| Ensemble Studio Theatre Announces 2019/20 Season, Beginning with Catya McMullen's GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 10:39 am EDT 08/28/19 | |
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| Ensemble Studio Theatre/Youngblood and Radio Drama Network Present THE WORLD PREMIERE OF GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD BY CATYA McMULLEN (AGNES) DIRECTED BY GIOVANNA SARDELLI (DESCRIBE THE NIGHT) OCTOBER 2–27, 2019 Ensemble Studio Theatre and Radio Drama Network Present THE NYC PREMIERE OF REDWOOD BY BRITTANY K. ALLEN (HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY) DIRECTED BY MIKHAELA MAHONY (DIDO OF IDAHO) APRIL 15–MAY 20, 2020 PLUS A NEW PLAY TBA FROM ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE AND THE ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION SCIENCE & TECHONOLGY PROJECT’S ONGOING PARTNERSHIP FEBRUARY 2020 ALL AT EST’S CURT DEMPSTER THEATRE TICKETS ON SALE NOW FOR GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE (EST) (William Carden, Artistic Director, Sarah McLellan, Executive Director) is proud to announce its 2019/2020 season. The season will commence in October 2019 with the world premiere of GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD, a new play by Catya McMullen (Agnes) and directed by Giovanna Sardelli (Describe The Night), presented by EST’s Youngblood (Graeme Gillis and RJ Tolan, Co-Artistic Directors) and Radio Drama Network (Melina Brown, President). In February 2020, EST and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Doron Weber, Vice-President, Programs), will present a new mainstage play TBA as part of its ongoing partnership. The season will conclude in April 2020, when EST and Radio Drama Network will present Redwood, written by Brittany K. Allen (Happy Happy Joy Joy) and directed by Mikhaela Mahony (Dido of Idaho). All productions will take place at EST’s Curt Dempster Theatre (549 W. 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019). Tickets can be purchased at www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org. GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD By Catya McMullen Directed by Giovanna Sardelli Previews begin October 2, 2019 Opening night is October 10, 2019 Limited run through October 27, 2019 Gretchen, Emma and Whitney have been friends since they were teenagers. They've been sober since they were teenagers. They set off on a road trip south--with homemade female urination devices, too much pie, ill-advised sexual escapades--to celebrate and mourn a figure from their past. GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD reveals what it's like to face adulthood and death after growing up weird and possibly broken. GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD has been in development at EST since 2016 and follows a workshop production in December 2017. The cast of GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD will feature Quincy Dunn-Baker (The Wayside Motor Inn), Layla Khoshnoudi (Dance Nation), Diana Oh (mylingerieplay), Claire Siebers (Agnes), and JD Taylor (Sundown, Yellow Moon). GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD will feature scenic design by Alexis Distler, costume design by Sydney Maresca, lighting design by Cat Tate Starmer, and properties by Caitlyn Murphy. Fran Acuña-Almiron serves as production stage manager. Tickets for GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD are on sale now, with $20 early-bird tickets available through October 1st. The performance schedule is as follows: Monday at 7pm, Wednesday – Saturday at 7pm, Saturday at 2pm, and Sunday at 5pm. Tickets can be purchased at www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org. REDWOOD By Brittany K. Allen Directed by Mikhaela Mahony Previews begin April 15, 2020 Opening night is April 23, 2020 Limited run through May 10, 2020 In Brittany K. Allen's new comedy Redwood, Meg and Drew are a young interracial couple, very much in love and moving in together. But when Meg’s Uncle Stevie sets out to chart his ancestry online, he unwittingly discovers that Meg’s family was owned by Drew’s in the antebellum South. Surprise! Love and politics collide, and time bounces between the past and the present while Meg and Drew are forced to confront themselves, and their families, in a dark new light. Full cast and creative team will be announced at a later date. Additional programing will include EST/Youngblood’s monthly Sunday Brunches; EST/Youngblood’s annual Asking for Trouble Festival of new ten-minute plays in November 2019; EST/Youngblood’s annual Bloodworks Festival of full-length readings in May/June 