Horse Trade Theater Group Presents LEGS AND ALL 10/2-16

After winning the Festival Favorite Award at the 2010 FRIGID New York Festival, an award-winning, sold-out run at the 2009 San Francisco Fringe Festival, and their most recent run as part of the New York Clown Theatre Festival at The Brick in Williamsburg, LEGS AND ALL returns to Horse Trade Theater Group for a limited engagement, October 2-16 at The Kraine Theater.

A man in an attic meets a woman in a box. As they lure one another into their worlds, their curiosity unfolds to expose a hilarious, mind-bending, innovative allegory for the classic man-meets-woman story. Rooted in physical comedy and drenched in imaginative stage illusion, LEGS & ALL is an inventive exploration of human loneliness set to an evocative tango-meets-bluegrass score.

LEGS AND ALL will play a special limited engagement on Saturday, October 2 at 2pm, Sunday, October 10 at 2pm, Thursday, October 14 at 8pm, Friday, October 15 at 8pm, and Saturday, October 16 at 3pm & 8pm at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery). Tickets ($20 / $15 for Students & Seniors) may be purchased online at www.horseTRADE.info or by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444.

POST-SHOW INTERACTIVE WORKSHOPS following the 2pm matinee performances on October 2 &10 Summer Shapiro and Peter Musante will hold a brief Q&A and then lead participants through a fun, hands-on exploration of physical comedy basics, as seen in LEGS AND ALL. Appropriate for all ages!

DEVISING PHYSICAL THEATER WORKSHOP In addition to their main stage performance Summer Shapiro and Peter Musante will teach a three-hour workshop on the creation of physical theater. Structured around their devising methods for creating LEGS AND ALL, the workshop will help participants identify a creative spark and propose techniques to help extract its theatrical possibilities. Participants will leave the workshop inspired and empowered to create their own work. This exclusive workshop will be held at The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery) on Sunday, October 17 from 1pm-4pm. The class fee is $50, which includes a $12 discount code to LEGS AND ALL. Visit www.horseTRADE.info to register. Class size is limited, so book your spot now!

"Legs and All is everything that makes clown theatre great. It's funny, clever, conceptual, and innovative. Shapiro and Musante raise the craft of clowning to new levels. This is a beautiful piece that should not be missed." Richard Hinojosa, nytheatre.com

"Legs and All is a spellbinding 50 minutes of theater, an innovative work that captures the ups and downs of human relationships with childlike energy and perfect comic timing."
Lucy Butcher, Show Business Weekly

"A relentlessly charming, overwhelmingly beautiful piece of art."
Aaron Riccio, What Sounds Cool

"Their wonderful hour long play (in my opinion, the best of the festival) is a kinetic poem about...the delicious vertigo one feels when your personal space crashes into someone else's."
Will Kenton, Cultural Capitol

"An inspired bit of performance art created and executed splendidly by two world-class physical comedians" Los Angeles Entertainment Today

"Deft physical comedy... Legs offers a swift all-ages kick in the funny groin."
San Francisco Bay Guardian

"A brilliant translation of the details of conversant life as we know it, taking these details a few steps beyond Harold Pinter and flinging them with utmost precision into kinetic comedy."
San Francisco Bay Times

WINNER of the 2010 FRIGID New York "Festival Favorite Award"
Best of The Best in 2009 Bay Area Theatre - SF Bay Times
2009 Ticketholder Award for Best Special Event/Performance - Entertainment Today
Top 5 Best Original Works of 2009 -Chloe Veltman*, lies like truth ArtsJournal

Summer Shapiro - Creator/Performer - Physical Actor & Comedienne
Summer Shapiro has written, performed and produced three original physical comedy shows, touring to San Francisco, Hawaii and New York since 2008 and will be attending the NY Clown Theatre Festival for the third time in a row. In San Francisco, she premiered her original solo show In The Boudoir sharing the bill with Cirque du Soleil veteran, John Gilkey. The show continued on to headline at the San Francisco WOW Festival, in 2009. Shapiro's PANTS! The Best Show Ever, sold out in the 2008 New York and San Francisco Clown Theater Festival's in 2008 and she was in a trapeze clown duo in Angry Gods and Lost Marbles showcasing at the Magic Theater in October, 2007. Shapiro was an assistant director and performer with The Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women, directed by Rhodessa Jones in 2006. Shapiro has trained, performed and taught her craft in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Ireland and holds a B.A. in acting from UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television.

Peter Musante - Creator/Performer - Physical Actor & Comedian
Peter Musante is a Brooklyn-based actor/musician currently performing Off-Broadway in Blue Man Group. As a Blue Man, he's worked in Chicago, Boston, Orlando, Bogotá, Colombia and can be seen in ad campaigns all over Las Vegas and Brazil. Out of blue, he has taught improvisation to kids, improvised in drag at Universal Studios Hollywood, crooned cowboy tunes in Tokyo, worked as a standardized patient for medical students and most recently, developed workshops for children with autism. After graduating from UCLA's School of Theater in 2005, he played Huck Finn in Big River at Vista, California's Moonlight Amphitheater and won the San Diego Theater Critic's Circle Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

COMPANY BACKGROUND
Summer Shapiro and Peter Musante began their artistic collaborations together as fellow students at UCLA's School of Theater. During this they began to uncover an uncanny chemistry and a world of play. Now after almost a decade apart the team has reunited, and since April 2009 have been traveling between New York and San Francisco for rehearsals, having script writing sessions on the telephone and even live Skype showings of new material while Peter gigs in Brazil for Blue Man Group. LEGS AND ALL is their first production together and the team is beginning to make plans for their next project in 2011.

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.summershapiro.com