New Georges Theatre Presents ALICEGRACEANON, Previewing 10/18

New Georges (Susan Bernfield, Producing Artistic Director; Sarah Cameron Sunde, Deputy Artistic Director; Jaynie Saunders Tiller, Managing Director) in association with Irondale Center (85 Oxford Street between Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street, Brooklyn) will present the World Premiere of Kara Lee Corthron's ALICEGRACEANON, October 18-November 9. The production will be directed by Kara-Lynn Vaeni and will feature Carolyn Baeumler (Lisa Kron's The Veri**zon Play at the Humana Festival), Eric Clem (The Elephant Man at Williamstown Theatre Festival), Matt Dellapina (The Civilians' In the Footprint at Irondale), Teresa Avia Lim (Quiara Alegria Hudes' Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful at Hartford Stage), and Christina Pumagiera (Theresa Rebeck's Seminar on Broadway). The creative team will include Sound Design by Marcelo Añez, Music Direction by Ralph Capasso, Set Design by Nick Francone, Costume Design by Liam O'Brien, Installation Design by Rachel Schapira, and Lighting Design by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew. The production will also feature The Spectacle Brigade, a 10-member chorus who facilitate inventive moments of theatricality and play smaller parts; and a live band in the "role" of Jefferson Airplane. Special guest musicians will sit in with the band during a break in the action at each performance. A complete schedule will be available at www.newgeorges.org.

A curious girl who falls down a rabbit hole. The lead singer of an iconic '60s rock band. The poor, nameless star of a classic druggie diary. Three oddly connected heroines inhabit three separate worlds, playing out their stories exactly as expected. But when those worlds suddenly collide – really, they collide -- they all start to wonder… who's really controlling my destiny?

Corthron's imaginary meeting of these three characters is inspired by the ways they historically intertwine. It was Grace Slick's obsession with the works of Lewis Carroll (and the drug imagery she found therein) which inspired Jefferson Airplane's hallucinatory 1967 hit White Rabbit, which in turn inspired the title of the best-selling 1971 teenage memoir Go Ask Alice – published as the real diary of an anonymous girl, but later revealed to be a work of fiction, a "cautionary tale" by a do-gooding writer named Beatrice Sparks.

The production is designed to feel like a '60s-era "happening," an event which used familiar materials in new ways to make participants question their approach to experience. The concept will extend throughout the ample Irondale space -- including the balcony, where audiences will enter the theater through an interactive installation, which explores the backstory of the three protagonists. There, text from their stories mingles with art-school style constructions; and soundscapes and live video create the sense that everyone is a voyeur.

ALICEGRACEANON was originally commissioned in 2010 as part of The Germ Project. As a response to the growing trend towards small-cast, one-set plays, New Georges commissioned four playwrights to write BIG plays, plays of "scope and adventure" that are "unproduce-able" and that "encompass elements which extend and expand the conventional playwriting repertoire." In June 2011 they presented a "germ" – a 20-minute excerpt – of each of the plays, at 3LD Art & Technology Center. Kara Lee Corthron's play AliceGraceAnon is the first of these four original Germ Project plays to receive a fully staged production.

ALICEGRACEANON, presented by New Georges at the Irondale Center (85 Oxford Street between Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street, Brooklyn) will play a four-week engagement October 19-November 9; Tuesday through Saturday at 8pm with an additional performance on Monday, October 22 at 8pm. Tickets ($25; $35 premium tickets; $10 on Tuesdays) may be purchased online at www.irondale.org or by calling 866-811-4111. For more information or to purchase group rates call New Georges at 646-336-8077.

