New Feet Productions Presents Leave the Balcony Open Through 2/26

New Feet Productions will present Leave the Balcony Open, a new play about learning how to live with loss written by Maya Macdonald. Jessica Bauman directs a cast of seven including Heidi Armbruster* (Broadway: Time Stands Still), Jerzy Gwiazdowski* (Broadway: The Lieutenant of Inishmore), Betsy Hogg* (Broadway: Fiddler on the Roof; The Crucible), Julie Kline* (Moment of Zen/Women’s Project; Birthday/Rising Phoenix Rep.), Jared McGuire (Photograph 51/3LD), Mary Rasmussen* (Romeo & Juliet/The Public Theatre), and a performer to be announced shortly. Performances for Leave the Balcony Open will be held at 3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich Street (between Rector and Edgar Streets) for sixteen performances through Sunday, February 26th, 2012. AEA Approved Showcase. *Member, Actors’ Equity Assoc.

May is standing in the way of control. June is trying to hold out. Jon really wants a hug. Silent Gen is still looking up at that broken window, and everyone knows why, but never says anything. On a rural college campus where proximity to death defines your social status, four soon-to-be-graduates party, scream and learn how to move on.

“Set between the lines of realism and a preternatural world, Leave the Balcony Open is a wild theatrical ride through a landscape of loss and resilience,” states director Jessica Bauman. “By offering humor and poetry (and costume parties) in the darkest places, it allows both the characters and the audience to find hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable grief.”

Leave the Balcony Open is produced by Lisa Dozier and New Feet Productions. Assistant Producer: Michael Holt; Director: Jessica Bauman; Scenic Designer: Gabe Evansohn; Projection Designer: Jesse Garrison; Costume Designer: Sydney Gallas; Lighting Designers: Laura Mroczkowski and Cat Tate Starmer; Sound Designer: Brandon Wolcott; Production Manager: Ken Larson; Production Stage Manager: Emily Paige Ballou; Assistant Stage Manager: Donald Peter Butchko; Publicist: Paul Siebold/Off Off PR; Co-producer: lowercase d.

Leave the Balcony Open plays for sixteen performances through Sunday, February 26, 2012 with performances running Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 7pm. 

Tickets are $18 and can be purchased online at https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/899595 or by calling 212-352-3101. For more information, please visit http://leavethebalconyopen.com/.

The runtime for Leave the Balcony Open is approximately 95 minutes with no intermission.

Jessica Bauman (Director) recently directed Making Up the Truth by and with This American Life journalist Jack Hitt, which premiered at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven in June. Making Up the Truth will be included in the 2012 Spoleto Festival. She has been working as a director in New York and regionally for almost 20 years. Her work has been seen at theatres such as New Georges, New York Theatre Workshop, Soho Rep, the Public, Juilliard (including the world premiere of Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire), Rising Phoenix Rep and the 52nd Street Project. Regionally, she has worked at the Huntington Theater, Portland Stage Company, Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, Theatre Outlet (Allentown, PA), Vermont Stage Company and the O’Neill. She has collaborated with playwrights such as David Lindsay-Abaire, Kia Corthron, Tracey Scott Wilson, Emily DeVoti, Jenny Lyn Bader, Diana Son, Napoleon Ellsworth and Kirsten Greenidge. She is the founder and Artistic Director of New Feet Productions, for which she directed and produced Into the Hazard (Henry 5), her own six actor adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V, All Day Suckers by Susan Dworkin and Milk by Emily DeVoti (co-produced with New Georges). For the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, she has directed the premieres of Terrence McNally’s Teachers Break with Cynthia Nixon and Maura Tierney, Harrison Rivers’ and it seems to me a very good sign… with Naomi Watts and John Krasinski, and David Lindsay-Abaire’s Dress the Orphans with Rachel Dratch and Rosie Perez. She has been an Artist-in- Residence at Tribeca Performing Arts Center, a Drama League Directors Project fellow, and is an alumna of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a NYTW Usual Suspect and New Georges Affiliated Artist. Jessica was a finalist for the 2007-2009 TCG/NEA Career Development program for Directors. She is a graduate of Yale College.

Maya Macdonald (Playwright) is a playwright, actor and native of New York City. She is bad at sleeping, but rather skilled at dreaming. Her plays have been read, workshopped and produced with The Bushwick Starr, New Dramatists, Ensemble Studio Theatre, MCC Young Playwrights, The Be Company, Rising Phoenix Rep, 3LD and Astoria Performing Arts Center, among others. She was Finalist for the 2011 Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship, a Semi-Finalist for both the 2009, and 2011 Page 73 Fellowship, a Finalist for the 2010 Mabou Mines Artist Residency, and a 2010 resident playwright at Tofte Lake Center’s Emerging Artists Residency, hosted by Liz Engelman. Her play the really important people will be produced by Rising Phoenix Rep this Spring. Maya is a graduate of Bennington College, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, and a member of the Dramatist’s Guild of America. Maya attempts optimism daily, and believes that hope is cutting edge. She seeks to represent this in the worlds she creates on stage and off. www.mayamacdonald.net

New Feet Productions is dedicated to developing and producing new and classical work that ripples with theatrical language and invention. Jessica Bauman founded New Feet Productions in 2007 in order to develop Into the Hazard (Henry 5), her six actor adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V. New Feet sponsored two workshops of that project – one in spring ’07 at the Culture Project, and one in winter ’08 at the Tank. In May ’09, New Feet fully produced Into the Hazard (Henry 5) at Walkerspace with sets and lights designed by Tony-winning designer Christopher Akerlind. In 2010, New Feet co-produced Milk by Emily DeVoti with New Georges. New Feet’s production of All Day Suckers by Susan Dworkin was part of the New York International Fringe Festival in August 2010. Most recently, New Feet has co-produced journalist Jack Hitt’s solo performance Making Up the Truth, directed by Jessica Bauman, which premiered at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven in 2011, and will be featured in the 2012 Spoleto Festival.

3LD Art & Technology Center creates and supports challenging large-scale art within a financially sustainable environment. Our goals are to create viable growth oriented business models for experimental art production, revitalize the experimental tradition in New York by improving the working conditions and quality of production, and foster a community of artists who work cooperatively and aggressively to address their own barriers. In order to achieve these goals, we create, re-distribute and re-imagine resources that drive core cost reduction while increasing capacity and revenue. www.3ldnyc.org

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