World Premiere Staged Reading of BARNARDINE Set for Tonight at The Group Rep

Barnardine is set in a Vienna similar to that of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, though no attempt is made to cleave exactly to that play's world, or to Elizabethan conventions and locations, or to the given contours of that play's characters; as in Shakespeare's own work, some anachronisms are present. Barnardine's Vienna is an imaginary place which does not purport to represent the actual city any more than Measure's. Its action set roughly 25 years after Measure, Barnardine is more of a spin-off than a sequel.

A translator of Sophocles and Plato, Jamey Hecht (Writer and Director) has taught world literature at various universities on both coasts. A writer by trade, his four books to date include an elegy for President Kennedy called Limousine, Midnight Blue: Fifty Frames From the Zapruder Film (Red Hen Press, 2009) and a translation of Sophocles' Three Theban Plays (Wordsworth Classics, 2004). An active member of The Porters as an actor as well as a writer, Hecht's translation of Oedipus the Tyrant from his Three Theban Plays collection was produced by The Porters in 2011, and was praised as a "poetical, lucid translation" by Steven Leigh Morris of LA Weekly, who went on to say of the company as a whole that "the strongest aspect, which should please translator Hecht to no end, is the commanding articulation of the poetical prose." In 2012, Hecht's Limousine, Midnight Blue ("Ovid himself might have taken notice of this volume." - Billy Collins, American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003) was presented by The Porters as a one-man show starring the writer at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, making Barnardine Hecht's third epic offering for the company. His PhD is from Brandeis, where he wrote on Hart Crane and Dylan Thomas. Hecht's poetry and prose have been published in a variety of scholarly journals and literary magazines.

For more information, visit www.jameyhecht.com.

The cast includes: Thomas Bigley, Alex Parker, Gus Krieger, Timothy Portnoy, Sean Faye, Michael Hoag, Kate O'Toole & Christine Sage.

Barnardine will have a staged reading tonight, July 30th at 7pm at The Group Rep at The Lonny Chapman Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91601. The reading will run approximately 90 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are Free. Donations graciously accepted. Reservations can be made via our e-mail or voice mail. Information line/voice mail: 818-325-2055. E-mail questions/comments/reservations to: PortersofHellsgate@gmail.com.