CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN Returns to NYC 1/7

Obie Award winning Pig Iron Theatre Company invites you to an encore engagement of CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN, chosen by The New York Times as one of the highlights of the 2008 season. This surreal comedy loosely inspired by Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters and the "Three Brain" theory of Paul D. MacLean is directed by Dan Rothenberg with text by Robert Quillen Camp and the ensemble. 

CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN dives into the center of an autistic mind. In twists and turns that take us from neuroscience to a domestic squabble to the circus ring, CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN captures a mind as it zigzags back and forth over troubling memories, attempting to mold them into neat Russian dramas. Dmitri, the protagonist, replays his memories until they are ornamented and decorated into a comforting fiction; what we witness is a kind of mental circus.

The cast includes Pig Iron co-founders Quinn Bauriedel and Dito van Reigersberg; Pig Iron Company Member James Sugg (winner of the 2009 Obie Award for CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN); and newcomer Chad Lindsey ("subway hero" actor recently seen in Kaspar Hauser at The Flea and Notes on the Land of the Earthquake & Fire at FringeNYC). The set is designed by Hungarian artist-designer Anna Kiraly, whose innovative design for Pig Iron's installation-bazaar Pay Up was recently featured at the Prague Quadrennial. Lighting design is by James Clotfelter (of Miro Dance Theater and Rennie Harris Puremovement). Sound design is by Nick Kourtides (Barrymore Award 2006 for his design of Pig Iron's Mission to Mercury). Olivera Gajic designed the costumes.

Pig Iron Theatre Company has been creating original performance works in Philadelphia since 1995, making plays about live music, dead people, neuroscience and thwarted love affairs through a unique method of collaborative creation and with a signature physical approach to character. Past collaborations have included work with the legendary director Joe Chaikin, playwright Adriano Shaplin, choreographer David Brick, and composer Cynthia Hopkins. Pig Iron's work has been seen at theaters and festivals in London, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Brazil, Germany, Ireland, Romania and Peru. The company's original works have met with critical acclaim and awards, including a 2002 Pew Fellowship in the Arts for the Co-Artistic Directors; 2005 and 2008 OBIE Awards; and multiple Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre.

Performances run January 7 - 17 at CSV Cultural Center (107 Suffolk Street between Rivington and Delancey Streets on the Lower East Side -- accessible from the F/V trains at 2nd Avenue, F at Delancey Street, or the J/M/Z trains at Essex Street) as part of the Under The Radar Festival.