THE REENACTORS Comes to Abrons Arts Center Tonight

After over two decades of non-linearity, experimental theatre artists Juliana Francis-Kelly and Tony Torn have created a naturalistic play inspired by real events.

THE REENACTORS is an unsettlingly funny play about stories in art: who gets to tell them, why they are important, and how they get told. A hard-working young actress gets cast in an Equity Showcase about the sole survivor of a teenage suicide pact. She hooks up with the play's affluent writer/director and soon discovers that his play is based on a terrible true story. The Actress freaks out. Trouble ensues.

Director Tony Torn and playwright Juliana Francis-Kelly cut their teeth as actors in the NYC avant-garde theatre scene. They met while performing in Reza Abdoh's Father Was a Peculiar Man, which transformed blocks of the then un-gentrified meatpacking district into a wild spectacle with a cast of 50. They then went on to become founding members of Abdoh's internationally acclaimed Dar A Luz company. Torn and Francis-Kelly have since then performed with the legendary auteur Richard Foreman, as well as for myriad bright lights of the next generation of experimental theatre artists. Their own collaborations have included Box and The Baddest Natashas (Ontological Hysteric Theatre.)

THE REENACTORS features a dynamic cast of eight: Blair Busbee (Napoli! American Conservatory Theater); Jody Christopherson (Because You Are Good); Dylan Dawson (Five Times in One Night); Ayesha Jordan (Come See My Double D's); Mieko Gavia (Drifting Through Daylight); Tom Pearl (Quotations from a Ruined City); Ean Sheehy (Red-Eye to Havre de Grace); Kaili Vernoff (Hulu's The Path) and is written by Juliana Francis-Kelly and directed by Tony Torn.

THE REENACTORS was originally developed as part of the Civilians 2013-2014 Research & Development Lab. It is approximately 70 minutes long, and performed with no intermission.

Performance Schedule:
Tues Dec 1 at 7.30 PM
Wed Dec 2 at 7.30 PM
Thurs Dec 3 at 7.30 PM
Fri Dec 4 at 7.30 PM
Sat Dec 5 at 7.30 PM
Sun Dec 6 at 6 PM
Tues Dec 8 at 7.30 PM
Wed Dec 9 at 7.30 PM
Thurs Dec 10 at 7.30 PM
Fri Dec 11 at 7.30 PM
Sat Dec 12 at 7.30 PM
Sun Dec 13 at 6 PM

Location: Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street (at Pitt). F/J/M/Z trains to Delancey / Essex stop.

Tickets: $18

More info at: www.abronsartscenter.org/performances/reenactors.html

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Juliana Francis Kelly is an actor, a playwright, and a doll maker. She has performed in the U.S., Europe, and Asia for many renowned experimental theater directors, and was a founding member of the late Reza Abdoh's Dar A Luz Theater Company. She originated roles for Abdoh in FATHER WAS A PECULIAR MAN; THE HIP-HOP WALTZ OF EURYDICE; THE LAW OF REMAINS and BOGEYMAN and served as assistant director on "Tight, Right, White." She also performed in several of Abdoh's films: DADDY'S GIRL; DIES IRAE; THE BLIND OWL and THE TRYST. After Abdoh's untimely death, Ms. Kelly went on to perform for Richard Foreman, Anne Bogart, Karin Coonrod, Young Jean Lee, Alec Duffy, Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, Lear DeBessonet, Normandy Sherwood, Hal Hartley, Charlotte Braithwaite, Marie Losier in collaboration with Guy Maddin, Bryan Doerries (for Outsidethewirellc.com / Theater of War), Dalia Ibelhauptaite, and David Michalek (Lincoln Center Festival.) Her own plays have been produced and published in the U.S. and Europe, and translated into four languages. Awards: OBIE (for Richard Foreman's "Maria Del Bosco,") a Sundance Screenwriting Fellowship; and project support from the NEA, NYSCA, The Jerome Foundation, The Durst Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, TCG, and chashama. Recent work includes director Karin Coonrod's "Elizabeth R/text and beheadings", at The Folger Theater in Washington DC and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She lives in New York City with her husband, actor/musician David Patrick Kelly and their seven-year-old daughter. julianafranciskelly.com

Tony Torn has spent his career crossing and recrossing borders between many different kinds of theater, film, and performance: Broadway, Downtown experimental theater, performance art, Hollywood remakes, underground cinema, plays by classic authors such as Shakespeare, Ionesco and Chekhov, and contemporary playwrights such as David Henry Hwang, Jason Grote, Ruth Margraff and Richard Foreman. Directing credits include The Red Rose (an adaption of Shakespeare's History Plays focusing on Queen Margret), Two By Synge, Party Time and This Strange Attachment (Leopold Zappler), The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time and Sop Doll! (Lee Ann Brown), Door Wide Open (based on the letters of Jack Kerouac and Joyce Johnson), The Baddest Natashas and Box (Juliana Francis Kelly). He is also an award winning filmmaker whose feature, Lucky Days (Co-Directed with his sister Angelica) won best film at the Coney Island International Film Festival. Most recently, he produced, co-directed and starred in the acclaimed rock musical Ubu Sings Ubu, which premiered at The Abrons Arts Center in April 2014 and returns for a special encore performance at BB Kings on 42nd street in February 2016. He manages Torn Page, a classroom, screening room, and venue for poetry and performance in NYC, celebrating the legacy of his parents Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.

Pictured: Ayesha Jordan, Jody Christopherson, Mieko Gavia and Blair Busbee. Photo by Jody Christopherson.

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