Michael Kearns' BANG BANG to Premiere at Highways

Highways Performance Space and Moon Mile Run present the world premiere of Bang Bang, the newest addition to Michael Kearns' compelling arsenal of theatrical work. Opening on Friday, April 10, 2015, Bang Bang is a character-driven play that examines societal "headline" contentions with intensity and passion. Inspired by the myriad responses to gun violence in America - from Sandy Hook to Ferguson - Bang Bang, directed by Mark Bringelson, weaves a battered, shredded tapestry from individual lives torn apart when a trigger is pulled. The six performances are on Friday and Saturday nights from Friday, April 10 to Saturday, April 25, 2015 at 8:30pm at Highways Performance Space (18th Street Arts Center, 1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404). General admission tickets are $20 in advance ($15 for students, Highways members, and seniors) and can be purchased here. Reservations may also be made by calling 310-315-1459. Additional information is available at www.highwaysperformance.org.

"This is epic theatre, unlike anything I've ever experienced - it goes places a lot of art doesn't go," says Mark Bringelson, the director of Bang Bang, "The play gets into the heads of its characters to explore some very timely and difficult subject matter with sensitivity, dark humor, and pathos for a cathartic experience. Yet, oddly enough, it's also surprisingly positive - the audience will leave with a sense of empowerment and hope."

Bang Bang Synopsis - Peter, one of the play's main characters, is a documentary filmmaker and his film-in-progress (titled Bang Bang) reveals the heartbroken lives of the viscerally wounded. The documentary that is being filmed becomes the play: a collage of confessionals and testimonies, intimacies of sexual rage, and arias of palpable loss.

A man loses his black son in a white cop shooting; a woman loses her husband and daughter in a random school shooting; an elderly man plans to off his wife, who is in the throes of Alzheimer's; a prostitute murders her boyfriend-pimp; a gay therapist morphs into a meth-addicted serial killer; a cop relives his experience of removing children from a schoolroom that was "a sea of blood."

Bang Bang is both a departure and a familiar undertaking for Kearns. His motifs - addiction, sexuality, familial unrest, HIV/AIDS, Hollywood - are extant in this endeavor. Bang Bang was initially workshopped last year, in two separate incarnations, at Skylight Theatre Company, as part of its INKubator Play Reading Series.