Site-Specific Reading of THE PLANTATION Set for Governors Island This Weekend

The Plantation Project, under the direction of Claire Beckman (co-founder of Brooklyn's Brave New World Rep) presents an inaugural, site-specific staged reading of The Plantation, Beckman's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. This immersive production on-book will feature costumes, live music and an Equity cast.

The Plantation, Sunday, August 16 at 3:00pm, was designed specifically for the Commanding Officer's House on Governors Island to develop and preview the play before its full production in a three-week run late August/September 2016. The immersive staged reading will occur in front, behind and inside the stunning pre-Civil War Commanding Officer's House in the historic Nolan Park section of the island.

Set in Virginia in 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War and twenty years before the Jim Crow backlash, The Plantation is an American retelling of Anton Chekhov's play seen through the lens of Reconstruction.

The cast: Craig A. Grant (SAG), Alice Barrett-Mitchell*, John Edmond Morgan*, Neville Aurelius*, Caroline Ryburn*, Nick Plakias*, Jonathan Kirkland*, Hale Thompson*, Al-Nisa Petty, Alice Kors, Danny Blanda, Tim Craig, Shawn Herb-Felton, Lauren Young, Tyler Egan,

Terilyn Fleming. The crew: Stage Manager: Brittany Giles-Jones* Production Stage Manager: Brittany Giles-Jones* · Dramaturg/Associate Producer: Leonie Ettinger · Costume Design: Martina Neverman · Music Director: Roy Eaton · Sound Design: Harrison Adams · Wardrobe Supervisor: Lucy Gwathmey · Assistant Director/Assistant Stage Manager: Annierose Kafer · Publicist: Carol Klenfner · Sound Consultant: Benjamin Furiga.

The mission of The Plantation Project is to raise consciousness about the ongoing backlash against African Americans in the United States, says Beckman. "We think Chekhov's voice and the play's striking parallel help illustrate the economic factors that led to the backlash so tragically linked to race in America."

Beckman also notes the historical parallels between the US and Russia. Two years before Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Tsar Alexander abolished serfdom. Like Lincoln, Alexander the Liberator was also assassinated. In a January 1861 letter to Fredrick Engels, Karl Marx wrote that the most important things happening in the world are "the movements of the slaves in America started by the death of John Brown and...the movements of the serfs in Russia."

IF YOU GO:

The Plantation, A Site-Specific Staged Reading
Presented by The Plantation Project
Director: Claire Beckman
Sunday, August 16th, 3pm
FREE
The Commanding Officer's on Governors Island
Ferries from Manhattan and Brooklyn (govisland.com/info/ferry-schedule)
More info at govisland.com/calendar/events/the-plantation

Pictured: John E. Morgan, Craig A. Grant, Alice Barrett-Mitchell. Photo by Sergio Pasquariello.

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