TNC Presents ZEN A.M. By Natalie Menna, A Comedy Of New Age Manners & Mores

It's Lower Manhattan in 2005 and a new painter and 9/11 survivor faces an artistic dilemma -- should he cave to shifting cultural mores or stand his sacred ground over a commission?

Since classical times, artists have had to reconcile the demands of their patrons with their own artistic integrity. "Zen A.M." is meant to illustrate the artist's conundrum, nesting it in present-day issues of class identification, compassion, cultural identity and creative resistance. The play offers us laughable characters who are straining to act rationally when faced with difficult decisions of this sort.

Bruno, a 9/11 survivor, has abandoned his lucrative Wall Street career to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a painter. He has been commissioned to provide a painting for a museum being planned for the 9/11 site, but feels politically conflicted about it. As Bruno's vacillations increase, hysteria and hilarity ensue. Can financial folly, a marriage-minded conservative girlfriend, a greedy guru, and a crusading fashionista change his mind?

The play is light farce with the theme that Americans will never agree about anything again because we are so divided, but its deeper theme is the price of artistic integrity.

Playwright Natalie Menna is author of "Occasionally Nothing," which was presented by Theater for the New City's 2018 Dream Up Festival, and "Committed," which was performed in 2017 at the 14th Street Y. She is a resident playwright of August Strindberg Rep, for which she adapted "Journey in Light and Shadow" by Stig Dalager for a 2017 production at Gene Frankel Theatre. Her plays have won multiple awards in the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity.

Director Andrew Block received the Ovation and L.A.Drama Critics Circle awards for Best Director and Production for the world premiere of "Small Engine Repair" by John Pollono. He has directed productions at Theater at 14th Street Y, the Lortel, Planet Connections Festivity and FringeNYC, among others. He also serves as representative for the Off and Off-Off Broadway community for TDF.

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