Times Square International Theater Festival Announces A Lineup Update

The Times Square Theater Festival is a brand new festival that celebrates theater by bringing together varied theater artists from all over the world.

"The Night of the Assasins" by National Theater Company of the Dominican Republic

This show replaces "On the Field of Blood" by Lesya Ukrainka, directed by Yuriy Rozstalny (Ukraine), which was canceled due to visa problems.

Tue, Jan 17 at 7:30 PM; Thur, Jan 19 at 6:00 PM; Sun, Jan 22 at 1:00 PM

This play by noted Cuban-born playwright Jose Triana (who has lived in Paris since 1980) is performed in Spanish. The assassins are three brothers who unfold a macabre game, dream about the murder of their parents, develop a generational conflict, and are accompanied by a hatred exacerbated to the abuse of the paternal power and the heavy oppression that feels. The three characters become, unfold and multiply into diverse characters (parents, neighbors, police, judges, assassins); taking the work to a circular drama with moments that clear the comedy. These universal character reflects human and familiar conflicts like the same mentally ill society that chooses to represent, to remember and to review facts on understanding impossibility, universal subjects that they breathe within those dangerous plays. The characters play at being able and cruel. In spite of the past time, they show in them an infantile face, locked up in an imaginary world created by them with a glance of upset and foolishness of its reality. The scenes reflect on infantiles and naive in this simple game and how the game is planned and conscious in the adults. These facts drive the point of the drama even more extreme than triggering the most perverse feelings, when the sadness, the joy, the wrath or the desperation are the detonators. Directed by Orestes Amador, designed by ChristIan Martinez. With: Mileny Estévez, Wilson Ureña, Yorlla Lina Castillo.

The play, originally produced in 1965 in Cuba, was invited to an international theatre festival in France, which catapulted it to world-wide critical acclaim. But it has been banned in Cuba for 40 years due to its insurgent undertones. It is described as the most frequently produced Latin American play in the Spanish-speaking world, which has historically been ruled largely by dictatorships. Reviewing a production at INTAR in 2000, The New York Times (Lawrence Van Gelder) wrote, "If there is anything to be said for repression, it is that it breeds brave, worthy art, and 'Night of the Assassins' is but one more example."

Space: Theatre 500, 300 West 43rd Street, 5th floor
Running time: 1 hour
More info: N.A.

THE FESTIVAL IN BRIEF
JANUARY 16 TO 22
TIMES SQUARE INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL
LITTLE TIMES SQUARE THEATRE AND THEATRE 500
300 WEST 43RD STREET
The Roy Arias Studios & Theaters, located in the Times Square Arts Center at 300 West 43rd Street, will present the first Times Square International Theater Festival from January 16 to 22, 2012. Coinciding with this festival, the complex is addressing shortage of flexible, experimental, curated performance venues in Midtown by recommissioning its fourth floor theater space (74 seats) as the Little Times Square Theatre and its fifth floor Off-Broadway theater (136 seats) as Theatre 500.

The festival is produced by Roy Arias and Stalin Urbano and curated by noted director Alfred Preisser and actor Irma Bello. It is dedicated to work that challenges the status quo, exhibits artistic excellence and manifests invention and innovation in all of its aspects. Its mission is to provide an affordable venue for an assortment of plays and performance pieces that will not otherwise be seen in the doorstep of Broadway, offering companies of reduced budget but great artistic merit the opportunity to show their art in the heart of the theater capital of the world.

19 EVENTS: SEE INDIVIDUAL LISTINGS FOR DETAILS.
COMPLETE INFO: http://www.jsnyc.com/season/tsitf.htm
FESTIVAL WEBSITE: www.tsitf.com
All productions $18 in advance, $20 at the door; $12 seniors and students. Festival pass: $99. Staged readings: $10.
Box office: SMARTTIX (212) 868-4444, www.smarttix.com