Compagnia de' Colombari Takes EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE on Tour, Now thru 4/16

COMPAGNIA DE' COLOMBARI has announced the four city national tour of Flannery O'Connor's EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE, created for the stage and directed by Karin Coonrod. EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE will play Washington, D.C.; Atlanta, Georgia; Brunswick, Maine; and New York City. Tour begins tonight, April 10 and continues through Wednesday, April 16. Tickets are free, for more information visit www.colombari.org.

EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE by Flannery O'Connor and created for the stage by Karin Coonrod is a tragic-comic interracial seat shifting dance by whites and blacks on a moving bus in America's deep south. Playing and speaking out the story verbatim, eight Colombari actors with razor sharp precision create all the characters and all the narration. Georgia's red earth is slammed up against the eternal. O'Connor's voice spread out across the company of actors carries the power of the apocalyptic comedy right into the audience.

EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE was developed at the University of Iowa, Sundance Theatre Lab and premiered at New York Theatre Workshop (2001).

The production stars Jacquie Antaramian* (Best Leading Actress, Barrymore Award for Nine Parts of Desire), D'Ambrose Boyd*, Ayeje Feamster*, Abigail Killeen* (Best Actress, PEER Award for Macbeth), Julienne Kim* (B'way: Metamorphoses, Golden Child), Christopher McLinden* (Outstanding Performance, After Dark Award for Vincent in Brixton), Randolph Curtis Rand* (Obie Award Winner for Painted Snake in a Painted Chair) and Carlton Taylor* (performed Best Original Song, "Raise It Up", at the 80th Annual Academy Awards).

The production features costume design by Oana Botez (Drammy Award, Princess Grace Award, Barrymore Award, NEA/TCG Career Development Program, Henry Hewes Design Award Nomination, Barrymore Award Nomination) and lighting design by Chris Akerlind (Obie Award 2000 for King John, Tony Award for Light in the Piazza).

EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE plays the following cities through April 16th:

April 10th at 8:00pm

Lorhfink Auditorium, Georgetown University, Washington DC

April 12th at 8:00pm

Cannon Chapel, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

April 15th at 7:30pm

Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine

April 16th at 8:00pm

Little Red/Elizabeth Irwin High School, 40 Charlton Street, NYC

Tickets are free. For more information visit www.Colombari.org. Running Time: 55 minutes.

*Actors Appearing Courtesy of Actors' Equity Association.

BIOGRAPHIES

FLANNERY O'CONNOR (Writer), one of the most admired writers of the 20th century, O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925. Her Southern Gothic style is known for catching the language and social behaviours of the rural life that surrounded her with a dark, violent sense of humor weighted in spiritual mystery. O'Connor's first claim to fame at the age of five was the teaching of her pet bantam chicken to walk backward, a stunt documented by a pathe newsreel cameraman and screened across America in 1932. O'Connor completed high school and college in Milledgeville, Georgia. In 1945 she entered graduate school at the University of Iowa intending to be a political cartoonist and instead joined the Writer's Workshop, where she was mentored by Paul Engle. In 1951 she was diagnosed with lupus, the disease that claimed her father's life. From that point until her death, O'Connor lived with her mother on the farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she raised peacocks and wrote. As Brad Gooch, her biographer states: "She was the first post-war American woman author in the canonic library of America; the phrase 'like something out of Flannery O'Connor' entered our language as shorthand for nailing many a funny, dark, askew moment," She wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as many reviews and commentaries. When she died in 1964 at the age of 39, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers. The New York Times deemed her story Everything That Rises Must Converge one of "the few masterpieces in the form in English." Her Complete Stories won the 1972 US National Book Award for Fiction.

KARIN COONROD (Creator for stage/Director) based in New York City, is an international theater artist of note. She founded two theater companies: 1) Arden Party in downtown New York and 2) Compagnia de' Colombari (2004-present) an international company (based in New York) which began a new tradition of theater in Orvieto, Italy with the medieval mystery plays in public spaces (Strangers and Other Angels 2004-2006); and in New York, More Or Less I Am (from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself) since 2008. Known for the Shakespeare productions--an epic Henry VI (1996) and surprising Love's Labor's Lost (2011) both at the Public Theater; King John (2000), Julius Caesar (2003) and Coriolanus (2005) with Theatre for a New Audience; Othello at Hartford Stage (2005)--Coonrod has also created many seminal productions: Andras Visky's I Killed My Mother (in Chicago and New York 2010), Chuck Mee's A Perfect Wedding (in Cluj, Romania 2012); Euripides' Phoenician Women (Moscow Art Theater 2007); a cabaret adaptation of Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York with flamenco dancer La Conja at New York University (2002); and The World is Round is Round is Round from a story by Gertrude Stein with composer Gina Leishman (2013). She has prepared new translations: Vvedensky's Christmas at the Ivanovs' with Julia Listengarten (1996); Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba with Nilo Cruz (1997); and Victor or Children Take Over with Frederic Maurin (1994); all of which she directed in acclaimed productions. She is on the faculty at Yale School of Drama (since 2002).

COMPAGNIA DE' COLOMBARI (Company Colombari) is an international collective of performing artists, generating theater in surprising places. Colombari intentionally clashes cultures, traditions and art forms to bring fresh interpretation to the written word-old and new-and commits to using any means possible to flesh it out. Colombari brings performers and audiences together, thereby transforming strangers into community. Colombari is founded on the twin principles that the magic of great theater can happen anywhere and be made accessible to everyone.

Based in New York City, Compagnia de' Colombari was born in Orvieto Italy in 2004, where the company re-imagined the medieval mystery plays and performed them in the streets and piazzas of Orvieto. Having revitalized the tradition of theater during Orvieto's Corpus Christi Festival each spring, the company launched a parallel theatrical tradition in New York, STRANGERS AND OTHER ANGELS. Since 2008, the company has created and performed MORE OR LESS I AM (inspired by Whitman's "Song of Myself") all around New York City, EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE (from Flannery O'Connor's short story) in Rome and on tour in the United States, THE WORLD IS ROUND IS ROUND IS ROUND (based on Gertrude Stein's story) performed in upstate New York at an old mill. And GIULIA (a play by Andras Visky) performed in a courtyard in Orvieto, Italy. The company is presently at work on Monteverdi's ORFEO to be performed in the Palazzo Simoncelli in Orvieto in July 2014.

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