First Flight Theatre Company's MINA to Play 2023 Days of the Dead Festival at UNDER St. Marks

First Flight Theatre Company will present Mina adapted by Richard Width from Bram Stoker’s Dracula directed by Karen Eterovich. This production will be presented as part of the 2023 Days of the Dead Festival at UNDER St. Marks Theater (94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009) with performances on Monday, October 23rd at 6:30 pm, Wednesday, October 25th at 8:15 pm and Thursday, November 2nd at 9:45 pm. Tickets for live in-person ($25) and streaming performance ($20) are available for advance purchase at www.frigid.nyc. The performance will run approximately 58 minutes. 

An epic battle of good versus evil, Mina is a solo version of Bram Stoker's Dracula from the point of view of an early STEM girl, Mina herself. The audience will experience this Victorian tale through Mina’s eyes, heart, and mind. A roller coaster of passion, science and storytelling, Mina is suitable for ages 10 and up.

The play features Reilly Hacker as Mina who recently starred in First Flight’s production of Little Women. The creative team will include Stage Manager Thomas J. Donohoe II and will be produced by Frank Farrell and the First Flight Theatre Company.

REILLY HACKER 

(Mina) is a NJ/NYC based actress with a Bachelor's Degree in Theater from Ramapo College with concentrations in Acting, Directing, and Stage Management as well as a minor in Digital Filmmaking. Some of her previous credits include Meg in Little Women, Kathryn Schaub in Radium Girls, Brooke Wyndham in Legally Blonde, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Agatha in Frankenstein, Officer#2/Musician in Twelfth Night, and Greek Chorus in Antigone. She was also nominated for The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Irene Ryan Acting Award for her role as Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and received a certificate of merit for ensemble work in Twelfth Night. 

KAREN ETEROVICH

(Director) recently played Mary Philipse in First Flight’s 2022 production of Valley Forge. During the pandemic, for First Flight, she directed a Zoom Movie: A Vampire Kiss in the Plague of 1666 by James Fitzmaurice, which won awards in Film Festivals around the world. She also directed The Witlings by Fanny Burney with an international cast on Zoom and received a rave review from Dr. Katie Aske and the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies.  Member: Dramatists Guild, AEA, SAG-AFTRA.  Her solo work includes Love Arm’d, Aphra Behn & Her Pen performed in 135 cities. Cheer from Chawton: A Jane Austen Family Theatrical which premiered in Stockton, California and toured to 30 US cities & the UK.  Instagram @eterovichdaughter & Twitter @lovearmd. 

THOMAS J. DONOHOE II 

(Production Stage Manager) is a NJ/NYC-based stage manager and graduate of Ramapo College of New Jersey with a degree in Directing/Stage Management. Select credits include First Flight Theatre Company: Shakespeare’s Ladies at Tea and Shakespeare’s Deaths (PSM/Lighting/Sound) and Little Women (PSM), New Studio on Broadway: An Experiment. (PSM), Once More (PSM), Montclair Studio Players: Miracle on 34th Street (PSM/TD), Triad Theatre: Magic Box (PSM/Lighting), Charles Seller Foundation: The Addams Family (PSM/Sound Design), Wolfsmouth Players: Effigy (ASM/Tech), A Very Great Mischief(Tech), Acting Under the Influence: Julius Caesar (Director), Twelfth Night (PSM), The Tank NYC: 20th Anniversary Gala (SM), Autumn Affair (Tech),  Modern Swimwear (Tech), Ramapo College: Stop/Kiss (PSM), Baltimore (PSM), The Big Unknown 1.5° (PSM), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ASM), Antigone (ASM), The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise (ASM). Nutley Little Theatre: Hand to God (TD), Tin Cat Shoes (PSM). He currently serves as the first chair of the Nutley Little Theatre Youth Committee, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region 2 Award for Stage Management Excellence. 

