TNC's 2016 Dream Up Festival to Present THE TITLE SHOULD BE SPOKEN OUT LOUD AROUND THREE-QUARTERS IN

Theater for the New City's Dream Up Festival Presents
"The Title Should Be Spoken Out Loud Around Three-Quarters In"
An Evening at a Bar with America's Next Great Playwrights

"The Title Should Be Spoken Out Loud Around Three-Quarters In" is a comical drama that satirizes the tropes and culture of contemporary theater. Convinced that "comedy is the new drama," this play offers subtly offers a dialogue about certain unhelpful practices in theater criticism and about the nature of playwriting and the concepts of the muse. It is written and directed by AnTony Raymond.

The play is both a drama about theater artists and a comedy of tropes. It begins with an empty stage, and as the main characters, Gene and Thomas, enter and begin discussing ideas of the next Great American play, the scene develops into a functional bar. Gene and Thomas quarrel over writing the script and their own insecurities, all the while fawning over Sophie, who is their bartender and a struggling dancer. As the play progresses, Gene and Thomas find themselves living out their script ideas, rife with all the romance, envy, humor, stripteases, dances and fight scenes they can imagine. Gene becomes depressed and begins to think of his play as an impossible dream. The arrival of the eccentric Hitchcock further threatens the completion of the play, as he poses ideologically challenges to Gene and Thomas and begins competing for Sophie's love. As the night draws to a close, Gene leaves Thomas with the script entitled "The Autobiography of a Guy Who Knew Me, Part One," bound with blank pages, before departing for the Brooklyn Bridge, his fate unknown.

"The Title Should..." exploits theatrical self-referential humor, lampooning the conventions of modern play-writing, while also supplying more accessible humor in its witty dialogue. The play is structured in a way that allows its ideas to consistently evolve, and its characters follow a similar pattern. There is also an air of ambiguity underlying the entire play, as many of the ideas Gene and Thomas have while brainstorming later happen in the actual play. It leaves the audience wondering whether the characters were their own autonomous beings or just muses conjured up be a mind trying to create art.

AnTony Raymond will direct the four person cast of Greg Bell, Christopher Heard, JJ Pyle and Eric Doviak. Chroeography is by Elizabeth Mooney de Gennaro, lightning design is by Daryl Embry and sound design is by Deen Anthony.

WHERE AND WHEN:
September 12 at 9:00 PM, September 13 at 9:00 PM, September 14 at 9:00 PM, September 16 at 9:00 PM, September17 at 8:00 PM.
Johnson Theater, Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave. (at East 10th Street)
Presented by Theater for the New City (Crystal Field, Artistic Director) as part of the Dream Up Festival 2016.
Ticket Price: $18.00
Box office: (212) 254-1109, www.dreamupfestival.org
Runs for 1:20 Mins. Reviewers are invited

AnTony Raymond is the artistic director of Elsinore County, a Greenwich Village based theater company founded in 2011. With a tendency towards satire and farce that rests on the darker side of comedy, Raymond has written several plays for other New York Theater companies before founding his own. He was trained as an actor and has appeared in many Off-Broadyway shows, with a focus on Shakespearean plays. Before getting involved in the world of theater, Raymond was a professional wrestler who appeared with such WWE legends as the Iron Sheik and Superfly Jimmy Snuka.

The seventh annual Dream Up Festival is dedicated to new works. Presented by Theater for the New City, the Festival will run from August 28 to September 18, 2016 and will feature a variety of original dramas, comedies, musicals, adaptations and experimental plays. The Festival celebrates the arts in a time when cultural and arts funding is in sharp decline due to a number of social and market forces. Now an East Village tradition, it challenges the audience to reflect on the innovative and imaginative ways that they interact with the theater.

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