2020; EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project’s annual First Light Festival, featuring readings and workshops of new science-themed plays commissioned and developed through the Project in February-April 2020; as well as additional public readings and workshops throughout the season. ABOUT ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE The Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST), founded by Curt Dempster in 1968, has been under the artistic direction of William Carden since 2007. Celebrating its 50th Anniversary last season, EST has developed thousands of new American plays and has grown into a company of over 600 actors, directors, playwrights, and designers. EST's mission is to develop and produce original, provocative, and authentic new work. A dynamic community committed to a collaborative process, EST is dedicated to inclusion across all aspects of identity and perspective, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexuality, physical or mental ability, physical or mental health, and recovery while acknowledging and working to end systemic marginalization and oppression at all levels of its organization. EST discovers and nurtures new voices and supports artists throughout their creative lives. This extraordinary support and commitment to inclusivity are essential to yield extraordinary work. EST’s primary programs include Youngblood, a collective of emerging professional playwrights under the age of 30; the EST/Sloan Project, a partnership that commissions, develops, and produces new works about science and technology; and the biennial Marathon of One-Act Plays, a landmark New York theatre festival since 1977. EST was granted a special Drama Desk Award in 2015 for its “unwavering commitment to producing new works”. After being developed at EST, Robert Askins’s Hand to God went on to West End and Broadway runs, earned five Tony Award nominations, and became the most produced play in the country for the 2016-17 theatrical season. Last year, Martyna Majok was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Cost of Living, a play which originated during her time in Youngblood, with a later version produced in EST’s Marathon of One-Act Plays. ABOUT YOUNGBLOOD Youngblood (Graeme Gillis and RJ Tolan, Artistic Directors) is EST’s Obie Award-winning, Drama Desk cited collective of emerging professional playwrights under the age of 30. Now in its 26th year, Youngblood nurtures new playwriting talent through regular meetings, readings, retreats, workshops and mainstage productions. Youngblood graduates include acclaimed writers Annie Baker, Sylvia Khoury, Charly Evon Simpson, Clare Barron, Lucy Alibar, Robert Askins, Michael Lew, Martyna Majok, Elizabeth Meriwether, Qui Nguyen, Will Arbery, Leah Nanako Winkler, and countless others whose work continues to be produced nationwide and beyond. ABOUT RADIO DRAMA NETWORK Radio Drama Network (Melina Brown, President) was founded by legendary audio drama director and producer, Himan Brown, to support art forms that use the spoken word to enrich our culture. Himan was a champion of all storytellers, from the tradition of the earliest stranger who wandered from town to town with tales of the latest news, to Academy Award-winning writers that contributed to his thousands of radio dramas, to the writers silenced by the Red Scare who were just trying to feed their families; Himan strove to keep writers writing and actors acting, telling tales that spun out in the grandest oral traditions of history, often addressing important social issues. Himan was the son of immigrants who became an actor, a director/producer and a gifted orator early in his life. His medium was the new frontier of radio. He began his career reading Yiddish stories over the airwaves from hotel bathrooms fashioned into audio studios, and quickly moved from packaging and starring in shows such as “Rise of the Goldbergs” to creating his own shows. During the height of radio, he created hundreds of radio series such as “Inner Sanctum,” “Little Italy,” “Grand Central Station,” “Dick Tracy,” “The Shadow,” “Bulldog Drummond,” and “The Thin Man.” Following television’s rise, he resurrected audio drama on the airwaves with CBS Radio Mystery Theater and Adventure Theater. Himan Brown lamented the dearth of dramatic and interesting programming on today’s airwaves, and he continued to create shows and series well into his 90s. Himan created the Radio Drama Network as a family foundation to continue his philanthropic work. He was a husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather who doted on his great-grandchildren. Himan Brown died three weeks’ shy of 100 