Irvine Foundations, Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, and Jerome Foundation. She attended Williams College and Juilliard's Playwriting Program and y completed an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing at Warren Wilson's M.F.A. Program for Writers. She is the author of three published books about architecture and design and is the co-author of the national bestseller The Not So Big House. A Core Writer at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, Kira teaches writing at Spalding University's low residency M.F.A. program, at Goddard College's MFA Program in Interdisciplinary Arts in Vermont, and also at the University of Minnesota.

Kira Obolensky's plays include Hate Mail, written with Bill Corbett; Lobster Alice (Jungle Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Stages Theater); and The Adventures of Herculina (Next Theater, Frank Theater). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as the Kesselring Prize for up and coming playwrights (for Lobster Alice). New work in progress includes Quicksilver (produced in 2003) and A Modern Home. A graduate of Williams College, Ms. Obolensky also attended Juilliard's Playwriting Program.

Lobster Alice was first produced at Playwrights Horizons' Anne G. Wilder Theater in January, 2000. Since then it has been produced at twenty venues across the United States. The convergence-continuum production will be its Cleveland premiere.

Lobster Alice, the company's 58th production, is the first of six in the 2014 season (our thirteenth). The company's season runs from February (during which we stage the NEOMFA Playwrights Festival) into December.

Nearly all of the cast and crew of Lobster Alice have been involved in previous convergence-continuum productions in many and various capacities. 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.

convergence-continuum was founded in 2001 by Clyde Simon (Artistic Director) and Brian Breth. 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.

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