HARM'S WAY Opens This Week at convergence-continuum

convergence-continuum opens its 2017 season with the Ohio premiere of Harm's Way by Mac Wellman, directed by Clyde Simon. Harm's Way, the darkly humorous fable of an angry man on a rampage through a fantasticAl Wilderness, chronicles the exploits of very angry Santouche as he tries to make sense of his understanding of law and order in a nation of other angry people.

Filled with Wild West and circus sideshow imagery, the action doesn't unfold in any specific time/place. But all the characters drink from the same poisoned well, which is definitely recognizably American. It might be anytime in the last 70 years, or even - not impossibly - in the next.

The March 25 performance of Harm's Way will be part of the three-day Mac Wellman Homecoming Festival presented by Playwrights Local.

Harm's Way is directed by convergence-continuum's Artistic Director, Clyde Simon, and features actors Wesley Allen, Robert Branch, Gideon Lorete, Joseph Milan, Michael Regnier, Beau Reinker, Brian Westerley, Hillary Wheelock and Carrie Williams. This will be the seventh Mac Wellman play presented by convergence-continuum, having previously produced Sincerity Forever, 7 Blowjobs, Cleveland, Whirligig, A Murder of Crows and The Hyacinth Macaw. All were directed by Artistic Director, Clyde Simon.

Harm's Way opens Fri, March 24 and runs Thu-Sat at 8 pm through April 15 at convergence-continuum's Liminis Theater, 2438 Scranton Rd, Cleveland 44113 in the historic Tremont neighborhood. Tickets are $20 general admission, $15 seniors (65+), $10 students. Reservations at convergence-continuum.org or 216-687-0074.

This production is supported in part by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.

Mac Wellman is an American playwright, poet and author. He is best known for his experimental work in the theater which rebels against theatrical conventions, often abandoning such traditional elements as plot and character altogether. His plays frequently resemble a moving collage of events which has more in common with an avant-garde dance production than conventional theater. Over the past 30 years, he has written well over 50 plays and numerous books of poetry, novels and short stories. Wellman is widely recognized as among the most influential voices of the Off-Off-Broadway era. Based for many years in New York, Wellman, who is originally from Cleveland, has authored scores of plays, with productions spanning throughout North America as well as England, Germany, China, and Japan. In addition, he is regarded as a significant teacher of playwriting, and has impacted many of today's most important emerging writers from his position as head of the master of fine arts program at Brooklyn College.

"His is a world of phantasm, environmental decay, bigotry, evil, longing. In a Wellman play, the end of the world seems just around the corner but then it turns out the corner is not all that close-it may even be behind us, an even scarier proposition. The point is simply that all is not lost. In such plays asTerminal Hip, Dracula, Swoop, Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, and The Hyacinth Macaw, he has determined to unmask the illusions that undermine the value of experience with a showman's love of artifice and an absurdist's sense of dread. For Wellman, patriotism is a love of American speech, which he offers in all its deeply disturbed and poetic glory." (Linda Yablonsky, BOMB Magazine)

Mac Wellman has received three Obie awards, the most recent being a Lifetime Achievement Obie in 2003.

The Mac Wellman Homecoming Festival is a three-day (March 23-25) celebration of a groundbreaking playwright from Cleveland, Ohio. This is the first Cleveland-based event honoring Mac Wellman, who has been celebrated in numerous other contexts-including the "Horizontal Avalanche" Festival encompassing thirty plays in four cities-but never in his hometown. The Festival, organized by Playwrights Local, will include readings and performances of Wellman's work by Playwrights Local, Theater Ninjas, CSU Department of Theatre & Dance, Baldwin Wallace University Department of Theatre and Dance, and The Manhattan Project - Cleveland Lab; and panel discussions and talkbacks with Mac Wellman. The final performance of the Festival will be convergence-continuum's March 25 presentation of Harm's Way, followed by a reception and Festival wrap party at the Tremont Tap House. (Further information about the Festival is available at playwrightslocal.org.)

Harm's Way is one of Wellman's earliest works, having premiered on 13 November 1985 at the LaMama ETC Annex in New York, directed by George Ferencz. The convergence-continuum production is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC - www.broadwayplaypub.com.

Harm's Way will be the seventh Mac Wellman play presented by convergence-continuum, having previously produced Sincerity Forever, 7 Blowjobs, Cleveland, Whirligig, A Murder of Crows and The Hyacinth Macaw. All were directed by Artistic Director, Clyde Simon.

Harm's Way, the company's 88th production, is the first of six in the 2017 Season (our sixteenth). The company's season runs from February (during which we stage the NEOMFA Playwrights Festival) through December. Most of the cast and crew of Harm's Way have been involved in previous convergence-continuum productions in many and various capacities, while some, we are delighted to say, are newcomers to our boards. The company seeks to create a core ensemble that continues to work together over the long term in exploring and developing its artistic voice, and performance and production practices, to create up-close, environmentally-staged productions that challenge the status quo and extend the boundaries of theatre.

The company's artistic home, which the company purchased in January, is the Liminis, an intimate, versatile, storefront performance space, with maximum seating of 40-50 depending on the set-up for each show. The company produces alternative/experimental theatre work by living playwrights, and completely transforms the Liminis for each show, immersing audiences into the world of the play in up-close productions.

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