THE JOYS OF FANTASY Makes World Premiere At Twelve21 Beginning 7/8

Inspired by Thornton Wilder's 1938 drama of everyday existence, The Ordinary Theater will present the World Premiere of THE JOYS OF FANTASY. Playwright/director Mitchell Polin re-mixes Wilder's classic ideas with literary, theatrical, musical and visual arts innovations to create a wholly original theater experience. This site-specific multimedia production will be presented for a limited engagement beginning July 8 at Twelve21, an 8,000 square foot event space in Chelsea.

THE JOYS OF FANTASY is the story of one woman's search for independence. Grover's Corners has been terrorized and its inhabitants are working to survive as their lives have been thrust into the 21st century. Under the guidance of a narrator, THE JOYS OF FANTASY engages acts of gratuitous violence, imagination, memory, love, and sacrifice as the ironic billboards left over from the industrial garbage heap of the twentieth century. It creates a stage experience that approximates watching life go by with a remote in your hand.

THE JOYS OF FANTASY stars Kim Brandt, Michael Cross Burke, Caroline Gart, Teri Incampo, Claire Kavanah and Scott Troost with video by Jenks Whittenburg and Griffin Richardson, set design by Elisa Griego, lighting by Blu, and original music by Tungsten74.

The Ordinary Theater, founded in New York in 1998, uses non-narrative structures to explore theoretical issues of performance. Merging multiple styles into collages that mimic the pace and structure of a television remote, Ordinary Theater remixes found texts, improvisational music, mimetic and non-mimetic acting, and real-time video to create theater that challenges contemporary media perceptions and realities. The Ordinary Theater has performed in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Moscow and elsewhere, and now resides in Northampton, Massachusettes. Past productions have been inspired by Faust, A Doll's House, The Adding Machine and Finnegan's Wake. THE JOYS OF FANTASY was originally presented in April 2009 at The Northampton Academy of Music under the title Our Town Revisited.

Mitchell Polin, artistic director of the Ordinary Theater, is a NYC-based director and playwright whose work focuses on the notion of the "re-mix" as a formalized theatrical tool of process and structure. Falling somewhere between "Happenings," rituals and rock concerts, his works combine live music, song, video, found texts, movement, and storytelling into a fluid landscape of performance. His directed works have appeared at LaMama, Stella Adler Conservatory, Bank Street Theater, Joyce Soho, and Philadelphia Fringe Festival, among others.

THE JOYS OF FANTASY runs July 8 - 25; Wednesday - Saturday, at 8:00 pm. Twelve21 is located at 12 West 21st Street, between 5th & 6th Avenues (accessible from the F train at 23rd Street). Tickets are: $20, available at 212-409-8662 or www.ordinarytheater.com.