The Cherry Artists' Collective To Present Live-Streamed World Premiere Of Gabrielle Chapdelaine's A DAY

The Cherry Artists' Collective will present the English-language World Premiere of A Day, written by Québecoise playwright, Gabrielle Chapdelaine, translated by Josephine George. Live performances are directed by Wendy Dann with video mise en scène directed by Samuel Buggeln.

The play will be live-streamed from the historic State Theater in Ithaca, NY on Friday, November 13 at 7:30pm, Saturday, November 14 at 7:30pm, Thursday, November 19 at 7:30pm, Friday, November 20 at 7:30pm, and Saturday, November 21 at 7:30pm. Tickets ($15-$45) are available for advance purchase at www.thecherry.org/. The performance will run approximately 90 minutes, without an intermission.

In A Day, four mysteriously connected characters guide one another through the obstacles large and small that must be overcome in order to get through an ordinary day. The play's unexpected and ever-evolving structure lends itself beautifully to mixed video, and this production is created to stream live to audiences' homes from the State Theater in Ithaca, NY.

Four actors will perform live from separate multi-camera green-screen booths on stage, and their performances will be mixed in real time with pre-recorded audio and video performances created by over a dozen other members of the Cherry Artists' Collective. The combination creates a surprising, touching and comic landscape of 24 seemingly ordinary hours.

This strange, funny, and tender new play received the 2018 Gratien-Gélinas prize for Best New Play and was featured in The Observer as one of "The Best Zoom Plays, Audio Dramas and Livestream Theater of Fall 2020."

The cast will feature Karl Gregory* (From White Plains with Fault Line Theatre; Words Express at Bushwick Starr; Are We Human at The New Ohio), Jahmar Ortiz (On the Other Side of the Sea with Cherry Arts), Erica Steinhagen* (regional premiere of Kinky Boots at Hangar Theatre; Hand to God at Kitchen Theatre Company), and Sylvie Yntema (Felt Sad, Posted a Frog with Cherry Arts; Katrina Ten Years Later with Civic Ensemble). The creative team includes Set Design by Daniel Zimmerman (Kill Floor at LCT3; Suicide Incorporated at Roundabout Theatre), Sound Design by Lesley Greene (Kitchen Theatre Company), and live video-mixing by Noah Elman (Felt Sad, Posted a Frog with Cherry Arts).

Gabrielle Chapdelaine (Playwright) is a playwright, screenwriter and translator living in Montreal, Canada. She graduated from the dramatic writing program of the National Theater School of Canada in 2017. She's written several plays including A Day (winner of the 2018 Prix Gratien-Gélinas) and Retirement (read in its English version at the Playwright's Workshop Montreal, 2019). She has been a screenwriter on projects such as Les Invisibles, a program broadcast on the waves of vat in 2019. She has also translated several works including Zahgidiwin / Amour by Frances Koncan for the festival of the never-before 2019. She is currently developing TV and web series projects and working on an upcoming play.

Samuel Buggeln (Co-Director) is a Canadian director, translator, and designer. In NYC he is an Artistic Associate at the New Ohio Theatre: directing credits at the New (and original) Ohio include the world première of The Eyes of Others (Bulgaria); the Off-Broadway première of Conor McPherson's Rum & Vodka; the Drama Desk-nominated Cressida Among the Greeks, and for the Obie Award-winning Ice Factory Festival, his adaptations of Queneau's Le Vol D'Icare and Duras' Les Yeux Bleus Cheveux Noirs, as well as Hater (his translation of Molière's Le Misanthrope, since produced by two west-coast companies and published). Recently translated and directed George Kaplan by French playwright Frédéric Sonntag, and co-translated recent works by Argentine playwrights Santiago Loza (these translations published by Oberon and Seagull Books) and Rafael Spregelburd (published in The Mercurian). He is an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors' Lab, a member of the international theatermakers' network The Fence, and has been a faculty guest artist at NYU/Tisch, Hunter College, SUNY Albany, Ithaca College, and Cornell University. www.buggeln.net

Wendy Dann (Co-Director) Regional directing work includes the Dallas Theater Center, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Alliance Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Capitol Repertory Theatre, Kitchen Theatre, and seven seasons as associate artistic director at the Hangar Theatre. She is the co-author of the musical Sammy & Me (MusicalFare Theatre, Hangar Theatre, Alliance Theatre, National Black Theatre Festival and New Vintage Theatricals). Her plays have been finalists for the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference as well as the Arts & Letters Prize in Drama. Wendy is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting. Her original play, Birds of East Africa, received its world premiere in 2017 at the Kitchen Theatre, and her short live-action film, La Casa Verde, premiered at the Ft. Lauderdale Film Festival and screened at the San Antonio Film Festival. Member, SDC.

The Cherry Arts expands the possibilities of live performance by bringing artists and audiences together across boundaries of language, artistic discipline, and form. We host works in the waterfront Cherry Artspace in Ithaca, and elsewhere. The primary focus of our support is the Cherry Artists' Collective, a self-governing ensemble of professional artists who create new works of performance that are radically local, radically international, and formally innovative. The Cherry Arts is proud to be embracing these tough new circumstances as a challenge to create new, fully embodied artistic experiences to once again safely bring our community together around the arts. www.thecherry.org

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