Soho Rep Extends WE ARE PROUD… thru Dec 16; Tickets on Sale for LIFE AND TIMES; 'WALT DISNEY' to Run 4/30-5/26

Soho Rep has announced some updates to the mainstage productions comprising its 2012-13 season, produced in association with John Adrian Selzer.

In response to critical acclaim and overwhelming demand, Soho Rep has again extended the New York premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury's We Are Proud to Present a Presentation …, directed by Eric Ting, this time to December 16. Tickets to the American premiere of Nature Theater of Oklahoma's epic serial Life and Times: Episodes 1-4-a Soho Rep production presented by The Public Theater as a special engagement of the Under the Radar Festival 2013-are now on sale. And Soho Rep announces the production that will conclude its 2012-13 season: the world premiere of Lucas Hnath's A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, directed by Soho Rep Artistic Director Sarah Benson (April 30 – May 26, 2013).

ABOUT THE PRODUCTIONS

Jackie Sibblies Drury's We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915

Now that a first extension of Jackie Sibblies Drury's We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… (to Sunday, December 9) has sold out, Soho Rep has added a second: Tuesday – Sunday, December 11 – 16, at 7:30 P.M. Tickets ($35-$40 General Admission) are available at: http://sohorep.org and (212) 352-3101. $15 Student Rush tickets are available at the door.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Life and Times: Episodes 1-4

Tickets are now on sale for Soho Rep's American Premiere production of Nature Theater of Oklahoma's epic serial saga Life and Times: Episodes 1-4, which The Public Theater will present as a special engagement of the Under the Radar Festival 2013. Performances will take place January 16 – February 2, 2013 at The Public Theater at Astor Place (425 Lafayette Street).

Tickets, priced at $30 for Episode 1, 2, or 3 & 4, or $70 for the full marathon, can be purchased at 212.967.7555, www.publictheater.org, or in person at The Public's box office.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma makes a triumphant homecoming with this bold, exuberant celebration of the most epic story of all: life. Conceived and directed by Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Artistic Directors, Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, Life and Times charts one person's account of their life, navigating a deep map of memory, from their earliest recollections through present day. The libretto of the work, which will ultimately comprise ten episodes, is a verbatim transcript of ten recorded phone conversations in which the person told their story. Life and Times continues the exploration Nature Theater of Oklahoma has pursued since No Dice: using casual, real-life speech and storytelling as the text for innovative theatrical works, thereby making something extraordinary out of the ordinary.

Life and Times, from a conversation with Kristin Worrall, features dramaturgy by Florian Malzacher, design by Peter Nigrini, and original music by Robert M. Johanson, Julie LaMendola,and Daniel Gower. The cast includes Ilan Bachrach, Elisabeth Conner, Gabel Eiben, Anne Gridley, Robert M. Johanson, Matthew Korahais, Julie LaMendola, Alison Weisgall, and Kristin Worrall.

Episodes 1-4 represent the first "movement" of the work; upcoming episodes will depart from the theater and take other forms, including a book, a film and a radio play. Episode 1, which starts with birth and continues to age 8, fuses communist musical and "mass games" rhythmic gymnastic spectacle. In Episode 2, which spans early adolescence, the company takes up the concept of the chorus and chorus line to represent the challenges of belonging to a social group. Episodes 3 and 4 encompass high school years, including the desire for freedom from home and family life. Experimentation, rebellion, and drug use collide with religion and metaphysics-both first love and first cigarettes. In order to unlock the considerable drama associated with this particular age, Nature Theater applies the dramatic conventions of a "locked-room" mystery play.

The episodes can be seen in installments or, together, as a "marathon": on different weeknights (exact days vary each week) at 7:30 P.M., the company will perform Episode 1 (3.5 hours with intermission), Episode 2 (two hours with no intermission), and Episodes 3 & 4 (together, 2.5 hours with no intermission). Then, on Saturday or Sunday (varies each week), the marathon (approximately 10.5 hours including a 45-minute snack break and a one-hour dinner break) is performed at 2:00 P.M.

Lucas Hnath's A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney

In spring 2013, Soho Rep will present the world premiere of Lucas Hnath's adrenaline-charged odyssey A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, a supersonic portrait of the man who forever changed the American Dream. The production will be directed by Soho Rep's Artistic Director, Sarah Benson. The play was presented as a reading at the 2012 PRELUDE Festival. Performances will run April 30 – May 26 at Soho Rep (46 Walker Street).

Hnath's play centers around the reading, by Walt Disney, of a screenplay that the famous man has written. It's about his last days on earth. It's about a city he's going to build that's going to change the world. And it's about his brother. It's about everyone who loves him, and how sad they're going to be when he's gone.

Casting will be announced in early 2013.

