HERE Arts Center Presents MILK With Jordan Baker & Peter Bradbury Through 5/22

New Georges (Susan Bernfield, Artistic Director; Sarah Cameron Sunde, Associate Director), the OBIE Award-winning downtown theater company founded in 1992, and New Feet Productions will present the world premiere of Emily DeVoti's thought-provoking new play "MILK," directed by Jessica Bauman. This Off Broadway engagement will be performed at HERE (www.here.org), 145 Sixth Avenue (enter on Dominick Street, one block south of Spring Street). Previews begin on April 26, and the official Opening Night will be Thursday, April 29 at 8:30 p.m. Performances will run through May 22.

Rural New England just before Reagan's second term. Meg (JorDan Baker) and Ben (Jon Krupp) are a creditor away from losing their family farm. To the rescue flies a high-powered businessman (Peter Bradbury) - in a private chopper no less - offering a tidy sum for a taste of farm life and the pure, raw milk that goes with it. Even before locavores roamed the earth, "back to the land" was hardly as simple as its promise; livestock and humans aren't known for behaving as expected. And so it is in "MILK," an elegant parable of change set on the cusp of a shifting American landscape.

Emily DeVoti's plays have been presented in New York City by New Georges, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, ArsNova, Abingdon Theater, HotINK/NYU, Cherry Lane Theatre, Six Figures, Judith Shakespeare Company and Perry Street Theater; published by Smith & Kraus; and supported by residencies with The Orchard Project and The MacDowell Colony. Her play Dirt was workshopped by the Royal National Theatre, London, in collaboration with Max Stafford-Clark in May 2009. It was in development with David Strathairn and Cherry Jones from 2004-2007. She has been commissioned to write a play for the American History Cycle, a collaboration between Shakespeare & Co. (Lenox, MA) and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, in which 4 playwrights will be produced in multiple locations in 2010-11. Her other full length plays include: Marianne, In Ipswich Waiting, Beyond the Veil, and an adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which received the Princeton University Grace May Tilton Prize in Fine Arts. Emily is a member of New Georges' Kitchen Cabinet and a founding member and current Theater Editor of The Brooklyn Rail.

Jessica Bauman most recently directed Into the Hazard (Henry V), her own six-actor adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V, designed by the Tony and OBIE Award-winning designer Christopher Akerlind. For the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, she has directed Terrence McNally's Teachers Break with Cynthia Nixon and Maura Tierney and Harrison Rivers's and it seems to me a very good sign with John Krasinski, Naomi Watts, Sam Rockwell, and Amber Tamblyn. In New York City her work has been seen at theatres such as New Georges, New York Theatre Workshop, Soho Rep, The Public, Rising Phoenix Rep, and the 52nd Street Project. Regionally she has worked at Portland Stage Company, Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, Theatre Outlet (Allentown, PA), and the O'Neill. She has collaborated with playwrights such as David Lindsay-Abaire, Kia Corthron, Tracey Scott Wilson, Jenny Lyn Bader, Diana Son, Napoleon Ellsworth and Kirsten Greenidge. Jessica has been an Artist-in-Residence at Tribeca Performing Arts Center and a Drama League Directors Project fellow, and is an alumna of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a NYTW Usual Suspect, and a New Georges Affiliated Artist. She is also Artistic Director of New Feet Productions (co-presenter of Milk)which produced Into the Hazard and is currently developing All Day Suckers, a dark satire of the health insurance industry by Susan Dworkin.

The complete six-member cast for "MILK" will be: Carolyn Baeumler (Auroch), JorDan Baker (Meg), Peter Bradbury (James), Jon Krupp (Ben), Anna Kull (Veronica), and Noah Robbins (Matt). Ms. Baeumler's Off Broadway credits include: Heddatron, Beebo Brinker Chronicles, Big Love, SEX, and both Self Defense and Creature with New Georges. Ms. Baker made her Broadway debut in Suddenly Last Summer opposite Elizabeth Ashley for which she received a Theatre World Award. Jordan's Off Broadway roles include being an original cast member of Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Three Tall Women, and seen more recently Off Broadway in Night Sky and Is Life Worth Living? She has appeared on many popular television series including: The New Adventures of Old Christine, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Practice, Brothers & Sisters, Cold Case, Medium, and Blind Justice to mention a few. Mr. Bradbury has appeared on Broadway in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial and the Roundabout Theatre production of A Man for All Seasons. Last season he understudied the role of Norman in the award-winning revival The Norman Conquests. Off Broadway he has been seen in The Overwhelming, Back from the Front Row, Bulrusher, Surviving Grace, and Snakebit. Mr. Krupp's New York theater credits include The Jonestown Project (directed by Leigh Fondakowski), Lisa D'Amour's 16 Spells to Charm the Beast (Clubbed Thumb), and Multi-Use Space (at the Atlantic). He will come to this production directly from having performed in Marielle Heller's adaptation of The Diary of a Teenage Girl at 3LD. Ms. Kull was seen in Michael Lew's Roanoke at Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival and in various roles in the Festival's anthology Brink. In New York City she has been seen in Exposition at Brick Theater, Blood Brothers Present: Pulp for Nosedive Productions, and It's a Wonderful Sex Life at Manhattan Theatre Source. Mr. Robbins made his Broadway debut earlier this season as Eugene Jerome in the critically acclaimed (but short-lived) production of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs.

