Play Co Presents an Idea Lab Evening With Brooke Berman 6/10 At The Huron Club

The Off-Broadway theatre company, The Play Company - whose most recent production was its acclaimed staging of Toshiki Okada's ENJOY - will continue its popular Idea Lab series with an evening of readings and discussion with Brooke Berman, author of the new book "No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments" on Thursday, June 10 at 7 pm at The Huron Club at 15 Vandam St. in Manhattan.

Ms. Berman 's new book chronicles 39 different apartments (over 20 years), starting in the Midwest, then leaping to the East Village in 1988 and the consequent trials involved in getting started in the theater, the further trials and issues surrounding having been raped by a stranger and then, after a lot of hard work, the path that emerged -- the Juilliard fellowship, working with Marsha Norman, Chris Durang, Maria Irene Fornes, and the subsequent foundation of a real playwright's life. No Place Like Home is a love letter to the American theater and a testament to The Miracles that can happen as a result of committing with one's whole heart. Published by Random House, "No Place Like Home" will be available in stores on June 8, 2010.

About this saga, Ms. Berman states, "I have lived in 39 apartments in New York City, some for years, others for a few weeks or months while in between more stable places. For reasons mundane and dramatic, pedestrian and also absurd, I have moved again and again and again. I used to joke that as soon as I put my address on my checks, I would be forced to move again".

Previously, Brooke Berman wrote the play SMASHING, which The Play Company produced Off-Broadway in 2003, directed by Trip Cullman. An award-winning playwright and screenwriter, Brooke trained as an actor and solo performer in the experimental theater and began performing her own work on the Lower East Side of Manhattan before receiving formal training in playwriting from the Juilliard School. Her play HUNTING AND GATHERING, which premiered at Primary Stages, directed by Leigh Silverman, was named one of the Ten Best of 2008 by New York Magazine.

Brooke's plays have been produced and developed across the US at theaters including: Primary Stages, The Second Stage, Steppenwolf, The Play Company, Soho Rep, Williamstown Theater Festival, Naked Angels, MCC, WET, SPF, New Dramatists, New Georges, The Hourglass Group and the EuGene O'Neill Theater Center. In the UK, her work has been developed at The Royal Court Theatre, The National Theatre Studio and Pentabus. Plays include: HUNTING AND GATHERING (Primary Stages); SMASHING (The Play Company, The O'Neill); UNTIL WE FIND EACH OTHER (Steppenwolf, The O'Neill); THE TRIPLE HAPPINESS (Second Stage), SAM AND LUCY (SPF, Cleveland Playhouse), A PERFECT COUPLE (WET), OUT OF THE WATER (Cape Cod Theater Project, Ars Nova), CASUAL ENCOUNTERS (New Dramatists Creativity Fund) and others. Her plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing, Playscripts, The Backstage Books and Smith & Kraus.

Brooke's short film ALL SAINTS DAY, directed by Will Frears, won Best Narrative Short at the Savannah Film Festival and played at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008. Other screenwriting credits include MAJOR MINOR DETAILS, the adaptation of her play SMASHING, and the adaptation of Jane Hamilton's novel, DISOBEDIENCE.

FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM "NO PLACE LIKE HOME"
"I am four years old, and the movers want to take the orange wool couch. I don't want them to take the orange wool couch. I don't know what they think they're doing or why all of our belongings are in brown cardboard boxes, but enough is enough. I sit on the couch in protest. My beautiful blonde mother, Marilyn, comes running from the other room and lifts me off the couch so the men can get back to work. Marilyn explains that we are moving. We are going to have a new home, without my father, Harvey, who has gone to an apartment downtown. I remember nothing else about this day except I am told later that once we arrive at the new home, a condominium in a "complex" (that's seventies for neighborhood) with 20 other identical units, I stop speaking to my mother entirely. This can't last long - she is, after all, my primary family member and the only other person living in "The Condo." So when we start speaking again, probably that night, she assures me that we will always have a home together, wherever we are. We live in "The Condo" for seven years. And then, Marilyn marries a bankrupt - both financially and, it turns out, morally - Austrian Archduke. When she introduces him to me, she says, "His family used to rule Europe, so be nice."

For more information visit www.brookberman.net.

The Play Company advances an international view of contemporary playwriting, linking New York City artists and audiences to a whole world of plays, and supporting new American writing in this global context. Play Co. produces unusual, ambitious work that reflects and responds to the issues and events that shape our time. Recent productions include the U.S. premiere of ENJOY by Toshiki Okada; New York premiere of Lloyd Suh's AMERICAN HWANGAP (U.S.), U.S. premieres of Przemyslaw Wojcieszek's MADE IN POLAND (Poland); Robert Farquhar's BAD JAZZ (England); Vijay Tendulkar's SAKHARAM BINDER (India); Yoji Sakate's THE ATTIC (Japan); and The Presnyakov Brothers' TERRORISM (Russia); as well as world premieres of the American plays A COOL DIP IN THE BARREN SAHARAN CRICK by Kia Corthron (co-production with Playwrights Horizons and Culture Project), SMASHING by Brooke Berman and HIGH DIVE by Leslie Ayvazian. Play Co. received a 2007 Obie Award for its "unique contribution to the theatre community." The Play Company is under the guidance of Kate Loewald, Founding Producer, and Lauren Weigel, Managing Producer.

The Idea Lab complements The Play Company's production season with an eclectic series of stand-alone events, including reading presentations of plays and literature, evenings that examine a particular topic through the work of a variety of prose and poetry writers and/or other media, and panel discussions featuring theatre artists, writers, scholars and community leaders. These events may link to a production, or extend Play Co's programming to other ideas or issues of interest to the community.

Copies of Brooke Berman's book No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments
will be available for purchase and signing. For more information about The Play Company and the evening with Brooke Berman, visit www.playco.org or call 212 398 2977.

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