The Flea Premieres Moses' LOVE/STORIES (OR BUT YOU WILL GET USED TO IT) 1/29-2/16

The Flea Theater will present the World Premiere of Itamar Moses' LOVE/STORIES (OR BUT YOU WILL GET USED TO IT), a collection of five short new plays. Moses is the author of The Four of Us, Bach at Leipzig, Back Back Back and Celebrity Row, a playwright whose sensibility is the perfect match for The Bats, The Flea's resident company of emerging artists. Performances begin previews on January 29 with opening night slated for Monday, February 16.

Nothing is what it seems in LOVE/STORIES (OR BUT YOU WILL GET USED TO IT), five funny and poignant short plays. A casting session for a play about a love affair goes awry. A talk-back with a theatre audience becomes the occasion for a life-altering choice. A couple moving in together finds that greater intimacy can have surprising results. And much more.

The production is directed by Michelle Tattenbaum and features a design team consisting of Jerad Schomer (set), Joe Chapman (lights), Jessica Pabst (costumes), Brandon Wolcott, (sound) and Eilzabeth Kandel (graphic design). The play will star Felipe Bonilla, Laurel Holland, Maren Langdon, Michael Micalizzi and John Russo, five members of The Bats.

Says playwright Moses, "Theater is so much closer to music than it is to fiction and so, in a way, only ever writing full-length plays is like only ever writing concept albums, or Handel's Messiah. But a short play is like a single. And the short form is one of my favorite things to write. The problem though, is that these plays often have no real life, or they run for one weekend, once, and disappear, and they become the homeless orphaned bastard children of a playwright's oeuvre. I'm thrilled that The Flea has entrusted me with their terrific young acting company and given these five bastards orphans of mine a home."

Itamar Moses is the author of Outrage, Bach at Leipzig, Celebrity Row, The Four of Us, Yellowjacket, Back Back Back and Completeness, Reality! (a musical with Gaby Alter), and Fortress of Solitude (a musical with Michael Friedman and Daniel Aukin), and various short plays and one-acts. His work has appeared Off-Broadway and elsewhere in New York, at regional theatres across the country and in Canada, and is published by Faber & Faber and Samuel French. He has received new play commissions from The McCarter Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Wilma Theater, South Coast Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club, and Lincoln Center. Itamar holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU and has taught playwriting at Yale and NYU. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, MCC Playwrights Coalition, Naked Angels Writers Group, and is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. He was born in Berkeley, CA and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Director Michelle Tattenbaum's previous collaborations with Itamar Moses include the Los Angeles premiere of The Four of Us; The Chromium Hook for Manhattan Theatre Club and Lincoln Center Directors' Lab; Reality! for the Cape Cod Theatre Project; and several short plays for Manhattan Theatre Source and Naked Angels. Her directing credits include The Sublet Experiment, Gallathea at Here; An Archipelago of Clouds at FringeNYC; and Guyler Beguiled at the Maverick Theater. Regionally, she has directed at the Hangar Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Goodspeed Opera House, New London Barn Playhouse, Women's Theatre Company, and Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. She is a two-time Drama League Directing Fellow

The Flea Theater, under Artistic Director Jim Simpson and Producing Director Carol Ostrow, is one of New York's leading off-off-Broadway companies. Winner of a Special Drama Desk Award for outstanding achievement, Obie Awards and an Otto for political theater, The Flea has presented over 80 plays and numerous dance and live music performances since its inception in 1996. Past productions include Anne Nelson's The Guys, A.R. Gurney's O Jerusalem, Screenplay, Mrs. Farnsworth and Post Mortem, Roger Rosenblatt's Ashley Montana Goes Ashore..., Kate Robin's The Light Outside, Elizabeth Swados' JABU, Talking Band's The Parrot, Karen Finley's Return of the Chocolate Smeared Woman, Glyn O'Malley's A Heartbeat to Baghdad, Yussef El Guindi's Back of the Throat, Julian Sheppard's Los Angeles, Adam Rapp's Bingo with the Indians, Will Eno's Oh, The Humanity and other exclamations and most recently a revival of CATO by Joseph Addison and the World Premiere of Dawn by Thomas Bradshaw.

(OR BUT YOU WILL GET USED TO IT) runs January 29 through March 9. Performance times vary. The Flea is located at 41 White Street between Church and Broadway, three blocks south of Canal, close to the 1, N, R, Q, W, 6, A, C and E subway lines. Tickets are $20 and are available by calling (212) 352-3101 or online at www.theflea.org.

Photo of Itamar Moses by Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.

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