Wolf 359 Presents EVANSTON: A RARE COMEDY, Debuts In July

Wolf 359 presents a new, full-length play by NYFA Fellow Michael Yates Crowley, directed by Michael Rau. Evanston: A Rare Comedy will debut in July 2009 as part of the undergroundzero
festival at P.S. 122, and then in August will be performed at HERE Arts Center as part of their Summer Sublet Series. From the writer/director team behind The Ted Haggard Monologues, this black comedy begins with the disappearance of a teenage girl in deepest suburbia and ends when a meeting of The Evanston Women’s Book Club goes horribly awry.

Evanston: A Rare Comedy begins with the disappearance of a teenage girl in deepest suburbia and ends when a meeting of The Evanston Women’s Book Club goes horribly awry. In between, a transgender student dreams of death, a housewife dreams of Mexico, an economics professor has an affair with a Whole Foods check-out clerk, and the financial crisis rages on. The latest show from the Wolf 359 team – director Michael Rau and writer/performer Michael Yates Crowley – takes a chainsaw to language, convention and pretension to create a new kind of American story-telling: raw, funny and painfully sexy. Inspired by the words of Psalm 137 and the streets of Evanston, Illinois, A Rare Comedy asks: how can we sing a song of joy in this strange land?

Written by Michael Yates Crowley. Directed by Michael Rau.

Produced by Rosalind Grush and Joshua Lubin-LevyAn Equity Approved Showcase With: Bodine Alexander, Chas Carey, Leah Karpel, Michael Crowley, Anna Margaret Hollyman, Devon Jordan*, Sam West (*appearing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association).

Performance and ticket info: undergroundzero festival at P.S. 122 150 First Avenue, NY, NY 10009 July 14, 9:30PM (preview); July 15, 9:30PM (opening); July 16, 9:30PM; July 17, 7:30PM.

For tickets ($15): Visit www.ps122.org or call 212-352-3101.

Summer Sublet Series at HERE Arts Center145 Sixth Avenue, NY, NY 10013 (between Spring & Broome, enter on Dominick).

August 3, 4, 5 at 8:30PM. For tickets ($15): Visit www.here.org or call 212-352-3101.

This production is being presented through HERE’s Summer Sublet Series, which provides artists with subsidized space and equipment, as well as technical and administrative support.

Wolf 359, founded in 2007 by the playwright Michael Yates Crowley and the director Michael Rau, is dedicated to radical new theater. The troupe has performed in Germany, Chicago, and New York
City. Our last show, The Ted Haggard Monologues, was a New York Magazine Critic’s Pick and filmed by HBO and presented in Germany as part of a festival of new American plays. We are currently Artists in Residence at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York City, where our adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Rag Fur Blood Bone, was performed in March 2009.

Since 1993, the OBIE-winning HERE Arts Center has been a premier arts organization in NYC and a leader in the field of new, hybrid performance work.  Under leadership of Founding Artistic Director Kristin Marting and Producing Director Kim Whitener, HERE has served over 12,000 emerging to mid-career artists developing work that does not fit a conventional programming agenda. Work presented at HERE has garnered 14 OBIE awards, an OBIE grant for artistic achievement, three Drama Desk nominations, two Berrilla Kerr Awards, three NY Innovative Theatre Awards, an Edwin Booth Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination.  HERE proudly supports artists at all stages in their careers through full productions, artist residency programs, festivals and subsidized performance and rehearsal space. Work at HERE is curated based on the strength and uniqueness of the artist’s vision. HERE’s Artist Residency Program (HARP) provides development, commissions and full production for up to 20 artists over one-to-three years. In 2005, with the support of the FJC, a foundation of donor advised funds, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the City of New York, HERE Arts Center purchased its long-time home as part of a five-year “Secure HERE’s Future” campaign. With full-scale renovations to the space concluding in June 2008, thanks to generous support from the City of New York, HERE is poised to continue and expand its role as a downtown haven for the finest emerging art. Offering a comfortable, eclectic setting for artists and audiences alike, HERE features a new café and two state-of-the-art performance spaces.