The Brewing Dept. Presents BOBRAUSCHENBERGAMERICA, Now thru 8/30

The Brewing Dept. will present a free, outdoor production of Chuck Mee's bobrauschenbergamerica directed by Emily Kaplan this August. The production runs today, August 14 - 30th, 2014 at 108th Street Lawn in Riverside Park (enter at 108th Street and Riverside Drive).

A collage play inspired by the work of artist Robert Rauschenberg, bobrauschenbergamerica is a theatrical panorama of American life that explores our contradictions, romances, fears, and ultimately, hope for the future. Director Emily Kaplan reimagines Chuck Mee's play as an immersive picnic that takes the natural beauty of Riverside Park as its set, and the sunset over the Hudson as its lighting design. The Brewing Dept. continues its work on the project following a limited run last year, demonstrating the creative rewards reaped from the company's long-term investment in the development of a piece of theater. So grab a spot on the picnic blanket, bring along your lunch or dinner, and join us for a celebration of life, art, and of course, America.

bobrauschenbergamerica features Yonatan Gebeyehu, Claudia Givings, Julia Izumi, Emily Kaplan, Brian LaPerche, Katerina Madson, Matthew McShane, Brandon O'Sullivan, Roberto Sanabria, Caroline Siewert, and sound design by Ben Vigus. It is assistant directed by Cody Holliday Haefner.

The performance schedule for bobrauschenbergamerica is:

August 14th-16th @ 7pm; August 17th @ 2pm

August 21st-23rd @ 7pm; August 24th @ 2pm

August 28th-30th @ 7pm

RSVP at: thebrewingdept.org/bobrsvp

Emily Kaplan is a theatre artist based in Brooklyn and a founding member of The Brewing Dept. Since graduating from Barnard College in 2011, Emily has performed, directed, and assisted at Dixon Place, HERE Arts Center, 59E59, The Wooster Group, New Dramatists, Incubator Arts Project, The Bushwick Starr, and The Living Theatre, among others. Her adaptation of Henry James' Turn of the Screw, entitled The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, was workshopped last year at Dixon Place, and her multimedia adaptation of The Little Prince was produced at Barnard College.

Chuck Mee has written Big Love and True Love and First Love, bobrauschenbergamerica and Hotel Cassiopeia, Iphigenia 2.0 and Trojan Women: A Love Story, and Summertime and Wintertime among other plays - all of them available on the internet at www.charlesmee.org. He was honored with a full season of his plays at the Signature Theatre. Among other awards, he is the recipient of the gold medal for lifetime achievement in drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and of the Richard B. Fisher Award. He is also the author of a number of books of history, and the former Editor-in-Chief of Horizon magazine, a magazine of history, art, literature, and the fine arts. His work is made possible by the support of Richard B. Fisher and Jeanne Donovan Fisher.

The Brewing Dept. (TBD) is a nonprofit theater collective that was founded in April of 2013, formed to foster a supportive community dedicated to giving projects a substantive developmental process in order to for artists to create their best work. TBD's artists work collectively to identify the best creative timeline for each of our individual projects to fully gestate and mature, and we take turns focusing our collective energy on enabling and supporting those projects over the course of that process. This means that every TBD event, from workshops to fully produced work, has been crafted as a step along an ongoing developmental process.

Our work has included world-premieres, new stagings of contemporary and classical plays, and developmental workshops of emerging playwrights' works. Our artists and projects have attracted hundreds of audience members in venues all over New York City, including the Gene Frankel Theatre, the Nuyorican Poets' Café, the 133rd Street Arts Center, and Riverside Park.

More information about The Brewing Dept. can be found at thebrewingdept.org, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheBrewingDept, or on Twitter @TheBrewingDept.