Colt Coeur to Stage World Premiere of HOW TO LIVE ON EARTH in September

How to Live on Earth is a haunting new play about our unrelenting obsession with the next frontier and the desire to give your life for something greater than yourself. Inspired in part by the Mars One project to colonize Mars by 2025 - this piece is a funny, wry, and deeply truthful portrait of the fears and hopes that drive us towards exploration and expansion.

Four individuals will be chosen for the one-way mission of a lifetime. The only catch: they can't come back. As contestants compete, they wrestle with what this means for their families, partners, and finally, themselves. How to Live on Earth is a play about space, bonds, creature comforts, and the vast expanses within us.

In the fall of 2014 MJ Kaufman approached director Adrienne Campbell-Holt with an interest in developing a theatrical piece inspired by the Mars One project. They applied for an Audrey Residency with New Georges and were selected. MJ and Adrienne did some research and assembled a team of 5 actors for a November 2014 workshop where characters and scenarios were generated using improvisational games, prompts, actual Mars One applicants' videos, and the questions from the application for the ABC reality series The Bachelor.

The cast for How to Live on Earth is: Molly Carden, Adam Harrington, Lynne Lipton, Genesis Oliver, Charles Socarides, and Amelia Workman.

MJ Kaufman is a trans-identified playwright who prefers the promouns 'he' or 'they.' Their work explores themes of gender, sexuality, identity, cultural versus blood ancestry, and insider/outsider dynamics. While their past work has often explored questions of history, landscapes, and loss, this play examines explorer narratives and the drive for expansion in the future. Their work has been seen at the Huntington Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, Yale School of Drama, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Aurora Theater, Crowded Fire, Fresh Ink Theatre, New Harmony Project and performed in Russian in Moscow. They have received awards and commissions from the Program for Women in Theater, the Playwrights Foundation, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, Young Playwrights Inc., and the Huntington Theatre, where they are also a playwriting fellow. MJ received the 2013 ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting, the 2013 Global Age Project Prize, and the 2010 Jane Chambers Prize in Feminist Theatre. MJ is currently a member of the Clubbed Thumb Emerging Writers Group, The Falcons, an Audrey Resident at New Georges and a Resident Artist at The Drama League. Originally from Portland, Oregon, MJ attended Wesleyan University and recently received an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.

Adrienne Campbell-Holt is the Artistic Director of Colt Coeur. Upcoming: world premiere of Theresa Rebeck's The Nest (Denver Theatre Company), One Child Born (Oberon at American Repertory Theater), and the world premiere of Cal in Camo (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater/Colt Coeur). Recent: Dental Society Midwinter Meeting by Laura Jacqmin at Williamstown Theater Festival (Foeller Fellowship), World Premiere of Dry Land by Ruby Rae Spiegel (Colt Coeur @ HERE, NYC), Red starring Tim Daly (Dorset Theater Festival, VT), World Premiere of Greg Moss' REUNION (South Coast Rep), World Premiere of Everything is Ours by Nikole Beckwith (Colt Coeur @ HERE), Recall (Colt Coeur @ Wild Project), Flu Season (American Conservatory Theater, SF), Fish Eye (Colt Coeur @ HERE), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Yale), Dead Man's Cell Phone (NYU), Seven Minutes in Heaven (Emerging America Festival, Huntington Theatre Company and Colt Coeur @ HERE). She is a Time Warner/Women's Project Lab 2014-2016 Fellow, a recipient of a Jerome Foundation/Tofte Lake Fellowship, the EST/Sloan grant, an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and a New Georges Affiliated Artist and Audrey Resident. She has developed work with La Jolla Playhouse, Roundabout Underground, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, Rattlestick, Women's Project Theater, New Georges, and EST. She is also the director of #makeitfair. BA Barnard College, Columbia University.

The scenic design for How to Live on Earth is by Amy Rubin; costume design is by Ashley Rose Horton; lighting design is by Grant Yeager; sound design is by M.L. Dogg; projections by Lianne Arnold, properties by Shannon O'Brien; production management by Paul Passaro, and technical direction by Josh Shain. Sarah Devon Ford is the Production Stage Manager. Colt Coeur is producing, with Jessica Rieken as line-producer, and Ellie Sachs as Associate Producer / Assistant Director.

Colt Coeur, an artists' ensemble, collaboratively creates theater from the ground up. Founded in 2010, Colt Coeur has created and produced five world-premieres: Seven Minutes in Heaven, together as a company with playwright Steven Levenson; Fish Eye, with playwright Lucas Kavner; Recall, by Eliza Clark; Everything is Ours, by Nikole Beckwith, and Dry Land, by Ruby Rae Spiegel. All five of Colt Coeur's productions have been New York Times and/or Time Out New York critic's picks and played to sold-out houses.

The performance schedule for How to Live on Earth is Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:30pm, and Sundays and Mondays at 7pm beginning on Sunday, September 13th. There will be special performances Wednesdays, September 16th and September 30th at 8:30pm. Opening night is Thursday, September 17th and How to Live on Earth will run through Saturday, October 3rd.

How to Live on Earth plays at HERE, 145 Sixth Avenue, between Spring and Broome. Tickets are $18 general admission and may be purchased at www.here.org or by phoning 212.352.3101. For more information, visit www.coltcoeur.org.

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