Long Wharf Theatre To Produce New Work By Tower One/Tower East Residents, Performs 8/24

Long Wharf Theatre's Education Department will be staging a production of original pieces created by residents of New Haven's Tower One/Tower East, on Long Wharf Theatre's Stage II on Monday, August 24 at 7 p.m.

The show, entitled Life University: Lessons, Letters and Legacies for the Young by the Young at Heart, will be performed by a combination of local actors and some of the writers themselves. In addition a book collecting all of the residents' essays, will be published in connection with the event.

"Many residents were shy about acting onstage, but everyone seems excited at the prospect of a final performance of their work," said Annie DiMartino, Long Wharf Theatre's director of education.

Tower One/Tower East is a retirement community located in downtown New Haven. The community, which opened in 1971 and expanded in 1982, houses 346 apartments, enclosed gardens and courtyards and offers senior citizens a full array of assisted living services.

Long Wharf Theatre began its relationship with Tower One/Tower East in January. Every other week members of Long Wharf's education department, using Aristotle's Elements of Drama as a starting point, met with a group of Tower One/Tower East residents to discuss the shows in our regular season to better prepare them on the themes, characters, and concepts on the shows they were gearing up to see. "We then took those conversations and used them as a springboard to connect them to their own lives," DiMartino said.

The residents began to write, crafting monologues and essays reflecting on the works they had seen on Long Wharf Theatre stages, in addition to recounting the seminal memories of their own lives.

"Most members of the group were theatre enthusiasts and avid readers and writers, but very few of them had ever attempted to write for the theatre. We were immediately stuck by how lively, sharp, independent and energetic all of the residents were," DiMartino said.

The group mused on their families and ubiquity of illness, love and loss, and a bygone, simpler time. The result of the sessions are 40 pages of thoughts, dreams and advice written by people who have gone through much of what there is to experience in life's journey and are still hungry for more.

The Tower One/Tower East residents whose writings will be performed are Florence Blosvern, Ruth Blum, Doris Dimenstein, Carole Duchin, Ruth Krawetz, Ellsworth Lindsey, Joe Mascia, Dana Pelkey, Florence Rabin, Kitty Sayball, Harriet Sidransky and Esther Zonenshine.

For more information about Long Wharf Theatre 2009-10 season, visit www.longwharf.org or call 203-787-4282 or visit www.towerone.org or call 203-772-1816.

Long Wharf Theatre (Gordon Edelstein, Artistic Director; Ray Cullom, Managing Director), entering its 45th season, is recognized as a leader in American theatre, producing fresh and imaginative revivals of classics and modern plays, rediscoveries of neglected works and a variety of world and American premieres. More than 30 Long Wharf Theatre productions have transferred virtually intact to Broadway or Off-Broadway, some of which include Durango by Julia Cho, the Pulitzer Prize-winning plays Wit by Margaret Edson, The Shadow Box by Michael Cristofer and The Gin Game by D.L. Coburn. The theatre is an incubator of new works, including this past season's A Civil War Christmas, by Paula Vogel, and Coming Home, by Athol Fugard. Long Wharf Theatre has received New York Drama Critics Awards, Obie Awards, the Margo Jefferson Award for Production of New Works, a Special Citation from the Outer Critics Circle and the Tony® Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre.

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