Reed Birney & More Set for THE ASSEMBLY Talkbacks at New Ohio Theatre

To accompany the world premiere of their latest original work, I Will Look Forward to This Later, presented by New Ohio Theatre as part of the Archive Residency, a collaboration between the New Ohio and IRT Theater, The Assembly is curating a post-show conversation series. Talkbacks will feature artists from a multitude of disciplines sparking inter-generational dialogue on the topic of sustaining a life, and career, in the arts world.

I Will Look Forward to This Later explores the evolution of perspectives on art and life over time and across generations, and the creation and destruction of the artist's journey. Central to The Assembly's mission is creating work that fosters dialogue within our community, and the company is excited to offer up this wide range of experience to audience members.

At time of writing, participants include actor Reed Birney in conversation with Assembly member Ben Beckley, visual artist Daniel Maidman in conversation with Assembly member Emily Louise Perkins, professor and author Cindy Rosenthal in conversation with the Living Theatre, curator and playwright Jeff Jones in conversation with playwright Kate Benson, and downtown theatre legend Vinie Burrows in conversation with May Treuhaft-Ali, a current theater major at Wesleyan University.

Discussions will run for approximately 30 minutes and take place immediately following performances of I Will Look Forward to This Later at New Ohio Theatre, 154 Christopher Street, in Manhattan's West Village. Audience members are invited to stay after the show, or join for the talk. No extra booking necessary. I Will Look Forward to This Later runs April 4 - 23. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased online at http://www.NewOhioTheatre.org or by calling 212-352-3101.

For more info visit http://www.AssemblyTheater.org and http://newohiotheatre.org/lookforward.htm.

Talkback Schedule:
4/17 Cindy Rosenthal in conversation with the Living Theatre
4/19 Reed Birney in conversation with Ben Beckley
4/21 Daniel Maidman in conversation with Emily Louise Perkins

Participant Information:

VINIE BURROWS
Vinie Burrows is currently playing the role of Agatha in I WILL LOOK FORWARD TO THIS LATER. She was last seen at the Public in Brecht's GOOD PERSON OF SZECHUAN, and first made her Broadway debut with Helen Hayes & Ossie Davis. Six Broadway shows followed in rapid succession. Frustrated by the available roles for persons of color, Vinie created and produced her first solo show WALK TOGETHER CHILDREN about the Black experience. Called "a magnificent performer" by The New York Times and now hailed as "a living legend," the veteran actor has performed over 6,000 times on four continents with eight different solo productions. Vinie Burrows was recently honored by the Womens International Democratic Federation, for which she was Permanent Representative to the United Nations. www.vinieburrows.com

REED BIRNEY
Broadway credits include Gemini, Picnic, Casa Valentina (Tony Award nomination, Drama Desk Award), The Humans. Off-Broadway credits include I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard (Atlantic Theater Company; Drama Desk Award nomination); You Got Older (HERE; Drama Desk Award nomination), Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep; Drama Desk Award nomination), Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons), Blasted (Soho Rep; Drama Desk nomination), Stuff Happens (Public). In 2011, he was recognized with a Special Drama Desk Award in recognition of the three plays in which he appeared in during one season: A Small Fire at Playwrights Horizons and at the Roundabout Underground, Tigers Be Still and The Dream of the Burning Boy. He has received three OBIEs and two Drama Desk Awards. He is Donald Blythe on the Netflix series, "House of Cards."

CINDY ROSENTHAL
Professor of Drama and Dance at Hofstra University, Cindy Rosenthal teaches acting, play analysis, dramatic literature, theatre studies and women studies. She received her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts/New York University, her M.A. from NYU's Gallatin Division in Literature in Performance, and her B.A. in English and Drama, magna cum laude, from Tufts University. She has contributed essays to The New York Times, Theatre Survey, Women and Performance and TDR, including an essay memorializing Judith Malina, "And After Love" (Fall 2015), as well as the TDR cover story (summer 2006) "Ellen Stewart: La Mama of Us All," which has been translated into Italian, and the Stessin Award-winning essay, also in TDR "The Personal, the Political, the Gardens and NYU" (fall 2002). She edited Living on Third Street: Hanon Reznikov's Plays of the Living Theatre 1989-1992 (Autonomedia, 2008), co-edited Restaging the Sixties: Radical Theatres and Their Legacies, with James Harding for University of Michigan Press (2006) and also with Harding, The Rise of Performance Studies: Rethinking Richard Schechner's Broad Spectrum (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011).

