13th Floor Announces Its Winter Season

13th Floor is proud to announce its winter season program featuring the world premiere of Next Time, I'll Take the Stairs, December 8 - 18 at the Joe Goode Annex, and Lightning Strikes Anonymous, February 24 - March 5, 2017 at ODC Theater.

Next Time, I'll Take the Stairs is an original play created by Artistic Director Jenny McAllister in collaboration with the company. Built for five actors, the play experiments with "seemingly nonsense language juxtaposed against exciting, character-based physicality," said McAllister. "A jumping off place for us in its creation has been the question, What happens to childhood fears when they are allowed to follow us into adulthood?"

In Next Time, I'll Take the Stairs, three adult siblings find their way into a mysterious world inhabited by two duplicitous strangers. Reviewing a work-in-progress showing at this summer's FURY Factory festival, Synchronized Chaos wrote: "Brilliantly written and choreographed, often brain-achingly funny, this Alice-in-Wonderland journey is a whirlwind of mischievous non-sequiturs...marvelous and memorable."

Next Time, I'll Take the Stairs runs for two weekends, December 8 - 18, with 8 p.m. shows Thursdays through Saturdays, and 7 p.m. shows on Sundays. Tickets are $15 - $40 with discounts available to seniors, students and low-income individuals. To purchase, visit joegoode.org/box-office afterNovember 1.

Next February, 13th Floor will share a double bill with Twisted Oak Dance Theater under the direction of Colin Epstein. Each company will present a 40-minute play. Twisted Oak premieres The Monster's Journey, a mythological allegory about the confrontation between Harmony and Strife, told through acrobatics, aerial work, clowning and dance. 13th Floor revisits its first company work, Lightning Strikes Anonymous. The play, in a substantial new version, tells the story of five individuals who share a dangerous craving for self-electrocution.

Since 2010 McAllister has premiered six plays, marrying text and movement in unusual ways including Bloomsbury/It's Not Real, which sets Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group inside a reality television premise; Being Raymond Chandler, about the iconic detective fiction writer as he struggles to write; A Wake, inspired by James Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake; and most recently The Broken Knife, riffing off ancient Greek and Norse mythology.

Next Time, I'll Take the Stairs and Lightning Strikes Anonymous feature performances by Zach FischerJulie Mahony and David Silpa, together with Epstein and McAllister. Keriann Egeland returns as costume designer, with Allen Willner as lighting designer.

For more information about 13th Floor and all its programs visit 13thfloortheater.org.

Next Time, I'll Take the Stairs is supported in part by The Zellerbach Family Foundation and Joe Goode Performance Annex. Lightning Strikes Anonymous and Monster's Journey are supported by ODC Theater and the Rainin Opportunity Fund.

ABOUT 13TH FLOOR

13th Floor was founded in 2010 by Jenny McAllister, along with a troupe of talented performers equally adept at acting and moving. With a background in both theater and dance, the company explores how narrative theater can be enhanced by character-based movement -- using dance, fight choreography or riffs on simple human gestures. Over the past five years, 13th Floor has collaborated with local writer Kim Green, visual designers Michael Oesch and Delayne Medoff, and has been supported in part by grants from ODC Theater, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the Fleishhacker Foundation, The Mellon Foundation, The Fort Mason Foundation and the Dancers' Group Lighting Artist In Dance Award. 13th Floor was the recipient of a creative work/play residency at ODC Theater in 2013, The Sandbox Series in May of 2015, and a one-month residency at Levy Dance in January 2015.

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