Phillip Howze's FRONTIERES SANS FRONTIERES Set for The Bushwick Starr This Spring

"The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future." - Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

"...the existence of a nation is not proved by the culture, but in the people's struggle against the forces of occupation." - Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of The Earth

"The America we celebrate is an illusion." - Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion

The Bushwick Starr presents the world premiere of Frontiéres sans Frontières, a bold and boundless new play about borders, friendships, and the challenges of reinventing oneself in a world that seeks to limit and delineate you. Written by Phillip Howze, the show will be directed by Dustin Wills and runs March 1 - 18 (Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8pm). Tickets are $20 at www.thebushwickstarr.org.

At the bombed-out corner of a country that feels both foreign and familiar, three orphaned, stateless youth have built a simple life out of recreation and mischief-making. Their way of life is rocked as a parade of immodest strangers slowly invade their homestead offering gifts of knowledge, medicine, art and commerce. As long-held values are upended, and the lure of escape blurs their beliefs, life and landscape mutate into a grotesquery of charity that threaten their relationships and humanity.

In a comic spectacle that challenges the pretense of altruism and civilization, Frontiéres sans Frontières asks what happens when generosity looks a lot like self-interest? How to make sense of things when the promise of language matures to the warring of words? What if development equals death?

This world premiere marks the New York playwriting debut for Phillip Howze, a recent graduate of Yale School of Drama. The play is helmed by Dustin Wills, the imaginative director of The Foundry's O, Earth, and the current Page 73/Rattlestick Playwrights production of Orange Julius.

"Having worked in the international human rights field for many years prior to becoming a playwright, I wanted to put that personal experience forward in a story that represents many of the challenges to human dignity so many people are facing right now," Howze states. "Also, I wanted to gift a talented ensemble, all actors of color, the chance to be fascinating and funny. We don't see that often in our culture. There's something subversive about it."

The Bushwick Starr theater is located at 207 Starr Street, Brooklyn, NY [between Irving and Wyckoff]. Directions: Via Subway take the L Train to Jefferson Street, exit at Starr Street, walk against traffic on Starr, and the theater is 3/4 of a block on the right. For detailed driving directions, visit www.thebushwickstarr.org/DIRECTIONS.

Phillip Howze is a playwright whose work has been developed at Bay Area Playwrights Festival, BRIC Arts-Media, Clubbed Thumb, Cutting Ball Theater, Theater Masters, PRELUDE Festival 2015, San Francisco Playhouse, SPACE at Ryder Farm, and Yale Cabaret. His fellowships include the 2015-16 Artist Fellow at Lincoln Center Education and 2015 Sundance Institute Theater Lab. He is a member of the 2016-17 Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater/NYSF and a Resident Writer at Lincoln Center Theater. Prior to playwriting, he worked in advocacy at the Open Society Foundations and was an educator at the US Embassy's cultural center in Rangoon, Burma.

Dustin Wills is a director whose recent projects include Orange Julius (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre & Page 73), AWFUL EVENT! (Development: NYTW, Ars Nova), a musical adaptation of Lorca's Once Five Years Pass (Williamstown Theatre Festival), and O, EARTH (Foundry Theatre). Dustin has also directed and developed work with Invisible Anatomy, The Vineyard, Berkeley Rep, Yale Rep, Berkshire Theatre Group, Paper Chairs, and Salvage Vanguard Theatre; created large-scale community puppet-projects with Creative Action; and devised new work for The English Theatre of Rome and Teatro L'Arciliuto in Rome, Italy. He is a two-time recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Theatre, a Drama League and Boris Sagal directing fellow, and for a couple of years gave rogue tours of the Vatican. Upcoming projects: La Pauvre Matelot with Yale Opera. MFA: Yale School of Drama. dustinwills.com

The Bushwick Starr is an Obie Award winning non profit theater that presents an annual Season of new performance work. We are an organization defined by both our artists and our community, and since 2007, we have grown into a thriving theatrical venue, a vital neighborhood arts center, and a destination for exciting and engaging performance. We provide a springboard for emerging professional artists to make career-defining leaps, and we are a sanctuary where established performance companies come to experiment and innovate. Our past Seasons have included new work from groundbreaking artists such as The Mad Ones, Clare Barron, Dave Malloy, The Debate Society, the TEAM, and Half Straddle.

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