years old in 2010. Currently, RDN has wrapped a feature documentary, Don't Be Nice which is about slam poetry. The film is now travelling to film festivals around the world and will have a wide release in 2019. RDN has under-written several plays at EST, including the 2017 and 2019 Marathon of One-Act Plays, William Jackson Harper's Travisville, and Sylvia Khoury's Against the Hillside, along with other ongoing projects including the HearNow! Festival, CUNY TV's Himan Brown Radio and TV Studios, and is underwriting a play at INTAR. ABOUT THE EST/ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY PROJECT The EST/Sloan Project (Graeme Gillis, Program Director; Linsay Firman, Associate Director) is designed to stimulate artists to create credible and compelling new theatrical works that explore the worlds of science, technology, and economics in order to challenge existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in popular culture. Since its inception in 1998, the EST/Sloan Project has commissioned, developed, and produced the work of more than 300 playwrights, choreographers, composers, and theatre companies. Recent notable plays include Behind the Sheet by Charly Evon Simpson, Isaac's Eye by Lucas Hnath, Please Continue by Frank Basloe, and Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler. ABOUT THE ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION The New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, founded in 1934, makes grants in science, technology, and economic performance. Sloan's program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience. Over nearly two decades, the Foundation’s pioneering theater program, begun with a 1997 grant to Ensemble Studio Theatre for Arthur Giron’s play about the Wright Brothers, Flight, has helped usher in the science play as a regular part of the theater canon. Commissioning close to 20 new plays each year through its two flagship partners, EST and Manhattan Theatre Club—and working with the National Theater in London and Playwrights Horizons in New York, among others—the Foundation has made “a Sloan” a coveted commission for any playwright embarking on a new play with a science and technology theme or character. Beginning with such renowned science plays as Proof, Copenhagen and Alan Alda’s QED, more recent grants have supported Bess Wohl’s Continuity, directed by 2019 Tony winner Rachel Chavkin; Charly Evon Simpson’s New York Times Critic’s Pick Behind the Sheet; Chiara Atik’s Bump; Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes; Leigh Fondakowski’s Spill; Nick Payne’s Constellations, a Broadway hit starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson; Nell Benjamin's The Explorer's Club; Lucas Hnath's Isaac's Eye and Anna Ziegler's Photograph 51, a 2015 prize-winner in London’s West End starring Nicole Kidman. Sloan also has a nationwide film program that includes support of six film schools, screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, SFFILM, Film Independent, the Black List, the Athena Film Festival, and the North Fork TV Festival, and has helped develop and distribute over 25 feature films including To Dust, The Sound of Silence, The Catcher Was a Spy, The Imitation Game, The Man Who Knew Infinity, Operator, and Experimenter. The Foundation has also supported theatrical documentaries such as Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, Particle Fever, and Jacques Perrin’s Oceans. The Foundation’s book program includes early support for Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, the best-selling book which became the Oscar-nominated, SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Prize-winning film. For more information, visit www.sloan.org or follow @SloanPublic on Twitter. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org # # # GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD BIOS CATYA McMULLEN (Playwright) is a playwright, comedian, TV + screenwriter. Her plays include AGNES (Lesser America/59E59, NYT Critics Pick), LOCKED UP BITCHES (The Flea Theater), GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD (Upcoming World Premiere EST/Youngblood), Everything Is Probably Going To Be Okay, We Pray To Elephants, A**HOLES IN GAS STATIONS, Rubber Ducks And Sunsets (Ground UP Productions) along with numerous shorts. Her play Missed Connection won the Sam French OOB short play competition and was directed by Leslye Headland (“Russian Doll”). She is the creator of the WE ARE ANIMALS series, a quarterly variety show series she wrote with Scott Klopfenstein of the Gold Record selling band Reel Big Fish, where she performed under her feminist hip hop alias “Chihuahua Fancy.” She is a proud alum of the Obie Award-winning EST/Youngblood and a company member of The Middle Voice Theater Company; the apprentice company of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Film/TV: AMC's “Dietland,” Freeform's “Everything's Gonna Be Okay” (upcoming), and currently FX's "Y the Last Man" adaptation. GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD was optioned by STARTHROWER Entertainment, which she adapted. BA UNC Chapel Hill. GIOVANNA SARDELLI (Director). With Rajiv Joseph: Los Angeles: Archduke (World Premiere the Taper, CTG), Guards at the Taj (Geffen Playhouse, 2017 Ovation Award for Best Production of a Play). Off-Broadway: Describe the Night (Obie Award for Best New American Play 2018), Huck & Holden (Cherry Lane); Animals Out of Paper – Joe A Callaway Award - and All This Intimacy (Second Stage); The Leopard and The Fox (AlterEgo). Regional: Archduke (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley), Describe the Night (Alley Theatre); Mr. Wolf (Cleveland Play House); The Lake Effect (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley); The North Pool (TheatreWorks World Premiere, Barrington Stage Company). Other Select Off-Broadway World Premieres: The upcoming GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD by Catya McMullen (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Little Children Dream of God (Roundabout); Wildflower (Second Stage); Finks (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Apple Cove (Women’s Project). Other Select Regional: the recent World Premiere of Heidi Armbruster’s Mrs. Christie (Dorset Theatre Festival); They Promised Her the Moon, Somewhere, The Whipping Man (The Old Globe); Constellations (Geffen Playhouse); All The Way, The Whipping Man (Cleveland Play House); The Mountaintop, Absalom (Actor’s Theatre of Louisville); Clybourne Park, Lord of the Flies, Muckrakers (Barrington Stage Company); Crimes of the Heart, Velocity of Autumn, Somewhere (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley). Though based in New York, Sardelli is the Director of New Works for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, the recipient of the 2019 Regional Theatre Tony Award. Education: MFA Graduate Acting Program, NYU and graduate of their Director’s Lab. REDWOOD BIOS BRITTANY K. ALLEN (Playwright) is a Brooklyn-based writer and actor. Her plays include Redwood (Upcoming productions: Portland Center Stage, The Jungle), The Late Greats, and Happy Happy Joy Joy, among others. Her work has been developed at Manhattan Theatre Club, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, and Ensemble Studio Theatre, and acknowledged on the Kilroys List (2017) and in The Mix (2018). She is currently under commission from Playwrights Horizons, and Manhattan Theatre Club/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Brittany’s a member of the emerging writers group at The Public Theater, and the Obie Award winning EST/Youngblood. She was a 2017 Van Lier Playwriting Fellow at the Lark. Recent acting credits include Diane Paulus and Emily Mann’s off-Broadway production of Gloria: A Life (Daryl Roth Theatre), New Saloon’s Minor Character (Invisible Dog; New York Innovative Theatre Award for Best Ensemble) and The Place We Built (The Flea). MIKHAELA MAHONY (Director) is a Brooklyn-based director of theatre, opera and film. She has developed work with New York City Opera, Ensemble Studio Theatre/Youngblood, The Syndicate, F*it Club, City Lyric Opera, and the Collaborative Arts Ensemble; as well as The Juilliard School, the Chautauqua Institution, the Manhattan School of Music, and Columbia University. At Ensemble Studio Theatre, she is a frequent collaborator with the playwrights of EST/Youngblood and directed Abby Rosebrock’s Dido of Idaho in 2018. Over the past season, she directed Alanna Coby’s Tiny Errors at the End of the Millennium, Tamara Geisler’s multi-media workshop on the life of artist-activist Tina Modotti, Ted Rosenthal’s new jazz opera Dear Erich, Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and The Fantasticks. Her debut as a film director, Summer, was an official selection at the Buffalo International Film Festival, Flathead Lake International Cinemafest, and FilmColumbia in Chatham, NY. She assistant directed Daniel Fish on Oklahoma! at St. Ann’s Warehouse and on Broadway, and Anne Bogart on Poul Ruder’s The Handmaid’s Tale at Boston Lyric Opera. She is a proud member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, and a volunteer at the 52nd Street Project. BA from Barnard College, MFA from Columbia University. |
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