MOURNING SUN to Run 11/6-12/6 at West End Theatre

MOURNING SUN, a new play by Antu Yacob slated for production by Theatre 167, sheds light on brutal traditions impacting girls and women across the world. Set in Ethiopia and New York, this remarkable love story spans continents and cultures while exploring the way our lives are our lives are shaped by trauma and recovery, dislocation and identity, and the power of human connection.

At 14, Biftu and Abdi listen to American pop music and fantasize about meeting Michael Jackson. Then Biftu is forced into an arranged marriage and her dreams and her body are shattered. MOURNING SUN asks how we can recover from the unthinkable, and how we can help to heal the people we love.

Child marriage impacts 15 million girls a year-more than 28 girls a minute are forced into marriage before the age of 18. Often these girls are as young as 9 or 10, with bodies utterly unequipped to bear children. They become pregnant and often lose the babies and develop complications, including preventable fistulas which consign them to live as outcasts, abandoned by their husbands and exiled by their culture.

Playwright Yacob grew up in Ethiopia and then the United States. After her sister, a medical student, volunteered at the fistula clinic in Addis Ababa, Ms. Yacob began researching stories of child marriage. MOURNING SUN came out of her desire to tell these stories and to transform her culture. "I realized if I didn't have the mother I had, I could have been one of those girls," the playwright says, "I wanted their voices to be heard. That's why I wrote MOURNING SUN."

Mourning Sun runs from November 6-December 6 at the West End Theatre in the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, 263 W. 86th St., 2nd fl., Thursdays at 7, Fridays & Saturdays at 8, and Sundays at 7. Press opening is November 15. Tickets are $18/$16 and can be purchased online at theatre167.org or on Artfuly or by calling (646) 568-5167. For more information visit Theatre167.org, follow on Twitter at @Theatre167 or on instagram @theatre167, and Like them on Facebook at Facebook.com/Theatre167.

Ari Laura Kreith will direct this world premiere production. The cast is Arlene Chico-Lugo, Shamsuddin Abdul-Hamid, Charles Everett, Fadoua Hanine, Kevis Hillocks, John P. Keller, and Antu Yacob. The production team features Jen Price Fick (Set Design), Matthew Fick (Lighting Design), Jessa-Raye Court (Costume Design), Anna Libbie Grossman (Sound Design), Bo Frazier (Assistant Director), Erica Gould (Fight Choreographer), and Ben Andersen (Stage Manager).

This project continues Theatre 167's tradition of producing plays addressing charged social issues - past productions have tackled sex trafficking, HIV/AIDS in Africa and the U.S., and immigration. ?

Theatre 167 received the 2015 Caffe Cino Fellowship Award, presented by the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation to an off-off-Broadway company "that consistently produces outstanding work." In 2014 their world premiere production of PIRIRA, a new play exploring human rights, gay rights, and the complexities of international aid, transferred to off-Broadway and won the 2014 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Premiere Production of a Play. The multilingual ensemble is dedicated to creating imaginative, deeply collaborative plays that investigate cultural complexities. Named for the 167 languages spoken in the world's most culturally diverse neighborhood, Theatre 167 experiments with form and process to develop productions that celebrate a multitude of voices, explore our essential humanity, and build bridges between our diverse communities.

Theatre 167 also created and produced The Jackson Heights Trilogy -167 TONGUES, YOU ARE NOW THE OWNER OF THIS SUITCASE, and JACKSON HEIGHTS 3AM - three full-length multi-writer plays featuring 93 characters speaking 14 languages, performed individually at four venues in Queens to what one reviewer called "the most diverse audience I've ever seen," as a six-hour epic in Manhattan, and re-imagined as an immersive installation at Queens Museum. Other Jackson Heights-inspired projects include I LIKE TO BE HERE: JACKSON HEIGHTS REVISITED, OR, THIS IS A MANGO, at the New Ohio Theatre and several short pieces for Queens Theatre's World's Fair Play Festival, which was a NY Times Critics' Pick.

Now in its fifth season, Theatre 167 (Artistic Director, Ari Laura Kreith; Artistic Producer, Jenny Lyn Bader) is currently in residence at Manhattan's West End Theatre housed in The Church Of St Paul and St Andrew, which inspired their recent production THE CHURCH OF WHY NOT for which they received the Randall Wreghitt New Producer Endowment Award grant from Theatre Resources Unlimited.

The play runs two hours including intermission. The space is wheelchair-accessible. Mourning Sun is for adult audiences only and the Church of St. Paul & St. Andrew is not responsible for any of its content.