EgoPo Hosts 'Shepard Country' Season Launch Party to Announce its 2019-20 Sam Shepard Season

On Sunday, June 2 at 5:30pm, EgoPo will host its Annual Season Launch Party at the Boot & Saddle on South Broad Street. "Shepard Country" will kick off EgoPo's 2019-20 Sam Shepard Festival Season with a Country Western celebration featuring live music, line dancing, and a country feast. Headlining the evening will be Jawbone Junction, Philly's own Southern Rock theater band with line dancing by Giddy Up Philly and catering by Easy Passyunk's Redcrest Fried Chicken.

Few playwrights have helped define the American theatrical landscape as deeply as the late great Sam Shepard. Shepard is a winner of 10 Obie Awards, the Pulitzer for Best Drama (Buried Child, 1979), Drama Desk for Best Play (Lie of the Mind, 1986), 2 Tony Nominations (Buried Child, True West) and even Academy Award nomination for acting. Shepard took the reins from the European absurdists (Beckett, Pinter) and evolved his own deeply American form of gothic magical realism.

With his passing in 2017, EgoPo would like to honor his stellar career with mainstage productions of Buried Child (dir. Dane Eissler), Fool for Love (dir. Brenna Geffers), and Curse of the Starving Class (dir. Lane Savadove). This is an opportunity for an honest look under the hood of rural America, which is far more diverse and complex than our politicians would like to pretend.

"In this writer's prolific 20-year career, he almost demands we see his plays as a continuum: they bleed together...Like the visionary pioneers who once ruled the open geography of the West, Mr. Shepard rules his vast imaginative frontier by making his own, ironclad laws." - New York Times

Guests for the full dinner party will gather at the Boot & Saddle on South Broad Street at 5:30pm. Performances by folk/country soloists Kylie Westerbeck and Charlie DelMarcelle (both of Lydie Breeze fame) will serenade us during cocktail hour, featuring signature Cowboy Margaritas and Bourbon Lemonades. A down-home southern feast will be served including Redcrest's fried chicken along with corn pudding, western bean chili, collards, mac 'n' cheese, homemade biscuits and chocolate bourbon pecan pies.

After dinner, we will have line dancing lessons with Hugocito Max of Giddy Up Philly. Then it will be time for the headliners, Jawbone Junction, to take the stage. This Southern Rock band features Philly theater all-stars and musicians: Jake Blouch, Damon Bonetti, Charlie DelMarcelle, Sarah Gliko, Steve Gudelunas and Tyler Blanchard. This will be their Boot & Saddle debut! The event will also have a giant silent auction with art, culture, and food specialties from around the city.

The full evening is $60 per ticket including dinner, entertainment, two drinks and dessert. A dance party ticket is $25 and includes line dancing, music, one drink and dessert. All proceeds will go to support EgoPo's Sam Shepard Season. Join us on Sunday June 2nd, 5:30pm, at the Boot & Saddle, 1131 South Broad Street, Philadelphia.

Tickets are available at www.EgoPo.org or call EgoPo at 267-273-1414.

EgoPo Classic Theater is a non-profit theater company committed to revitalizing the great classics of theater and literature. We strive for virtuosity in vocal and physical performance in order to create innovative and provocative theatrical events.

EgoPo is ambitious in the scale of the plays it presents, staging modernist and avant-garde classics that are often under-produced because of their cast size and technical demands. EgoPo produces yearlong festival seasons that focus on a single playwright or theatrical genre. Each season is designed as a single journey in which we guide audiences through mainstage productions, a special performance event, interactive audience engagement events, and an annual Gala, all themed to the season. The result is a deep immersion into a single theatrical genre. The ultimate goal is to make exciting and challenging theater that provides audiences multiple levels of engagement with the opportunity for an in-depth experience.

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