Annenberg Center Opens 19-20 Season With FringeArts Co-Presentation

The Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, at the University of Pennsylvania, opens its 2019-20 season September 13-15 with the Philadelphia premiere of Tina Satter/Half Straddle's production of Is This A Room: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription, a co-presentation with FringeArts as part of the 2019 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Tickets are available at AnnenbergCenter.org or 215.898.3900.

Is This A Room: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription is the true story of 25-year-old former Air Force linguist Reality Winner, who in 2017 was surprised at her home by the FBI, interrogated and charged with leaking evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Winner was ultimately imprisoned and is serving a record-breaking sentence. Tina Satter, artistic director of Obie Award-winning ensemble Half Straddle, read the FBI transcript of the interrogation and was struck by Winner's humor and self-assuredness in the midst of her predicament. Half Staddle's staging of the verbatim transcript lays bare the power dynamics, natural drama, and relevancy of a true story that is still unfolding. Is This A Room: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription is a co-presentation with FringeArts as part of the 2019 Fringe Festival. It premiered at The Kitchen in New York City on January 5, 2019 and was developed in part at The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, New York Theatre Workshop's Dartmouth Residency, and a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency in 2018. The show is presented by special arrangement with Vineyard Theatre, NYC, where it makes its off-Broadway premiere run, September-November 2019.

Tina Satter is a writer, director, teacher, and Artistic Director of Obie-winning theatre company Half Straddle, which often focuses its work on female and/or queer stories and characters. She's a recipient of a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award and a 2014 Doris Duke Impact Artist Award. Satter has been in residency at Yaddo, Headlands Art Center, LMCC, The Performing Garage, New Museum and Mass MoCa; and been visiting faculty and/or a guest artist in recent years at Yale, NYU, Princeton, University of Michigan, Bowdoin, Reed, Sarah Lawrence, University of Pennsylvania and the Hunter MFA playwriting program. Her over 10 plays, performances and videos made with Half Straddle have been presented at theatres and festivals in Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada and the U.S. Satter's show House of Dance was nominated for the ZKB Patronage Prize of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel. Her first collection of plays, Seagull (Thinking of you), was published by 53rd State Press in 2014 and text and LP for Ghost Rings was released by 53rd State in 2017.

Half Straddle is an Obie-winning, New York City-based company started in 2008 that makes plays, performances, videos, and music led by writer and director Tina Satter that have been seen throughout the United States and internationally. With a constant internal engine and focus on feminist and queer dynamics that feels more necessary than ever, the company's work has grown in recent years to include teaching, workshops, and curated lecture series of other artists in addition to their ongoing making of performances, music and videos. All of Half Straddle's company members and collaborators also work extensively in a range of other performance contexts, often creating their own work, performing in avant-garde theatre to Broadway, teaching at universities, and working as theatre artists in NYC public schools. Cast members of Is This A Room: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription are Becca Blackwell (Unknown Male), Frank Boyd (Special Agent Justin C. Garrick), Emily C Davis (Reality Winner), and T.L. Thompson (Special Agent R. Wallace Taylor).

The Annenberg Center's 2019-20 season also includes the world premiere of The White Lama: The Improbable Legacy of Theos Bernard, March 13-14, 2020, part of the Annenberg Center's three week #GLASSFEST celebrating composer Philip Glass. Born in Arizona in1905, Theos Bernard was the first westerner to study at the secretive monasteries of Tibet. A national celebrity for his exploits at the time, he faded into obscurity after his mysterious disappearance in India, but not before he inspired a generation of spiritual seekers in the 50's, 60's and beyond. Conceived by multi-disciplinary theatre artist and filmmaker Nikki Appino, The White Lama is about the seeker in all of us. Part biography, part invocation, this experimental work blends music, projected imagery and prose performed by Kevin Joyce, with a score played live by Tenzin Choegyal and Philip Glass. Major support for The White Lama has been provided to Nikki Appino by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. The White Lama is co-commissioned by the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and The Days and Nights Festival.

The Annenberg Center continues its long tradition of introducing new artists and innovative work to Philadelphia in the 2019-20 season, including 19 world, U.S. and Philadelphia premieres, and seven artists who will make their Philadelphia debut appearances. One of the most significant classical modern composers of our time, Philip Glass, will be celebrated with the three-week #GLASSFEST, which honors his legacy in a range of performances, including one featuring the groundbreaking composer himself. Grammy and Latin Grammy award-winning vocalist and global superstar Lila Downs is the 2019-20 Artist-in-Residence, expanding the Annenberg Center's The Philadelphians: Migrations That Made Our City series. In the 2019-20 season, the series shines a spotlight on Mexican Americans, one of our city's largest immigrant groups, and how this population has reshaped and contributed to the culture of Philadelphia. The University of Pennsylvania's quartet-in-residence, the Daedalus Quartet, performs a migration-focused series, and the Annenberg Center presents Philadelphia's own Grammy award-winning new music choir, The Crossing, in its first local residency. The Annenberg Center and NextMove Dance continue their successful partnership to present a special retrospective series that will celebrate the tradition of bringing the best in dance to Philadelphia while also looking to the future of the art form. A robust schedule of jazz, world music, early music, new music, theatre, family, and holiday presentations completes the Annenberg Center's 2019-20 season.

The Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts serves as a major cultural destination and crossroads connecting Penn and the greater Philadelphia region through innovative human expression in theatre, music, dance, and film, serving an annual audience of almost 60,000. The Annenberg Center also serves as a key resource for the arts at Penn, connecting master artists with Penn students in support of and as an enhancement to the arts curriculum. Student performing arts groups are also key users of the Annenberg Center's multiple performance and rehearsal spaces, while also staffing many operational roles throughout the academic year. In reflection of Penn's core values as a world-respected academic institution, the Annenberg Center emphasizes artistic and intellectual excellence, diversity, and rigor in its presentations; prioritizes broad inclusiveness in the artists, audiences, and groups it serves; manages outstanding performance, conference, and meeting facilities; and stresses comprehensive event planning, production support, and customer service. The Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is a major provider of performing arts access for school children and actively engages a broad range of primary, secondary, and post-secondary student audiences and inclusive constituencies from the campus, community, and greater Philadelphia region. Visit AnnenbergCenter.org.

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