Oskar Eustis-Helmed THE HUMAN SCALE Opens at Joe's Pub, 3/17

Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis will direct THE HUMAN SCALE for four performances only at Joe's Pub beginning Wednesday, March 17 at 7 PM. Written and performed by Pulitzer Prize winner Lawrence Wright, THE HUMAN SCALE will also play Saturday, March 20 at 7 PM and Sunday, March 21 at 2 PM and 7 PM. 

Following up on his essay "Captives" published in the November 9, 2009 issue of The New Yorker, Wright performs THE HUMAN SCALE, an unsparing and graphic exploration of the ongoing crisis in Gaza. Returning to the stage following his acclaimed My Trip to Al Qaeda, Wright workshops his newest piece about one of the most searing political conflicts of our day. THE HUMAN SCALE was first workshopped by The Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law.

"Larry Wright is a brilliant journalist, an eloquent writer, and a beautiful performer," said Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis. "The Human Scale is, quite simply, indispensable; it's the best reporting on and analysis of the crisis in Gaza available to us."

Lawrence Wright (Author/Performer) is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for The New Yorker. He joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1992, where he published a number of notable articles which have won him the National Magazine Award for Reporting as well as the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, and Overseas Press Club's Ed Cunningham Award for Best Magazine Reporting. Wright is the co-writer (with Ed Zwick and Menno Meyjes) of the film The Siege, starring Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis and Annette Bening. He also wrote the script of the Showtime movie, "Noriega: God's Favorite," directed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Bob Hoskins. His history of Al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, was published to immediate and widespread acclaim, spending eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and being translated into 25 languages. It was nominated for the National Book Award and won the Lionel Gelber Award for nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Award for History, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. In 2006, he premiered his one-man play, My Trip to Al-Qaeda, at The New Yorker Festival, and then enjoyed a sold-out six-week run at the Culture Project. It is now being made into a documentary film, directed by Alex Gibney who won the 2008 Academy Award for Feature Documentary. Wright has published six previous books: City Children, Country Summer; In the New World: Growing Up with America, 1960 - 1984; Saints & Sinners; Remembering Satan; Twins: Genes, Environment, and the Mystery of Identity; and God's Favorite.

Oskar Eustis (Director) has been the Artistic Director of The Public Theater since 2005. From 1981 through 1986 he was resident director and dramaturg at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco, and Artistic Director until 1989, when he moved to the L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum as Associate Artistic Director until 1994. Eustis then served as Artistic Director at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island for 11years. At The Public he directed the New York premiere of Rinne Groff's The Ruby Sunrise and most recently he directed Groff's newest play, Compulsion, at Yale Rep and will be directing it at Berkeley Rep in the fall. At Trinity Rep, he directed Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Henry IV and Julius Caesar at the Mark Taper Forum. At Trinity Rep he also directed the world premiere of Paula Vogel's The Long Christmas Ride Home (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); Homebody/Kabul (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); the world premiere of Rinne Groff's The Ruby Sunrise; Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director); Angels in America, Part II: Perestroika; as well as world premieres of plays by Philip Kan Gotanda, David Henry Hwang, Emily Mann, Suzan-Lori Parks, Ellen McLaughlin, and Eduardo Machado. He commissioned Tony Kushner's Angels in America at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco and directed its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. He was a professor of Theatre, Speech and Dance at Brown University, where he founded and chaired the Trinity Rep/Brown University Consortium for professional theater training. He received an honorary doctorate from Brown in 2001 and currently serves as Professor of Dramatic Writing and Arts and Public Policy at New York University.

THE HUMAN SCALE will run Wednesday, March 17 at 7 PM; Saturday, March 20 at 7 PM; and Sunday, March 21 at 2 PM and 7 PM at Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette Street. Tickets are $20 for this workshop presentation and can be purchased at 212) 967-7555. For additional information about Joe's Pub and The Public Theater, please visit The Public Theater website at www.publictheater.org.

Photo Credit: Ben Strothmann

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