The set design will be by Susan Zeeman Rogers (Is Life Worth Living? at The Mint, Mercy on the Doorstep at The Flea, Innocents and Fire Throws for Ripe Time, and The Right Way to Sue for New Georges); the costume design by Emily Pepper (King of Shadows for Working Theater, 500 Words at La Jolla Playhouse, and Tio Pepe at SPF); the lighting design by Lenore Doxsee (Last Meadow for DTW, Ten Blocks on the Camino Real for Target Margin, and Cunning Little Vixen for the Houston Grand Opera); and the sound design by Amy Altadonna (The Winter's Tale at the Atlantic, Twelfth Night at The Pearl, and The Unmentionables at Yale Repertory Theatre). The production stage manager will be Kat West.

New Georges (www.newgeorges.org), the OBIE Award-winning downtown theater company founded in 1992, has included among its notable productions the following: Heidi Schreck's Creature; Eisa Davis' Angela's Mixtape; Jenny Schwartz's God's Ear; Wendy Weiner's Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy With a (Somewhat) Happy Ending; Susan Bernfield's Stretch (a fantasia); Sheila Callaghan's Dead City (a winner of the 2007 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize); Deb Margolin's Three Seconds in the Key (winner of the 2005 Kesselring Prize); Lisa D'Amour's Anna Bella Eema; Jenny Lyn Bader's None of the Above; and Carson Kreitzer's Self Defense, or death of some salesmen. The company, in addition to producing regular seasons, is a play and artist development organization, providing essential resources and opportunities to a community of venturesome artists.

This production is being presented through HEREstay, HERE's curated rental program, which provides artists with subsidized space and equipment, as well as technical and administrative support. Since 1993, the OBIE-winning HERE has been a premier arts organization in NYC and a leader in the field of new, hybrid performance work. Under leadership of Founding Artistic Director Kristin Marting and Producing Director Kim Whitener, HERE has served over 12,000 emerging to mid-career artists developing work that does not fit a conventional programming agenda. Work presented at HERE has garnered 14 OBIE awards, including the 2009 Ross Wetzsteon Award, an OBIE grant for artistic achievement, three Drama Desk nominations, two Berrilla Kerr Awards, three NY Innovative Theatre Awards, an Edwin Booth Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. HERE proudly supports artists at all stages in their careers through full productions, artist residency programs, festivals and subsidized performance and rehearsal space. Work at HERE is curated based on the strength and uniqueness of the artist's vision. HERE's Artist Residency Program (HARP) provides development, commissions and full production for up to 20 artists over one-to-three years. In 2005, with the support of the FJC, a foundation of donor advised funds, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the City of New York, HERE purchased its long-time home as part of a five-year "Secure HERE's Future" campaign. With full-scale renovations to the space concluding in June 2008, thanks to generous support from the City of New York, HERE is poised to continue and expand its role as a downtown haven for the finest emerging art. Offering a comfortable, eclectic setting for artists and audiences alike, HERE features a café and two state-of-the-art performance spaces.

The schedule for "MILK" (April 26 through May 22) will be: Mondays thru Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. (with the following exceptions: the performances on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, April 26, 27, 28; Thursday, Friday, Saturday, May 3, 4, and 5, will be at 7:00 p.m.) Tickets will be $25.00 for general admission (including students and seniors), with a $35.00 reserved premium ticket also available. Monday night performances are "pay-what-you-will" at the door only. To reserve tickets, please visit www.here.org or call 212-352-3101.

 

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