Horse Trade Theater Group Announces Summer 2009 Season Lineup

BIGGER THAN I
Presented by Counting Squares Theatre
June 4-20, Thurs-Sat @ 7pm
UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st & A)
With the popularity of confessional websites, blog culture, and the advent of the technology age, Counting Squares Theatre examines the cause and effect of our increasingly stark interpersonal relationships. Counting Squares asks the question: Why can't we deal with each other and really be ourselves out in the open. Through the use of scene work, song, dance, and multimedia we expose how our inner secrets cause our outward fears.

ARSENIC & OLD LACE
Presented by Dysfunctional Theatre Company
June 12-27 Thur-Sat @ 7pm, Sunday, June 21 at 3pm
The Kraine Theater (85 E. 4th Street between 2nd and Bowery)
This classic comedy features two sweet old ladies... who poison lonely men as an act of charity. One of their nephews is a serial killer. Another thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt. The third just wants to marry his girl and keep his aunties safe from the Brooklyn Police Department. There's a slew of dead bodies buried in the cellar and another in the window seat. Because murder, insanity and family are very Dysfunctional.

BOATLOADS OF SHAME
By Rick Blunt & Robert J. Gibbs
June 25-27 @ 8pm
UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st & A)
In a house full of Catholic women, Rick learned that good girls don't like sex. Hear the hilarious description of how he learned otherwise while growing up and transitioning from blue-collar union worker to Shakespeare scholar and professional actor.

WAKING UP WITH STRANGERS
By Paul David Young
June 29-July 2 @ 8pm
The Kraine Theater (85 E. 4th Street between 2nd and Bowery)
Marc is an American scholar in Berlin, attempting to rewrite a failed dissertation on Kleist. Konrad, from whom he is letting a room, offers Marc help in understanding his attraction to Kleist and opens up a disturbing confrontation with identity. Konrad's girlfriend Mina is pulled into the vortex of their discovery. The life of Kleist finds its eerie parallels in Marc's awakening.

TWISTED
Rising Sun's Annual One Act Series
Presented by Rising Sun Performance Company
July 9-25, Thurs-Sat @ 8pm
UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st & A)
5 Short Plays of Perverse & Funny stories that will make you scratch your head in disbelief.

THE HUNGER ARTIST
Presented by Human Group
July 16-18 @ 8pm
The Red Room (85 E. 4th Street between 2nd and Bowery)
There are no limits to my ability to fast!" In this explosive performance, one of Franz Kafka's strangest characters comes to life and invites the audience to come and share his dark cage. Nick Fesette, in a truly "naked" performance, plunges headfirst into the soul of the hunger artist and ecstatically emerges drenched in theatrical placenta. Using song, dance, and circus tricks, Human Group explores starvation, the human body, and what it means to be a performing animal.

JULIUS CAESAR
By William Shakespeare
Presented by Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company
August 13-16, Thurs-Sat @ 8pm, Sun at 2pm
The Kraine Theater (85 E. 4th Street between 2nd and Bowery)
William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar takes place in a world of male power and dominance. The Rome of Shakespeare's play is an arena of male competition, in which the female characters attempt to avert tragedy but find themselves powerless to do so. The Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company takes on this testosterone-filled play with an entirely female cast, exploring the performance of gender and challenging preconceptions of male and female.

Tickets to all shows ($18) are available by calling SmartTix at 212-868-4444 or by visiting www.horseTRADE.info

Horse Trade Theater Group also has a variety of monthly shows happening at UNDER St. Marks throughout the summer including Revealed Burlesque, Sci-Fi Screening Room, Sundays With Poe, The Matt Fried Show, Told, God Tastes Like Chicken, and Penny's Open Mic. Visit www.horseTRADE.info for scheduling info.

Horse Trade Theater Group is a self-sustaining theater development group; with a focus on new work, it has produced a massive quantity of stimulating downtown theater. Horse Trade's Resident Artist Program offers a home to a select group of Independent Theater artists, pooling together a great deal of talent and energy. It is also the home of FRIGID New York - the first and only festival of its kind in New York City.

www.horseTRADE.info