Kanawha Players to Present SING DOWN THE MOON: APPALACHIAN WONDER TALES, 6/28-29

Sing Down the Moon: Appalachian Wonder Tales will be performed at the Kanawha Players Theater located at 309 Beauregard Street, Charleston, West Virginia, 25301. Performances will be on June 28 and 29 at 7pm and June 30, 2013, at 2:00p.m. Tickets are $16 for adults $10 for students with IDs and Children 17 and under. Media night will be June 25, 2013 at 7:00pm.

Journey into the Appalachian Mountains in this award-winning musical that deftly weaves six traditional tales and original music into a keepsake quilt of mountain lore and wisdom for the whole family. Three "Jack tales" feature the resourceful, clever Jack who climbs a wonder-bean tree to find giants in the sky, who lands himself a job despite his foolishness and who wins the heart of Featherflight, the magical daughter of a devilish trickster. "Catskins" is a spunky Appalachian Cinderella. "The Enchanted Tree" is a beauty-and-the-beast love story between a lost girl and a frightening crow. And in a zany, sung-through "Sow and Her Three Pigs" plucky Nancy the pig outsmarts the hungry fox. This musical play incorporates singing, mountain dances, music and giant puppets to create a highly theatrical storytelling style. The score, which interweaves music throughout the tales, is inspired by "Old Time" Appalachian music featuring fiddle and banjo that drives the play's action and makes music itself a character in the play.

Young children, middle school, high school, college and adult audiences will love the retelling of these old classics.

Luciana A. Britton is a Virginia native who has made her home in the beautiful mountains and streams of West Virginia. She is a lover of the arts and shows it with her creative mind through writing, singing, and playing any one of her chosen instruments. Receiving a minor in music from West Virginia State University, Luciana has used her knowledge of music to be the assistant director of her church's
choir when preparing for performances. Her acting debut, in front of a paying audience, was as a singer and dancer in, Black Nativity, during her early years of attending WVSU. Luciana's first directing role occurred during her supervisor of a Christmas play presented by her students at a local daycare center. She also assists in directing her church's choir in performances. Luciana is an active member of the Delta Sigma Thetha Sorority and currently works as a cosmetologist.

Mary Hall Surface's work has been featured at Seattle Children'sTheatre, Dallas Children's Theatre, Arizona's Childsplay, Honolulu Theatre for Youth, the National Gallery of Arts, the Folger Shakespeare Library, as well as more than 15 productions at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in every region of the United States, as well as in Ireland, France, Peru, Germany, Italy, Taiwan and across Canada. An anthology of five of her plays, Most Valuable Player and Four Other All-Star Plays for Middle and High School Audiences, was published by Smith and Kraus. She has been nominated for five Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Direction: for the Round House Theatre's TinTypes, for Theatre for the First Amendment's Grimm Tales, Sing Down the Moon, Perseus Bayou (for which she recieved the award) and Tribute/Adventure Theatre's Good Night Moon and for the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play for Sing Down the Moon, Perseus Bayou, Mississippi Pinocchio and Lift: Icarus and Me (all four written with composer David Maddox.)

David Maddox (composer, lyricist) has created six works of musical theatre in collaboration with Mary Hall Surface: Sing Down the Moon, Perseus Bayou, Mississippi Pinocchio, The Nightingale (a dance-theatre work, commissioned by the Kennedy Center); Gandhara (also commissioned by the Kennedy Center); and The Odyssey of Telemaca. David is also the composer of Steak!, a country-western musical about cattle-rustling vegetarians and scores for film. David has produced scores and sound designs for more than 100 theatre productions across the United States, including Nijinsky's Last Dance, for which he won a Helen Hayes Award for Sound Design. David has received thirteen Helen Hayes Award nominations in four different categories (Best New Play, Best New Musical, Music Direction, and Sound Design) and has released six albums of original music, including the award-winning Original Cast Albums of Sing Down the Moon: Appalachian Wonder Tales and Perseus Bayou: The Search for the Cajun Medusa.

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