Rorschach Theatre Announces 2016-2017 Season

Rorschach Theatre - an award-winning company known for its dedication to impossible fantastical realism - will present in its 2016-2017 season three full productions and a number of unique events. The three productions include the world premiere of Erin Bregman's A Bid to Save the World, the world premiere of Forgotten Kingdoms written by co-Artistic Director Randy Baker and a summer remount of a popular play from Rorschach's past that is yet to be announced.

Tickets for Rorschach's 2016-2017 season are available through the Atlas Performing Arts Center box office. For more information, please visit http://atlasarts.org/events/ or call (202) 399-7993.

A BID TO SAVE THE WORLD

Pay-What-You-Can Previews: September 9-11, 2016

Press Opening: Monday, September 12, 2016 /

Run Continues through October 2, 2016

Erin Bregman's fantastical A Bid to Save the World will have its world premiere after having been developed in DC by both InkWell Theatre and The Source Festival where it received a 5-performance run in 2014.

Raised in a world without death, best friends Adam and Evelyn study dying obsessively. In the recent past, a young woman barters for her beloved brother while Death peels oranges. Elsewhere, a rich man seeks to buy world peace, and a song of great sorrow and beauty is sung and sung again. When being immortal is normal, what is the meaning of life without death?

Bregman, a playwright in residence with the Playwrights Foundation and PlayGround. Bregman has had work produced or developed throughout the United States with the Playwrights Foundation, American Conservatory Theater, Actors Theatre of Santa Cruz, the UCSB New Plays Festival and many others. In addition to her work as a playwright, Bregman is a teaching artist for the San Francisco Opera and runs Little Opera, an all-kids opera company.

A Bid to Save the World will be lead by local director and Rorschach company member Lee Liebeskind. Liebeskind is one of the founders and a former producing director of The Inkwell, the new play development company that developed A Bid to Save the World in 2013. With Rorschach he most recently directed Glassheart (2014) and last performed in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (2013). He served as a member of the inaugural Directors' Studio with Shakespeare Theatre Company, a professional development program for early-career directors. He is also an artistic advisor at Flying V Theatre, a two-tour veteran of the National Players and a film producer and editor for WILL Interactive.

A Bid to Save the World will be performed in the Sprenger Theatre at the Atlas Performing Arts Center from September 12 to October 2, 2016.

FALL SPECIAL EVENTS:

A CABARET TO SAVE THE WORLD

With Tracy Lynn Olivera

One Night Only! September 30, 2016

Five-time Helen Hayes Award Nominee and Rorschach Company Member Emeritus Tracy Lynn Olivera will commandeer the A Bid To Save The World stage for one night only for A Cabaret to Save the World. Joined by an outstanding list of guest artists, she'll sing the songs that will save the world as only she can do.

KLECKSOGRAPHY

Multiple performances on Saturday, December 10

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but not the one you remember. Rorschach Theatre's 2016 Klecksography Project presents a small selection of stories built by teams of artists working on a furiously short timeline and focusing on one theme: you think you know everything about the most wonderful time of the year, but there are secrets from the past lurking in those stockings and crackling fires.

Klecksography was a game that Hermann Rorschach played as a child in which children would make shapes out of ink on a blank page. Inspired by this game he would go on to develop his famous psychological test, the Rorschach Inkblot Test. Rorschach Theatre's Klecksography Projects play a similar game with New Play Development - stories are built by local artists responding to a similar theme or a common source and then presented to an audience as an evening of theatre.

The 2016 Klecksography project will be performed in both Lab I and Lab II at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on December 10, 2016

MORE EVENTS IN THE FALL AND SPRING

Rorschach will perform a public reading of Forgotten Kingdoms (which will premiere with a full production in the spring) at the Kennedy Center as a part of the annual Page-to-Stage Festival. The performance will take place on September 5 (Labor Day) at 130pm in the Theater Lab at the Kennedy Center.

Subsequent development and readings will take place in Jakarta, Indonesia and Penang, Malaysia in January 2017.

The Company will also create some unforgettable events in the winter and spring of 2017. More details are coming soon!

FORGOTTEN KINGDOMS

Pay-What-You-Can Previews: April 21-23, 27 and 28, 2017

Press Opening: Saturday, April 29, 2017

Run Continues through May 21, 2017

Winner of the 2012 Larry Neal Writer's Competition, Forgotten Kingdoms by Rorschach co-Artistic Director Randy Baker presents an intimate, mystical tale of clashing cultures and an unusual young boy caught in the fray.

On a small island in Indonesia, a wooden house balances on stilts over a churning sea. In this house Reverend David Holiday tries to convert a skeptical young local whose fate has become improbably intertwined with his own. At stake this night is the life of the young man's father, the future of this island's ancient culture and the happiness of an American family caught between worlds. As the night turns into morning, the fate of David's haunted young son becomes the biggest question of all.

Forgotten Kingdoms will receive an international play development process. Following a reading at the Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage festival on September 5 at 130pm, the play will be have developmental workshops in Jakarta, Indonesia and Penang, Malaysia in January 2017.

Rorschach's 2017 production of Forgotten Kingdoms will be the play's world premiere. Baker first wrote the play as the thesis project for his MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College in 2012 and has since been developed by companies across the United States including The National New Play Network and Inkwell Theatre in Washington, Wordsmyth Theatre in Houston and MTWorks in New York (where it won the audience choice award).

Forgotten Kingdoms will be performed in the Sprenger Theatre at the Atlas Performing Arts Center from April 23 to May 21, 2017.

ABOUT RORSCHACH THEATRE

Through uncommon uses of environment and intimate passionate performances, Rorschach Theatre seeks to lure its audiences beyond the limits of ordinary theatrical experience so that they may discover new elements of their own humanity.

Rorschach Theatre is a company that has received significant acclaim for its fierce performance style, its bold use of theatrical space and its dedication to challenging works that are at once relevant and timeless. The company's work has focused on helping to reveal the contemporary relevance of fable, finding magic in rough spaces, connecting timeless works to a contemporary audience.

Rorschach Theatre has produced more than three dozen plays seen by tens of thousands of people in the Washington area. They have been nominated for over a dozen Helen Hayes Awards, have been a finalist for the Mayor's Arts Award and have been the recipients of multiple grants and awards from the DC Commission on the Art and Humanities. Rorschach Theatre won a Mary Goldwater award in 2006 and many Rorschach artists have won Mary Goldwater awards for their work with the company. The company's work has garnered the attention of The New York Times, The Washington Post, American Theatre Magazine and National Public Radio, as well as countless local publications. The company has become, "proof that limited resources do not stymie great talents, any more than big budgets can squeeze works of genius from mediocre minds." (Washington Post)

Rorschach Theatre is a member of the LEAGUE OF WASHINGTON THEATRES and THE CULTURAL ALLIANCE OF GREATER WASHINGTON.

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