DANIEL MAIDMAN
Daniel Maidman is a painter whose imagery occupies a spectrum from high rendering to almost total abstraction. His art has been shown in group and solo shows in Manhattan and in juried exhibitions nationwide. It was selected by the Saatchi Gallery to be displayed at Gallery Mess in London, and has been exhibited at the Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art. His art and writing on art have been featured in ARTnews, Juxtapoz, Hyperallergic, American Art Collector, International Artist, Poets/Artists, MAKE, Manifest, and The Artist's Magazine. He blogs for The Huffington Post. He has produced paintings in collaboration with best-selling novelist China Miéville, award-winning poet Kathleen Rooney, legendary actor Martin Donovan, and noted installation artist Erika Johnson. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the Long Beach Museum of Art, as well as numerous private collections. www.danielmaidman.com

JEFF JONES
Jeffrey M. Jones is a playwright and essayist whose works include 70 SCENES OF HALLOWEEN, NIGHTCOIL, DER INKA VONPERU, TOMORROWLAND, a series of CRAZYPLAYS, J.P. MORGAN SAVES THE NATION (a musical with a score by the late Jonathan Larson), and A MAN'S BEST FRIEND (produced by the Undermain Theatre in New York and Dallas) and, most recently, A LETTER FROMOMDURMAN presented in 2012 at the Flea. His essays have appeared in The American Theatre Reader, Performing Arts Journal, and as introductions to the anthologies Plays by Young Jean Lee and New Downtown Now. He has been manager of The Wooster Group, Richard Foreman and John Jesurun; taught playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and a series of Pataphysics workshops at the Flea Theater; and is currently co-curator of the OBIE-winning Little Theatre series at Dixon Place. He blogs intermittently at http://jeffreymjones.blogspot.com.

THE ASSEMBLY is a collective of multi-disciplinary performance artists committed to realizing a visceral and intelligent theater for a new generation. Assembly members unite our varied interests in service of wide-reaching, unabashedly theatrical and rigorously researched ensemble performances that address the complexities of our ever-changing world. The company embraces collaboration as the core of the creative process, allowing all the elements of text, action and design to develop side-by-side within the rehearsal environment. The Assembly is dedicated to rooting its artists, audiences, and peers in a profound sense of community.

The Archive Residency, a collaboration between New Ohio Theatre and IRT Theater (likeminded neighbors in the historic Archive Building in the West Village), is a unique incubator for New York City's most promising emerging independent theater companies. Now in its third year, the two year residency offers each company that most elusive and invaluable resource, an artistic home, including space, artistic support, and institutional continuity for the development and presentation of a new work, culminating in an exciting world premiere.

New Ohio Theatre is a two-time OBIE Award-winning theatre under the leadership of Robert Lyons, Artistic Director, and Marc Stuart Weitz, Producing Director. The New Ohio serves New York's most adventurous theatre audiences by developing and presenting the boldest, most innovative work of today's vast independent theatre community. They believe the best of this community, the small artist-driven ensembles and the daring producing companies who operate without a permanent theatrical home, are actively expanding the boundaries of where American theatre is right now and where it's going. New Ohio Theatre nurtures, strengthens, and promotes this community; as they reestablish the West Village as a destination for mature, ridiculous, engaged, irreverent, gut-wrenching, frivolous, sophisticated, foolish and profound theatrical endeavors. The theatre is accessible from the #1 train to Christopher St. or A, B, C, D, E, F or M train to West 4th St. For info visit http://www.NewOhioTheatre.org.

IRT Theater is a grassroots laboratory for independent theater and performance in New York City, providing space and support to a new generation of artists. Tucked away in the old Archive Building in Greenwich Village, IRT's mission is to build a community of emerging and established artists by creating a home for the development and presentation of new work. Some of the artists they have supported include Young Jean Lee, Reggie Watts, Mike Daisey and many others. For info visit http://irttheater.org.

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