PlayCo to Bring Site-Specific OH MY SWEET LAND to Kitchens Across NYC

The Play Company (PlayCo), led by Founding Producer Kate Loewald and Managing Director Robert Bradshaw, will produce the U.S. premiere of Oh My Sweet Land, written and directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi, in September/October 2017.

Rather than presenting a traditional staging in a theatre venue, PlayCo will bring the play into the community to be performed in private homes as well as religious and community centers with kitchen spaces suitable for audiences of 8 to 80 (or more).

This intimate solo play recounts one woman's journey to Lebanon, Jordan and, finally, Syria, and the chilling events reported by the people she meets along the way. Oh My Sweet Land will offer audiences an intimate, multi-sensory experience.

The Play Company is looking for kitchen spaces within homes and communal spaces, located within New York City's five boroughs. Performances will be held one night in each location. To submit a home kitchen, religious center, community center or event space for the production, an individual or organization can complete the following questionnaire: playco.org/plays/oh-sweet-land.

In Oh My Sweet Land, audiences are invited to step into the kitchen. The onions are cooking on the stove and meat is on the cutting board waiting to be chopped. Our host is preparing kubah, a traditional Syrian dish. While she cooks, she tells us the story of meeting Ashraf, a Syrian exile, and falling in love with him as he desperately tries to help those he was forced to leave behind. When he vanishes, she impulsively trails him to her homeland-one she has never known, now consumed by war. As the meal comes together and then falls apart, we learn the stories of brutality, grace and humanity of those she witnessed along the way.

Amir Nizar Zuabi developed Oh My Sweet Land through a series of interviews he conducted with German-Syrian actor Corinne Jaber, the co-conceiver of the work, who originated the principal role. The U.S. premiere production stars Nadine Malouf. PlayCo introduces vital playwrights and plays from around the world to the U.S. This immersive production will lift what's happening in Syria out of the news cycle and facilitate human connection with the country's people and their stories.

Zuabi is a theatre director, playwright and actor. In 2009, he became one of five co-founders of the independent theatre company ShiberHur (A Bit of Freedom), in the Israeli city of Haifa. His productions there include I Am Yusuf and This Is My Brother and Three Days of Mourning. Oh My Sweet Land had its world premiere in Lauseanne, Switzerland, and has been seen in London at The Young Vic, Dublin at the Abbey Theater, in Amsterdam, Abu Dhabi, Mumbai and Toronto. The script is published by Bloomsbury.

Performances of Oh My Sweet Land will take place in September/October 2017. Tickets will start at $15. A complete performance schedule will be announced mid-July. For more information, visit playco.org or call 212.398.2977.

The creative team for the U.S. premiere includes Mariana Sanchez (Set Design), Nicole Pearce (Lighting Design) and Mark Van Hare (Sound Design).

The Play Company is an OBIE Award-winning Off Broadway theater Production Company. Since launching in 1999, PlayCo has produced 32 new plays from the United States, Germany, Romania, Poland, Sweden, Japan, India, Russia, Chile, Mexico, France, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England. PlayCo develops and produces adventurous new plays from the U.S. and around the world, advancing a dynamic global experience of contemporary theater and expanding the American theater repertoire.

As the only New York company regularly producing outstanding contemporary plays from around the world alongside new American work, PlayCo's distinctive international programming links American theatre with world theater, American artists with the global creative community, and American audiences with a whole world of plays.

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