Kara Lee Corthron (Playwright) plays include JULIUS BY DESIGN (Fulcrum, Penumbra Theatre), ETCHED IN SKIN ON A SUNLIT NIGHT (InterAct Theatre, 6/12), HOLLY DOWN IN HEAVEN (Forum Theatre, Washington, D.C., 10/12; Princess Grace Award), SPOOKWATER, LISTEN FOR THE LIGHT, ELECTRIC PERSEPHONE IN THE SCORPION'S DEN, and WILD Black-Eyed SusanS. Other awards/honors include: The Vineyard Theatre's 3rd Annual Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, two NEA grants (with InterAct and Naked Angels), the Helen Merrill Award, Lincoln Center's Lecomte du Nouy Prize (three-time recipient), an E.S.T./Sloan Commission, the Theodore Ward Prize, the New Professional Theatre Writers Award, two MacDowell fellowships, residencies at Skriðuklaustur (Iceland), the Millay Colony, and Ledig House and she was twice finalist for New Dramatists membership. Current commissions: South Coast Rep, New Georges, and Naked Angels. Her plays have been produced and/or developed at the African Continuum Theatre (D.C.), ArsNova, CenterStage (Baltimore), Electric Pear, E.S.T., Horizon Theatre (Atlanta), the Kennedy Center, Naked Angels, New Dramatists, New Georges, NYTW, The Orchard Project, Page 73, Penumbra, PlayPenn Conference, The Shalimar, TheatreWorks (Palo Alto), the Vineyard Theatre, and Voice &Vision among others. TV: writer for NBC's KINGS (2008-2009). Kara is a Juilliard alumna, instructor at Primary Stages' Einhorn School of Performing Arts, a New Georges Affiliated Artist and member of the 2010-2011 Ars Nova Play Group, 'Wright On! Playwrights Group (co-founder), Blue Roses Productions, the Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America.

KARA-LYNN VAENI (Director) directorial work has been seen at HERE, BAM, The National Theatre of Prague, The Guggenheim Works & Process, New Georges, Dallas Theater Center, Yale Repertory Theatre, Irondale Center, 3LD Art & Technology Center, 2G, NYC Fringe, The Flea Theatre, The Wild Project, The Duplex, Montana Rep and the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in Florida. Her innovative staging and use of contemporary dance for Opera Slavica's Rusalka won her an extended invitation to perform from the Artistic Director of the Czech Center in New York. She is a Resident Director for the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at NYU, the Literary Manager of New Georges, a faculty member at Hofstra University and the University of MA-Amherst, and an Alumna of the Women's Project Directors Lab. She received her MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama in 2004 where she also received a Presidential Public Service Fellowship and the Julian Kauffman Prize for Directing.

NEW GEORGES founded in 1992, has premiered 37 new full-length plays and 11 festivals of new work; hundreds of original works have passed through New Georges' workspace, The Room, on their way to venues in New York City and beyond. In addition to producing regular seasons, the company is a play and artist development organization, providing essential resources and opportunities to a community of adventurous artists. Their production of Eisa Davis' Angela's Mixtape was one of The New Yorker's "Best Off-Broadway Shows of 2009;" and Jenny Schwartz's God's Ear was a Time Out New York "Top Ten of 2007" and transferred to the Vineyard Theatre in 2008. Plays premiered at New Georges have been published by Faber & Faber, Samuel French, Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Smith & Kraus, Seagull Books and Vintage, and have received Susan Smith Blackburn and Kesselring prizes. In addition, New Georges produced early works by many notable playwrights, including Lisa D'Amour, Tracey Scott Wilson, Diana Son, Cusi Cram, Sheila Callaghan, Heidi Schreck, Leigh Fondakowski, Catherine Filloux, Kate Moira Ryan and Carson Kreitzer. Honors include an OBIE Award as well as awards from New York Women's Agenda, Princess Grace Foundation/USA, Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation, Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, and FringeNYC. In 2009, The L Magazine named New Georges among its "Best of NYC;" and a study published by TDF, OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: The Life and Times of the New American Play, lists New Georges as one of the top 10 theaters nationwide named by playwrights as a leading producer of their plays.

IRONDALE CENTER the first performing arts space to open in the Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District is uniquely and entirely run and maintained by the Irondale Ensemble. A beautiful and historic space, the Center is an old Sunday school building attached to the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. The church boasts an incredible history in its own right being a shelter proving through history a commitment to positive social activism.

 

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.