Target Margin Theater's 24th Season to Honor Gertrude Stein

Target Margin Theater will dedicate its 24th season to the exploration of works created by the great American novelist, poet and playwright, Gertrude Stein. The 2015 Season begins in January 2015 with The TMT Stein Winter Lab at The Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn, and concludes in May 2015 with the world premiere of Composition...Master-Pieces...Identity, a new performance piece from Obie Award-winner David Greenspan, and The TMT Stein Spring Lab, that will run in tandem at The Connelly Theater at the Cornelia Connelly Center in Manhattan.

Launching the 2015 season will be the The TMT Stein Winter Lab, presented by The Bushwick Starr, that brings together over 100 artists who will participate in a range of Stein-related events and productions. Creative artists and special guests include Nic Adams, Adam R. Burnett, Nikki Calonge, Nehassaiu deGannes, Shonni Enelow, Aaron Ethan Green, Megan Hill, Julia Jarcho, Karinne Keithley Syers and TMT Artistic Director David Herskovits, who will be directing a special Stein piece with a very limited (and free!) run. Performances are set for January and February 2015 at The Bushwick Starr (207 Starr Street, Brooklyn).

The exploration continues into May 2015 with the world premiere of Composition...Master-Pieces...Identity, a new work conceived and performed by Obie Award-winner David Greenspan. With his "lively trickster mind" and movement "like origami that knows how to fold itself," David Greenspan brings us a new signature solo piece. In the vein of The Argument, Myopia and The Patsy and Jonas, Greenspan will bring to life two "lectures" and a "play" by Gertrude Stein. Stein's thoughts on artistry and authenticity changed as her own reputation morphed to "celebrity" status. Earlier in Stein's career, Composition as Explanation expressed her belief that the creator of an authentic work of art is an outlaw until sufficient time has passed for his work to be accepted as a classic. In What Are Master-Pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them, Stein as author of international renown defines an authentic work of art as one in which the artist's self-consciousness has been suppressed. As Stein's fame reached mainstream status, her meditation on the relationship between artist and audience yielded Identity A Poem. Greenspan shapes Stein's heady wordplay as only he can, and the result is a startlingly clear diversion for the senses and for the mind. Greenspan's solo show will in run tandem with The TMT Stein Spring Lab, with artists including TMT Artistic Producer John Del Gaudio, Sarah Lurie, Handan Ozbilgin and Patrick Scheid. Performances are set for May and June 2015 at The Connelly Theater at the Cornelia Connelly Center (220 East 4th Street, Manhattan).

In making the announcement, David Herskovits, Target Margin Theater's Artistic Director, stated, "Gertrude Stein is a natural for us at TMT. No writer is more challengingly experimental; no writer is more playfully child-like. All of our artists aspire to capture her spirit of play and rigor, of brainy fun and playful curiosity, and David Greenspan embodies that spirit like no one else."

Permission for the texts has been granted by the Estate of Gertrude Stein, through its Literary Executor, Mr. Stanford Gann, Jr. of Levin & Gann, P.A.

TMT's programming is made possible through major support from The Andrew W. Mellon New York Theater Program, Axe-Houghton Foundation, The Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, The Clinton-Walker Family Foundation, The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Fred Alger Management, Inc., The Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Iger Bay Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts and The Shubert Foundation.

Target Margin Theater, entering its 24th season, has been at the forefront of New York's alternative theater scene and has been praised for its bold and sometimes wild interpretations of classic dramas and lesser-known works. TMT has presented ambitious re-thinkings of plays by Shakespeare, Chekov, Brecht, Gertrude Stein, and Beaumarchais, among others. TMT has also created original works and new music/opera over the years and has served over 1,000 artists (mostly emerging) through its annual Lab. The company's production of Mamba's Daughters received the Obie Award and was a sensation of the 1999 Spoleto Festival, and its recent epic production of Goethe's Faust received critical acclaim. Recent productions include The (*) Inn at Abrons Arts Center, Uncle Vanya and The Tempest at HERE, and Uriel Acosta: I Want That Man! at The Chocolate Factory.

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