Plays & Players Present Philly Premiere of BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON, 1/17-2/3

Andrew Jackson was a rock and roll GOD. He rode his outsider bad-boy image and his populist movement into office with promises to reform and representing the "other" America. What happened next was broken promises and a Trail of Tears. The multiple Tony nominee and Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle winning high-octane rock musical will explode on Plays & Players' mainstage January 17-February 3 in a Philadelphia premiere production. Performances run Wednesday and Thursdays at 7pm, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Saturdays at 2pm (except Jan. 19), and Sundays at 3pm.

Featuring songs such as "Populism, Yea, Yea!," "I'm So That Guy" and "Rock Star," Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson compares Andrew Jackson's frontier and manifest destiny fueled rise to power as the seventh president of the United States, and the first not born in Virginia or Massachusetts, to contemporary rock and roll American patriotic excess. A laugh-out-loud "South Park" style social critique mixes with a Brechtian self-awareness resulting in brazen satire that leaves no current political movement, from George W. Bush to the Tea Party to Obama's "Yes We Can," unscathed. In fact, the New York Times raved of the original production, "There is no show in town that more astutely reflects the state of this nation than Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson."

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson features music and lyrics written by Michael Friedman and a book by Alex Timbers. It was nominated for the 2011 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, and won the 2010 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Off-Broadway Musical and the 2010 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical. The Philadelphia premiere will be directed by Plays & Players' Producing Artistic Director Daniel Student, whose critically acclaimed productions in recent seasons include Joe Turner's Come and Gone, A New Brain, and Take Me Out.

The performance stars Joe Sabatino as Andrew Jackson, who previously appeared in Plays & Players' hit 2011 musical production, A New Brain. He is also an accomplished comedic performer who has performed with various specialty comedy groups, Philly Improv Theater and is a regular with ComedySportz Philadelphia. The performance also sees a return to the Plays & Players' stage of Brendan Norton, the leading actor of A New Brain, and Kristen Norine (Cecily) and Tim Rinehart (Henry Carr) in the 2012 production of Travesties. A cast of new and emerging talent bursting onto the Philadelphia professional theater scene rounds out the rest of the ensemble, including University of the Arts graduates Allison Caw, Jamison Foreman, Sam Nagel, Corey Regensburg, Shannon Remley, and Meggie Siegrist, as well as Max Cove, Billy Kametz, and Josh Totora.

All performances at Plays & Players Theatre, at 1714 Delancey Place. Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door for general admission. Discounted group rates of $15 for groups of 10 or more and student rates of $20 are also available.* Tickets may be purchased online at www.playsandplayers.org or by phone at 800-595-4849.

DATES

January 17 at 7pm*
January 18 at 8pm*
January 19 at 8pm**
January 20 at 3pm
January 23 at 10:30am***
January 23 at 7pm
January 24 at 7pm
January 25 at 8pm
January 26 at 2pm
January 26 at 8pm
January 27 at 3pm
January 30 at 7pm
January 31 at 7pm
February 1 at 8pm
February 2 at 2pm
February 2 at 8pm
February 3 at 3pm

*Tickets to January 17 & 18 previews of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson are $5 off all price points.
**Opening Night. Reception to follow.
***Student matinee. Interested school groups call 215-735-0630 for more information.

Over 100 years old, Plays & Players was reborn in 2009 as a professional theater under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Daniel Student. Returning to its roots, Plays & Players seeks to invest in the talents of local emerging theater artists by providing a gathering place
for practitioners to contribute to professional productions, expand their artistry through
training, and connect and collaborate at the historic Plays & Players Theatre. The 2012-
13 Season is dedicated to The American Presidency and debuted in November with a series of events titled An American Presidency: A Theatrical Response, including the popular Voices of a People's History, starring Michael J. Boryla and Guy Davis, and a presentation of Forearmed Productions' controversial Republican Theater Festival. The season will will culminate with The America Play and Other American Cousins, pairing Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Suzan Lori-Parks' seminal work about an African-American man who looks just like Abraham Lincoln with World Premiere short plays named for the play Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated, running April 4-21.

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