TNC's 2016 Dream Up Festival to Present NULL & VOID

Theater for the New City's Dream Up Festival Presents
"Null & Void"
"When is a painting finished? When is a marriage over?"

How far will we go to save a relationship? "Null & Void" by Charles Gershman explores this question, following the exploits of Thad as he attempts to salvage his relationship with his wife, Jean, by commissioning a painting for her by an artist she studies and admires. However, when the painting evokes the feelings of uncertainty in both of them, the power of their relationship is pressed to the limit for a final time. Kerry Kastin will direct.

The play revolves around a painting that the audience never sees; an invisible force representative of the common interests and objects that link us to the ones we love. The painting was created by Damian Perlstine, a famous artist who arrives to deliver the painting to Thad. Jean, as an art history professor, is immediately skeptical of the painting, knowing from her fields of study that Damian is reluctant to take commissions, and the work appears uncharacteristic of his established styles. When one of Jean's students, Phoebe, arrives to pick up a book for an upcoming exam, Damian begins challenging the ways in which Thad, Jean and Phoebe experience art and art criticism. As Thad and Jean's relationship begins to deteriorate, Damian and Phoebe forge a corresponding relationship of dreams and freedom, ideologically reminiscent to the marital framework that Thad and Jean once shared and ideologically opposed to the martial framework they now have.

Described as "a living room drama without the living room," the play will be minimalist by design. The audience will never see the painting, allowing it to maintain an air of mystery and ambiguity.

WHERE AND WHEN:
August 28 at 8:00 PM, August 30 at 6:30 PM, September 2 at 9:00 PM, September 4 at 8:00 PM, September 7 at 9:00 PM, September 8 at 9:00 PM, September 9 at 9:00 PM, September 10 at 5:00 PM, September 11 at 8:00 PM.
Cabaret Theater, Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave. (at East 10th Street)
Presented by Theater for the New City (Crystal Field, Artistic Director) as part of the Dream Up Festival 2016.
Ticket Price: $18.00
Box office: (212) 254-1109, www.dreamupfestival.org
Runs for 1:30. Reviewers are invited to all performances.

Charles Gershman is a playwright and the artistic director of the Snowy Owl Group, an Off-Off-Broadway theater company based in New York City. He has an MFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Gershman has had successful productions of his plays nationwide. His plays have been considered finalists and semifinalists in prestigious festivals, such as the New York Avant-Garde Arts Festival in 2011 and the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference in 2016.

Kerry Kastin is a theater director and artist who has worked in Virginia, New York and Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, she was the artist in residence at the Berkshire Theater Festival, and taught theater and playwriting in local elementary schools. In New York, Kastin has worked with The New York Shakespeare Exchange, Vineyard Arts Project, Lincoln Center, Gotham City Improv and Magnet Theater. She is also a co-founder and the artistic director of the Blowout Theater Company. She is the associate producer of "The Truth" Podcast.

The seventh annual Dream Up Festival is dedicated to new works. Presented by Theater for the New City, the Festival will run from August 28 to September 18, 2016 and will feature a variety of original dramas, comedies, musicals, adaptations and experimental plays. The Festival celebrates the arts in a time when cultural and arts funding is in sharp decline due to a number of social and market forces. Now an East Village tradition, it challenges the audience to reflect on the innovative and imaginative ways that they interact with the theater.