Photo Flash: The Catastrophic Theatre Presents the World Premiere of LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR

The Catastrophic Theatre continues its 2017-2018 season with the rolling world premiere of Leap and the Net Will Appear by Chana Porter, who two-time Obie Award-winning playwright and director Craig Lucas has called "the most original and funny and touching and interesting young playwright out there at this moment."

The production will be directed by Porter's collaborator, NYC director Tara Ahmadinejad, and features original music by composer Andrew Lynch. The production opens February 9th and runs through March 4th.

Margie was raised to be a good girl, but Margie has a secret: she wants to be a lion. Leap and the Net Will Appear by Chana Porter traces one woman's highly theatrical, time-hopping search for adventure, for love, and for her true self. Packed with wildly eccentric family members and unpredictable lovers, Margie's journey is at turns uproariously funny and probingly melancholic. Her fierce insistence that she can discover her most fundamental nature takes her across the globe in a romantic and bewildering whirlwind.

LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR is the first of Chana Porter's plays to be produced by The Catastrophic Theatre. Catastrophic artistic director Jason Nodler sees Porter as an emerging powerhouse among contemporary avant-garde playwrights: "I am an unabashed fanboy. When I fall in love with a playwright's voice I fall hard and I don't just want to produce the work that made me fall in love; I want to produce everything they ever write. It's a rare and glorious thing when that happens, and I am head over heels in love with Chana Porter's voice as a writer and with the play, LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR. It is one of the strangest, most imaginative, hilarious, 'pataphysical, and moving things I have ever read. And I can't wait to see what the extraordinary director Tara Ahmadinejad will make out of it. Plays like this one and artists like Chana and Tara are why I make theatre."

The Catastrophic Theatre's production is the first production of the rolling world premiere of LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR, which will also receive a production at New Georges in New York City. The Houston production features a cast of Houston favorites: Amy Bruce, Tamarie Cooper, Jovan Jackson, Jayden Key, Andrew Lynch, Mateo Mpinduzi-Mott, and Pamela Vogel. Music Direction and Composition by Andrew Lynch. Set by Ryan McGettigan, Costumes by Macy Lyne, Lights by Hudson Davis, Sound by Tim Thomson, and Props by Lauren Davis.

Chana Porter is a writer and teacher living in Brooklyn. Her plays and performance pieces have been developed or produced at Playwrights Horizons, Cloud City, 3LD, Rattlestick Playwright's Theatre, Cherry Lane, The Invisible Dog, Primary Stages, Movement Research, PS122, and The White Bear in London. She has been an Artist-In-Residence at Space On White, CAVE, and Dixon Place. She is currently working two works of speculative fiction. She is a MacDowell Fellow, a New Georges affiliated artist, and a recent nominee for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Chana is the co-founder of the Octavia Project, a free summer program for Brooklyn teenage girls. www.chanaporter.com

Director Tara Ahmadinejad is a New York City-based freelance director and a core-founding member of the theater collective Piehole. Their most recent work, Ski End, premiered in 2017, and was developed through the New Ohio/IRT's Archive Residency and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Residency. Other recent projects -- Hand Foot Fizzle Face at JACK and Old Paper Houses at the Irondale Center -- have been developed at the Drama League, New York Theatre Workshop and the Prelude Festival. Tara recently directed Caryl Churchill's Love and Information at LSU, and is collaborating with Daaimah Mubashshir on a new play through the New Georges Jam. Tara leads workshops in collaborative theater-making, including recent work with undergraduates in Tehran, Iran. She is an NYTW Usual Suspect, a New Georges Jam member and affiliated artist, and a graduate of Columbia's MFA Directing program.

Composer Andrew Lynch's original music theater has been presented at Ars Nova, the Music Theatre Factory, Dixon Place and more. Original works include Le Gourmand or GLUTTONY! which the New York Times described as "so rich in musical abundance... it deserves a bigger plate;" Paper Plane, named a Critics' Pick by Time Out NY; and Vestige, presented by Columbia Stages and workshopped at Music Theatre Factory. Other recent projects include The Curious Case of Phineas Gage with Split Knuckle Theatre presented at APAP 2017. He also composed music for BREAD Arts Collectives' Rise and Fall which was praised by the Village Voice, and The Great American Casket Company, which was commissioned by Greenwood Cemetery.

Formed in 2007 by Jason Nodler, Tamarie Cooper, The Catastrophic Theatre is Houston's premier creator and producer of new work for the theatre. The nationally acclaimed organization is dedicated to developing productions that foster a meaningful exchange between artists and audiences. A recipient of two prestigious MAP Fund commissioning grants, the theatre has gained an international reputation for its original pieces, which have attracted audiences from across the United States, Europe, and Australia. Artistic director Jason Nodler is the recipient of a NEA/MacDowell Colony fellowship, a Houston Press Mastermind award, and an unsolicited and unrestricted creative grant from Creative Capital. Awarded Best Season, Best Actor, and Best Artistic Director by the Houston Press Theatre Awards in 2017, The Catastrophic Theatre offers Houston audiences a repertoire of challenging, innovative work that can't be seen anywhere else in the country.

New Georges is a strategically small theater company with a national reputation for launching and sustaining exuberantly theatrical women artists - individually, as collaborators, and as a community. Since 1992, we've cultivated a boundary-pushing aesthetic in a nimble, artist-driven production environment, serving the largest ongoing working community of women theater artists in New York City; our plays and our people have received 3 Obie Awards, the Lilly Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn and Kesselring Prizes.

LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR. Through March 4th. Performances are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. All performances are held at The Midtown Arts Theatre Center (MATCH). Tickets can be ordered online (catastrophictheatre.com OR matchouston.org) or by phone (713-521-4533). ALL PERFORMANCES ARE PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN.

Photo credit: Anthony Rathbun

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