Transport Group Announces The 2018-2019 Season Featuring World Premiere Musical RENASCENCE

Transport Group has announced its 2018-2019 mainstage season of two productions: Renascence, a world premiere musical about a radical and reckless poet and The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, a play about the trial that sparked a national wave of Vietnam War resistance. Renascence will run October 5 - November 17, 2018 and The Trial of the Catonsville Nine will run January 16 - February 23, 2019. Both productions will be presented at the Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, New York City. Transport Group season memberships are now on sale on their website: transportgroup.org. Casting and additional staffing announcements and single ticket sales will be available at a later date.

Renascence is the story of Edna St. Vincent Millay, who lived one hundred years ago, a hundred years ahead of her time. At eighteen she writes a staggeringly profound poem that rocks the literary world and transforms this girl from rural Maine into a cause cèlébre. Vincent captivates everyone in her orbit (male and female), and is hero worshipped by young women for her unabashed intellect and frank sensuality. She works her newfound fame, leaving in her wake broken relationships with those who believed in her before anybody else. In her New York debut, composer Carmel Dean sets Millay's words to music in a lush, contemporary score, immersing the audience in this Pulitzer Prize-winning poet's groundbreaking but sometimes overlooked artistry and provocative point of view that today resonates more than ever.
Renascence has a book by Dick Scanlan (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Everyday Rapture), music by Carmel Dean (Musical Director, If/Then, American Idiot) and lyrics from the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The show is directed by Jack Cummings III and Dick Scanlan. This piece has been in development with Transport Group since 2014 and this production will be its world premiere.

The Trial of the Catonsville Nine is based on the court transcripts of the trial of nine peace activists who broke into a drafting office in Catonsville, Maryland on May 17th 1968, and burned 378 draft cards with homemade napalm. Father Phil Berrigan and his brother Father Daniel Berrigan lead the movement, joined by seven additional parishioners in their protest for peace. In sharp contrast to the wave of young, liberal extremists at the forefront of the resistance headlines, The Nine give a new face to activism and inspire hundreds of anti-war demonstrations that follow. Transport Group draws audiences into the world of these courageous demonstrators with a re-imagined re-telling of this landmark struggle of culture versus conscience.

The Trial of the Catonsville Nine was produced on Broadway in 1971 and received numerous award nominations including a Tony Award nomination for Best American Play. This is its first New York revival in over 30 years. This production is produced by special arrangement with The Daniel Berrigan Literary Trust, Catalyst Literary Management and Phil Sandhaus. The play is by Daniel Berrigan and will be directed by Jack Cummings III.

Transport Group is the recipient of a special Drama Desk Award recognizing its "breadth of vision and presentation of challenging productions," a Special Citation from the prestigious New York Critics' Circle, and a Special Citation from the Obie Awards as well as numerous other awards and award nominations from the Outer Critics' Circle, Lucille Lortel Awards, Obie Awards, Off-Broadway Alliance, Drama League, and others. Founded in 2001, Transport Group stages new works and re-imagined revivals-both plays and musicals-that explore the challenges of relationship and identity in modern America.

Currently headed by founder Jack Cummings III (Artistic Director) and Lori Fineman (Executive Director), Transport Group most recently produced the critically acclaimed production of Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke with Classic Stage Company starring Marin Ireland and Nathan Darrow, Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude starring David Greenspan (Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance as well as an Obie Award for Greenspan, Cummings and Transport Group), and Picnic & Come Back, Little Sheba: William Inge in Rep, which received two Drama Desk nominations and three Obie Awards (Jack Cummings III for direction, Heather Mac Rae for performance, Dane Laffrey for scenic design).

Additional recent productions include the first off-Broadway revival of Once Upon a Mattress, starring Jackie Hoffman and John "Lypsinka" Epperson; Three Days To See, a world premiere theatrical exploration of Helen Keller through her own writings; the critically acclaimed revival of John Cariani's modern classic Almost, Maine; and a re-imagined revival of the John Van Druten classic I Remember Mama which was included in the New York Times' Top Ten productions of 2014 and The New Yorker's top cultural moments of 2014. In addition to mainstage productions, Transport Group also produces one-night-only, star-studded concert events, often featuring the productions' original orchestrations performed by as many as 60 actors and musicians. Concert titles have included Baby (2012), Once Upon a Mattress (2013), The Music Man (2014), Peter Pan (2016), A Man of No Importance (2016), Man of La Mancha (2017) and Promises, Promises (2018).

Renascence will run October 5 - November 17, 2018 and The Trial of the Catonsville Nine will run January 16 - February 23, 2019. Transport Group season memberships are now on sale on their website: transportgroup.org or by phone 866-811-4111.

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