Remount of George & Co.'s HOLDEN Starts Tonight at New Ohio Theatre

New Ohio Theatre presents a remounting of George & Co.'s HOLDEN, directed by Anisa George and written by Anisa George in collaboration with the ensemble. Originally developed at the 2015 Ice Factory Festival, HOLDEN returns tonight, January 5, through January 14, 2017.

HOLDEN is a tragicomic piece, plumbing a darker dimension of J.D. Salinger's famous novel, The Catcher in the Rye. A few obsessive super-fans have taken up residence in Salinger's private writing bunker. Unbeknownst to the reclusive author himself, their mission to get Salinger to publish once more spirals into a larger excavation of violence in America and the male imagination.

The original concept of HOLDEN was to create a play about the three assassins who carried a copy of The Catcher in the Rye to the scene of their crimes. But a constant barrage of mass shootings in the news during the development of the play infiltrated the creative process and eventually led to the creation of Zev, a fictional character that now sits at the heart of the work. "When I hear there's been yet another mass shooting in America," says George, "I feel like 'the boy in the people shooting hat' who Salinger created, has been irrevocably corrupted and has manifested himself in the world in a way Salinger could never imagine. I think I needed to make sense out of this new Holden, to discover how he was born, and to find a place for him amidst the pantheon of Holdens already enacted in the play."

The performers and co-creators include Jaime Maseda (founding member/Co-Artistic Director of No Face Performance Group, Pig Iron Theatre Co.'s Twelfth Night), Matteo Scammell (member of Obie Award-winning New Paradise Laboratories, The Legend of Georgia McBride with Arden Theatre), Scott Sheppard (Co-Director of Lightning Rod Special, Underground Railroad Game at Ars Nova, Pig Iron's 99 Breakups and Gentlemen Volunteers), Bill George (co-founder/member of Touchstone Theatre, Fringe First Award winner) and George Truman.

The production team includes Nick Benacerraf (Scenic Design), Alex Bechtel (Sound Design), Seth Reiser (Lighting Design), Rebecca Kanach (Costume Design), Cem Ozdeniz (Props Design) and Madeline Charne (Production Stage Manager & Dramaturge).

Watch a trailer for the show below!

---

New Ohio Theatre is located at 154 Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets in New York City. HOLDEN previews on January 5 for a January 6 opening. Performances are Thu, Jan 5 at 7pm, Fri, Jan 6 at 10pm, Sat, Jan 7 at 12pm and 4pm, Sun, Jan 8 at 12pm and 7pm, Mon, Jan 9 at 7pm, Tue, Jan 10 at 6pm, Thu, Jan 12 at 8pm, Fri, Jan 13 at 10pm, and Sat, Jan 14 at 4pm and 8pm.

Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at www.NewOhioTheatre.org or by calling 212-352-3101. The running time is 90 minutes. For information, visit www.NewOhioTheatre.org, Like them on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/NewOhioTheatre and follow on Twitter (Twitter.com/NewOhioTheatre) and Instagram (www.instagram.com/newohiotheatre) at @NewOhioTheatre.

George & Co. was founded in 2009 as a platform for original performances and films that grow out of collaborative research and spontaneous play. It creates complex hybrid works that cross-breed contradictory aesthetics and artistic disciplines, while digging into impenetrable messes of culture, history and identity. George & Co.'s work has been seen at FringeArts (Philadelphia Inquirer Pick), The Ice Factory Festival (NYC), AUX Performance Space (Philadelphia), Underground Arts (Philadelphia), The Brick (NYC), The Hive (London, UK), Chisenhale Dance Space (London, UK), Kontainer (Bilbao, Spain), and Underbelly (Edinburgh, UK). George & Co. was nominated for Best Ensemble at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for its production of The Seer and received a Theater Communications Grant (TCG) to collaborate in Buenos Aires, Argentina with the company LindaLinda. For information, visit GeorgeAndCo.org.

Anisa George was a 2014 TCG - Global Connections grant recipient and has worked as a writer and director with such organizations as Pig Iron, Opera Philadelphia, Swarthmore College, The Bearded Ladies, Lightening Rod Special, and Red40 & The Last Groovement.

New Ohio Theatre is a two-time OBIE Award-winning theatre under the leadership of Robert Lyons, Artistic Director, and Marc Stuart Weitz, Producing Director. The New Ohio serves New York's most adventurous theatre audiences by developing and presenting bold work from today's vast independent theatre community. They believe the best of this community, the small artist-driven ensembles and the daring producing companies who operate without a permanent theatrical home, are actively expanding the boundaries of where American theatre is right now and where it's going. From their home in the West Village's historic Archive Building, the New Ohio provides a high-profile platform for downtown's most mature, ridiculous, engaged, irreverent, gut-wrenching, frivolous, sophisticated, foolish and profound theatrical endeavors. The theatre is accessible from the #1 train to Christopher St. or A, B, C, D, E, F or M train to West 4th St. For information, go to www.NewOhioTheatre.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.