PTP/NYC Opens Tonight At Atlantic Stage 2

PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project), in association with Middlebury College, officially opens its 33rd repertory season tonight. Performances continue through August 4 in a limited Off-Broadway engagement at The Atlantic Stage 2, located at 330 West 16th Street.

This season's line-up includes DOGG'S HAMLET, CAHOOT'S MACBETH, by Tom Stoppard, directed by PTP's Co-Artistic Director Cheryl Faraone, and HAVEL: THE PASSION OF THOUGHT, comprised of five serio-comic one act plays by Vaclav Havel, Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, directed by PTP's Co-Artistic Director Richard Romagnoli.

Performances are Tuesdays - Sundays at 7pm, Saturdays - Sundays at 2pm, and select Wednesdays and Thursdays at 2pm. Schedule varies - for exact days and times visit http://PTPNYC.org. Tickets are $37.50, $22.50 for students and seniors, and $20 for previews. Purchase online at http://PTPNYC.org or by calling 1-866-811-4111.

DOGG'S HAMLET, CAHOOT'S MACBETH began previews on July 9 for a July 17 opening and runs through August 3.

Three schoolboys who speak only Dogg confuse a lorry driver who speaks only English. Dogg's Hamlet's goofy linguistic mismatches tumble into a performance of the 15 Minute Hamlet. In Cahoot's Macbeth, a forbidden living-room production of Shakespeare's play, interrupted by a wise-cracking Inspector, parallels Macbeth's usurpation of the Scottish throne before Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia. By play's end, Shakespeare explodes into Dogg.

The cast for DOGG'S HAMLET, CAHOOT'S MACBETH includes Matthew Ball (PTP: Pity In History, Pentecost), Denise Cormier (Broadway national tour The Graduate, Showtime's "The Affair"), Tara Giordano (PTP: The After-Dinner Joke, Vinegar Tom, Serious Money), Christo Grabowski (PTP: The After-Dinner Joke, Pity In History, No End of Blame), Christopher Marshall (PTP: The Possibilities, The After-Dinner Joke, Pity In History), Peter B. Schmitz (PTP: Lovesong of the Electric Bear, Therese Raquin), Lucy Van Atta (PTP: The After-Dinner Joke, Serious Money, Spatter Pattern), Olivia Christie (PTP: Brecht on Brecht), Will Koch, Emily Ma, Katie Marshall, Madeleine Russell (PTP: The After-Dinner Joke, The Possibilities), Lior Selve, Zach Varicchione and Connor Wright (PTP: Pity In History).

The production team for DOGG'S HAMLET, CAHOOT'S MACBETH includes Mark Evancho (Set Design), Hallie Zieselman (Lighting Design), Ellery Rhodes (Sound Design), Chris Romagnoli (Costume Design Dogg's Hamlet), Rebecca LaFon (Costume Design Cahoot's Macbeth), Sam Tompkins Martin (Props Design), Peter B. Schmitz and Adam Milano (Movement) and Alex Williamson (Production Stage Manager).

HAVEL: THE PASSION OF THOUGHT, comprised of five serio-comic one act plays, began previews on July 10 for a July 16 opening and runs through August 4.

In Audience, Private View and Protest, the dissident Vanek (Havel's alter ego) encounters people trapped by the moral dilemmas inherent in a Communist system. The trio of plays is bookended by Harold Pinter's New World Order and Samuel Beckett's Catastrophe. The latter was written in tribute to Havel.

The Vanek plays (along with all of Havel's work) were banned in Czechoslovakia, but that didn't prevent people from performing them in their living rooms, copying them surreptitiously as samizdat (illegal, faded copies of banned work), or even recording them on vinyl. One of Havel's core ideas in his philosophical essays is the concept of "living in truth," that each small compromise we make with the truth leads to larger compromises, until it snowballs into a society-wide epidemic in which lying becomes the institutional path.

The cast for HAVEL: THE PASSION OF THOUGHT includes David Barlow (PTP: No End of Blame, Victory, The Castle), Emily Kron (PTP: The Europeans, Sweet Tooth at Cherry Lane), Michael Laurence (Broadway: Talk Radio, Desire Under the Elms, NBC's "Shades of Blue"), Christopher Marshall (PTP: The Possibilities, The After-Dinner Joke, Pity In History), Danielle Skraastad (Broadway: All My Sons, Hurricane Diane with Women's Project & NYTW, The Architecture of Becoming with Women's Project), Emily Ballou and Madeline Ciocci (PTP: The After-Dinner Joke).

The production team for HAVEL: THE PASSION OF THOUGHT includes Mark Evancho (Set Design), Hallie Zieselman (Lighting Design), Ellery Rhodes and Allison Rimmer (Sound Design), Glenna Ryer (Costume Design), Sam Tompkins Martin (Props Design), Peter B. Schmitz and Adam Milano (Movement) and Devin Wein (Production Stage Manager).

PTP/NYC says, "Vaclav Havel -- poet, playwright, prisoner, president -- is a timeless voice of integrity and resistance, a virtual anomaly on the cusp of 2020, but certainly a much-needed inspiration. Tom Stoppard, his fellow Czech, visited Havel in 1977 shortly after his release from prison, and afterwards produced a series of plays focusing on freedom of speech, freedom from censorship, and the rights of the artist; one of these is Cahoot's Macbeth. The two evenings are umbilically entwined. Moreover, the bookending of the three Vanek plays by Havel with Pinter's New World Order and Beckett's Catastrophe (written in tribute to Havel) expands and universalizes this evening, with a chilling final image of the artist as tortured celebrity. Together, using farce, linguistic games, poignancy, and liberal doses of Shakespeare, the two evenings resonate with our cultural and political moment."

To post a comment, you must register and login.