NACL Theatre to Stage Walk-in-Progress COURAGE

Conceived and directed by NACL Theatre co-artistic director, Tannis Kowalchuk (STRUCK, THE WEATHER PROJECT), with music composed by Rima Fand (DON CRISTO?BAL, BILLY-CLUB MAN, Luminescent Orchestrii) and text by Mark Dunau (GLASS, THE WEATHER PROJECT), Melissa Bell (DEVIL AND THE DEEP), Tannis Kowalchuk, and the NACL ensemble. COURAGE features the NACL professional ensemble of actors and musicians, with community members who perform in the NACL Stilt Corps and Chorus.

Inspired by Bertolt Brecht's MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, this original play looks at the struggle for survival in a dystopian world, and advocates for compassion in an era of fear and war.

Work-in-progress presentations will take place July 22, 23 and 24, 2016, at Apple Pond Farm, 80 Hahn Rd in Callicoon Center, NY 12724 at 6:30 PM. Tickets are $20, and $10 for Audience members under age 30. Tickets must be purchased online at www.nacl.org/performances/courage.html. Limit 100 spectators per show.

The entire farm is used as a backdrop for the play, and Audience members walk from outdoor scene to scene until the play's culmination inside a two-pole circus tent.

A New York City premiere is slated for 2017 at Governor's Island in New York City.

The 30-member cast includes actors Jessica Barkl, Michael Chojnicki, Bradley Diuguid, Conrado Falco, Rima Fand, Tannis Kowalchuk, Keith McHenry, Brian Ritchey, Yurika Sase, Sajda Waite, and Peter Walsh. Chorus members include Melissa Bell, Tracy Broyles, Laylage Courie, Annie Hat, Ginny Hack, Lizzy Heck, and Nancy Peterman; the Stilt Corps includes Rocky Davis, Gregg Erickson, Brett Hughes, Mark Keoppen, Desmond Oxford McDaniel, John Roth, Jon Jon Thomas, Sunny Thomas, and Tyler Young. Featuring musicians Hannah Temple and Doug Rogers. Costumes are by Karen Flood, with props by Sue Currier, puppet design by Ramona Jan, technical direction by Zoot, and Brett Keyser on tech/web. Brad Krumholz is the Co-Artistic Director of NACL.

In COURAGE, an audacious woman named Anna (Kowalchuk) searches for her missing soldier son (Ritchey) in a time of ongoing conflict. She is a modern-day, opportunistic peddler in business with her adopted daughter (Sase) selling goods from a golf cart at a camp for citizens displaced by the Crisis. The audience walks with Anna, refugees, and staff from location to location, and witnesses the songs and tales (some funny, some terrible) of a motley crew of survivors, and the maneuvers of a stilt army there to protect them. At journey's end the audience and actors gather inside a large tent on a Catskills hillside for a rowdy Greek play by Aristophanes put on by camp residents for the newly arrived refugees. The event concludes with a community meal of bread and soup.

NACL Theatre is a 16-year-old company based in Highland Lake, NY. Known for experimental, physical, and site-specific work, NACL makes original theatre productions about contemporary issues that have involved collaborations with specialists in the diverse fields of climate change (The Weather Project), neuroscience (STRUCK), and agriculture (The Little Farm Show). NACL received a prestigious Our Town award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2013 for its creative place in making work with the community.

About NACL's newest production, NACL artistic director Tannis Kowalchuk writes: "I want to appeal to the emotional intelligence-the heart and mind-of each spectator. Our goal is to move audiences deftly from thoughts to feelings to positive action. Today, equality, justice, and peace are way too valuable to lose sight of in the current climate of fear. Our production calls for empathy, resilience, and yes, courage-the courage to envision and embody change."

The performance of COURAGE is supported by The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, The Puffin Foundation, Sullivan Renaissance, the Salt of the Earth Donors Circle, and Apple Pond Farm.

For further information, contact NACL.org or call 845-557-0694.

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