Melanie Stewart Presents World Premiere Of JUST LIKE HOLLYWOOD At Fringearts Festival's Cannonball Festival

Melanie Stewart announces the world premiere of Just Like Hollywood, her latest movement theater work presented by Blind Faith Theatre in partnership with Cannonball Festival, a n independent production hub of the Philadelphia FringeArts Festival. 

Written by John Clancy and directed by Melanie Stewart the show features Kylie Westerbeck and Dane Eissler.  Performances at the Maas Studio in the Maas Building (1320 North 5th Street, Philadelphia) are on Sunday, September 10 and Sunday, September 17, at 2:00PM and 5:00PM each day.  Tickets at $25 and $50 are available at https://phillyfringe.org/events/just-like-hollywood/.  Pay what you can admission on a sliding scale ($5-$20) is also accepted.

 

The result of a decade-long collaboration with Obie award-winning playwright John Clancy, Just Like Hollywood explores the degradation of a young woman in contemporary America.  On a bare stage, using only props supplied by a demanding and impatient master of ceremonies (Eisler), the woman (Westerbeck) must discover the key to unlock the cage in which he keeps her.  Forced to perform and dance to please her captor she forces the audience to question at what point will she rebel.  A rigorous and playful study of status and the eternal male/female dance and duel, this dark comedy examines the trap ensnaring so many women today, an invisible but all-encompassing prison she is raised in and taught to accept, if not embrace.

 

“Just Like Hollywood was written in the wake of and in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” explained Stewart.  “I see this play as a way to encourage audience to protest the fallout of this decision which has led to the most destructive and cruel treatment of women in our recent history.”

 

Melanie Stewart (Director) creates darkly absurd movement-driven theatre focusing on the nuanced, weird, and vulnerable side of American culture.  She was the Artistic Director of Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre from 1984-2014, producing over 50 original works of dance and movement driven theater for the concert stage, in dance/film/video, and in education, both nationally and abroad. As a critically acclaimed choreographer and director, she has received numerous fellowships and grants from such funders as the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, The National Endowment for the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and both the NJ and PA Council for the Arts. She is the winner of the 2008 Leigh Gerdine Award for Excellence in the Performing Arts.  She is a Professor of Theatre and Dance and the Associate Dean in the College of Performing Arts at Rowan University.

 

 

John Clancy (Writer) is a contemporary American playwright, novelist and director. He was a co-founder and first Artistic Director of the New York International Fringe Festival and its producing organization The Present Company. His written work centers mainly on the American experience, and is characterized by dark humor and farce. His best-known play is Fatboy: An American Grotesque, a modern re-working of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi. His monologue The Event premiered in Edinburgh in 2009 and has gone on to tour Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and the United States and has been translated into Greek and German. Clancy's directing has earned six Fringe First Awards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and two Best of Fringe Awards ata the Adelaide Fringe Festival. He was awarded a 2005 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Direction, a 2002 Glasgow Herald Angel Award for Excellence in Direction, a 1997 New York Magazine Award, and a 2008 Dialogue ONE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Theater.

 

Actor/musician/photographer Kylie Westerbeck (Performer) has appeared locally in Nocturne, The Lydie Breeze Triology, Curse of the Starving Class and Company, all at  EgoPo Classic Theatre, Witness for the Prosecution at Bristol Riverside Theatre, and Our Town at People's Light  & Theatre Company.  A graduate of Rowan University, her original theatre works include Complexity (DC Fringe) and Peg! (Philly Fringe). She has released original two albums: Bello (2018) and Summertime (2019).

 

Dane Eissler (Performer) is a theater director, designer, performer, and educator, as well as a visual artist. In Philly, he has worked with Azuka Theatre, B.R.A.T. Productions, and EgoPo Classic Theater, where he served as Artistic Producer. In Chicago, Eissler was the founding artistic director of the multidisciplinary pop-up theater collective, A Dead Whale Productions, and also worked with Rough House Theater, Whiskey Rebellion Theatre, Women of the Now, MTV- and SAG-nominated comedian Megan Stalter's Freakfest, and The Annoyance Theatre.

 

Melanie Stewart/Blind Faith Theatre brings artistic collaborators together to devise original theatre that is socially relevant focused on creating intimate relationships with audiences.  The projects of the company integrate movement, text, and image to explore the ability of the body to carry meaning in original narratives that are often ironic and intensely human. Just Like Hollywood is the first production of Blind Faith Theatre.

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