ABOUT THE SHOWS' CREATORS

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… had its world premiere at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. Sibblies Drury's work has been featured at PRELUDE.11, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Victory Gardens 2010 Ignition Festival, American Theater Company's 10 x 10 Festival, and The Magic Theatre's Virgin Play Festival. She received a 2012-13 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, and has been a member of the 2011-12 Soho Rep Writer/Director lab, a 2010-12 New York Theater Workshop Emerging Artist of Color Fellow, and a member of The Civilians' R&D Group. She is the dramaturg and contributing writer for Zero Cost House, a collaboration between Pig Iron Theatre Company and Japanese playwright Toshiki Okada. Sibblies Drury is a NYTW Usual Suspect and a MacDowell Colony fellow, and is on committees to organize classes for Pataphysics Playwriting Workshops and The Public School New York. Sibblies Drury is a graduate oF Brown's MFA playwriting program, where she received the David Wickham Prize in Playwriting. Her play Social Creatures was commissioned by Trinity Repertory Theater Company in Providence RI, and will premiere there in 2013. She is the inaugural recipient of the Jerome New York Fellowship for 2012-2014.

Eric Ting is Associate Artistic Director at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT. For Long Wharf, Ting has directed the world premieres of Aditi Kapil's Agnes Under the Big Top and The Old Man and the Sea (which he also co-adapted), Sylvia, Bad Dates, Italian American Reconciliation, The Bluest Eye (co-production with Hartford Stage), Underneath the Lintel, It's a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play, and his adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macbeth (1969). Other work includes Donald Margulies's Shipwrecked: An Entertainment… (Shakespeare Santa Cruz), A.R.T.'s production of Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy, The Little Prince (Roundhouse Theatre) and puppet design for Bizet's The Pearl Fishers (Opera Boston). This fall, in the 30th BAM Next Wave Festival, he directed dancer/choreographer Nora Chipaumire's Miriam. Ting's work has been presented internationally, including France, Canada, Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bali. He is a founding member of the artists' collective INTELLIGENT BEASTS. Ting has served on multiple grant and fellowship panels including the Jerome Foundation and the NEA. Personal awards and grants include a TCG New Generations Future Leaders fellowship and a Jerome & Roslyn Milstein Meyer Career Development Prize.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma is an OBIE-winning New York art and performance group under the direction of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper. Since Poetics: a ballet brut, the company's first dance piece created as an ensemble, Nature Theater of Oklahoma has been devoted to making "the work we don't know how to make, putting ourselves in impossible situations, and working from out of our own ignorance and unease. We strive to create an unsettling live situation that demands total presence from everyone in the room. We use the readymade material around us, found space, overheard speech, and observed gesture, and through extreme formal manipulation, and superhuman effort, we affect in our work a shift in the perception of everyday reality that extends beyond the site of performance and into the world in which we live." Nature Theater of Oklahoma's work has been seen in 23 countries and 46 cities around the world. They are the 2010 recipients of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award and the 2012 Ambassador's Award for Cultural Diplomacy from the U.S. Embassy in Vienna. For more information, visit www.oktheater.org.

Lucas Hnath's recent plays include A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney, Red Speedo, Hillary and Clinton, Sake Tasting with a Séance to Follow, The Courtship of Anna Nicole Smith, Odile's Ordeal, Tonguetied, and Three Attempts at Corrective Eye Surgery. He has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011. Most recently his play Death Tax premiered in the 36th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. Hnath is a two-time winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant for his feature-length screenplays, The Painting, the Machine, and the Apple and Still Life. He is also a recipient of an EST/Sloan Project commission for his play, Isaac's Eye. Most recently, his play Death Tax premiered in the 36th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2012. In addition, he is currently working on two commissions for Actors Theatre of Louisville, including a collaboration with Rinne Groff and Anne Washburn called Sleep Rock Thy Brain, which will premiere at the Humana Festival in 2013.

Founded in 1975, and in its theater on Walker Street since 1991, Soho Rep has built an outstanding reputation for being at the forefront of new and innovative theatre, serving as a vital center for Contemporary Theatre artists. Soho Rep is dedicated to cultivating and producing visionary, uncompromising, and exuberant new plays. They perform to one of the youngest adult audiences in New York City, with over three-quarters aged 18-40.

Over the last decade, Soho Rep productions have garnered 13 OBIE Awards; six Drama Desk nominations, Two Kesselring Awards for Melissa James Gibson and Mark Schultz and The New York Times Outstanding Playwriting Award for Dan LeFranc's Sixty Miles To Silverlake. In recent years, Soho Rep has presented plays by established and emerging theatre artists such as Annie Baker, Richard Maxwell, Sarah Kane, Daniel Alexander Jones, Debbie Tucker Green, Mac Wellman, Young Jean Lee and Nature Theater of Oklahoma.

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