RICHARD WIDTH 

(Playwright) (AEA) performed or directed well over 100 mainstage, young company, residency and staged reading productions with Orlando Shakespeare Theater (OST) as well as adapted Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Forster’s Maurice and Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum for the stage as a part of their new play development program. He has worked in numerous regional theaters, appeared nationally on Guiding Light, One Life to Live, and Vin Diesel’s directorial debut film MultiFacial. Most recently, he appeared as George Washington in Maxwell Anderson’s Valley Forge with First Flight Theatre Company and will be directing the company’s signature production of Dickens by Candlelight: A Christmas Carol at The Hermitage while working full time as a Hospice RN in the northern NJ area.

Frank Farrell 

(Producer & Artistic Director of the First Flight Theatre Company) directed and appeared in First Flight’s Shakespeare’s Ladies at Tea and Shakespeare’s Deaths in August as part of FRIGID’s Little Shakespeare Festival.  He was an actor in Chicago for 38 years receiving three Joseph Jefferson acting nominations and recently returned to NYC. While in Chicago he directed and produced plays for the Free Shakespeare Theatre Company, Temporary Theatre, Shakespeare’s Herd, Steppenwolf Theater, Raven Theatre, Equity Library Theater Chicago, the North Lakeside Players, Citadel Theatre and Theatre-Hikes. Frank has formed six theater companies along the way including Theatre-Hikes in Chicago and the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company in Grand Haven, Michigan.  In 2018 in NYC, he directed Forgotten Soldiers from Our Forgotten War for the First Flight Theatre Company, the seventh theatre group he formed.  For First Flight he also coordinated several stage readings of Maxwell Anderson’s plays in New York City and Chicago. Frank directed and produced last summer’s First Flight productions of Maxwell Anderson’s play Valley Forge and this summer’s production of Little Women.  He recently directed three short films and one full length; Walt Kelly’s Songs of the Pogo, The Leaves Were Falling, Salvador and In the Garden of Live Flowers which recently won Best Biopic at the Green Academy Awards Film Festival. He can be currently heard talking and singing as co-host for the Songs of the Pogo Podcast.

FIRST FLIGHT THEATRE COMPANY

is a not-for-profit founded by Frank Farrell in 2018 devoted to presenting the plays of 20th century American playwright Maxwell Anderson as well as other playwrights who instill poetry in their writing. In August it presented the double bill Shakespeare’s Ladies at Tea and Shakespeare’s Deaths as part of FRIGID’s Little Shakespeare Festival in NYC.  The company has performed live staged readings of Anderson’s plays in New Jersey, New York City and Chicago including Valley Forge, Elizabeth the Queen, Mary of Scotland, Sea-Wife, The Masque of Queens, White Desert and The Eve of St. Mark. During the pandemic First Flight presented play readings on Zoom for the public. These were benefits featuring actors from all over the United States and England and they benefited various not-for-profits. Productions streamed included Maxwell Anderson’s one-act plays The Feast of Ortolans, Second Overture, The Miracle of the Danubeand Letter to Jackie. Also streamed were A Vampire Kiss in the Plague of 1666 written by James Fitzmaurice, which went on to win many awards on the film festival circuit, Salvador, a play about Salvador Dalí by Richard Young, another film festival winner, and a streaming version of Anderson’s first Broadway production White Desert. Post pandemic the company presented at The Hermitage in New Jersey outdoor productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Maxwell Anderson’s Valley Forge followed by indoor performances of Mina, based on Dracula and a reprise of Dickens by Candlelight: A Christmas Carol. For this past Earth Day in April the First Flight Theatre Company presented streaming performances of In the Garden of Live Flowers, a play about Rachel Carson, which went on to be a winner at this year’s Green Academy Award Film Festival. In June First Flight’s production of Little Women at The Hermitage was a rousing success. In addition, the company and the Instant Shakespeare Company have joined forces presenting play readings at New York City’s various public libraries including Anderson’s White Desert and Sea-Wife and upcoming in December Maxwell Anderson’s 1924 play What Price Glory. The Mid-West branch of First Flight will present Maxwell Anderson’s play Saturday’s Children on September 30th and October 1st at the Rudolph Steiner Branch in Chicago. Mina and Dickens by Candlelight: A Christmas Carol will again be performed in October and December.

Visit www.firstflighttheatreco.com for more about the First Flight Theatre Company.

Photo credit: Karen Eterovich

To post a comment, you must register and login.