Padua Playwrights Offers 3 Premieres For $50 & Free Dinner

Intrepid theatergoers looking to see two world premiere plays and a new film by legendary Los Angeles playwright Murray Mednick back-to-back on a Saturday evening receive a package discount - and dinner and dessert are on the house.

Padua Playwrights is offering the special $50 deal ("50 Bucks") on four consecutive Saturdays: March 28, April 4, April 11 and April 18.

Audience members will check in at Art Share LA, a gallery/theater space located in the Downtown L.A. Arts District, between 4:30 and 5 pm where, prior to the 5 pm curtain, they can choose from among three complete menus prepared by Chef Jason Ha of the acclaimed ZIP Fusion Sushi restaurant and The e3rd Steakhouse and Lounge.

At 5 pm, Padua Playwrights presents the world premiere of Mednick's The Destruction of the Fourth World, produced by Zoo District and directed by Zoo District's Kristi Schultz and Brian Frette, in which the ancient Native American trickster, Coyote, makes ready for the end of the world with his only accomplice - a 13-year old boy from a dysfunctional Jewish family.

After the show, dinner will be served in the Arts Share Gallery, where a "Tribute to Murray Mednick" exhibit includes historical artifacts from the nationally renowned Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival, where he was artistic director from 1978 until 1995.

8 pm is curtain time for the world premiere of Clown Show for Bruno, Mednick's homage to the great Polish writer and artist Bruno Schulz who was murdered in 1941 in an act of revenge against the Nazi officer who "owned" him. Written in the fast-paced rhythms of the Yiddish theater, Clown Show utilizes clowning, masks, and mime to tell Schulz's story. Padua artistic director Guy Zimmerman directs.

Then, it's back to the Gallery for coffee and dessert prior to the 10 pm screening of Girl on a Bed, directed and adapted for the screen by Guy Zimmerman from Mednick's critically acclaimed play about a high school girl who walks fearlessly into lethal realms of pornography and drugs.

Best known as the founder of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival, Murray Mednick is the recipient of two Rockefeller Foundation grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an OBIE, several Bay Area Critics Awards, two LA Weekly Playwriting Awards (for Dictator and Fedunn), the American Theater Critics Association/Steinberg New Play Citation (for Joe and Betty), an Ovation Lifetime Achievement Award from Theatre LA for outstanding contributions to Los Angeles Theatre, a Local Hero Garland Award from Back Stage West for a Distinguished Body of Work, a Career Achievement Award from the LA Weekly, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle's most prestigious honor, The Margaret Harford Award for "Sustained Excellence in Theater." Born in Brooklyn, New York, he was for many years a playwright-in-residence at New York's Theatre Genesis, which presented all of his early work (The Hawk, The Deer Kill, The Hunter, Sand, Are You Lookin'?, and others). Plays produced since then include Iowa and Blessings (for the PBS series "Visions"), The Coyote Cycle, Taxes, Scar, Heads, Shatter ‘N Wade, Fedunn, Switchback, Skinwalkers, Baby Jesus!, Dictator, Freeze, G-nome, and the first three of his octet of plays, The Gary Plays.

Padua Playwrights is committed to the exploration of the spoken word and its myriad connections to the possibility of real meaning. Steven Leigh Morris, editor of the LA Weekly, wrote, "The Padua playwrights embody a true voice of L.A. The group's shared aesthetic is comprised of elliptical structures, lean poetical repartee, and comical Beckettian juxtapositions that speak to the soul of the place: the hubris of wealth and celebrity against the desert's belittling grandeur."

Zoo District is a theater ensemble that fuses innovation and physical virtuosity with entertainment, feeding both artists and audiences hungry for compelling language, images, music and action.

Purchased individually, single tickets to The Destruction of the Fourth World, Clown Show for Bruno and Girl on a Bed are $20 each. For more information about 50 BUCKS, call 213-625-1766.

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