Cherry Lane Theatre 2012 Mentor Project Continues with EVOLUTION

By: Kelsey Denette Feb. 28, 2012

Cherry Lane Theatre's award-winning MENTOR PROJECT will continue its 13th season with a production of EVOLUTION, written and performed by Patricia Buckley, directed Michele Chivu and mentored Jean-Claude van Itallie with performances scheduled March 13 through March 24 at Cherry Lane Studio Theatre (38 Commerce Street in Manhattan), where the 2012 MENTOR PROJECT is in residence through April 14.

Written and performed by Patricia Buckley, EVOLUTION combines the Paleontological history of whale evolution with a contemporary tale of a woman’s extraordinary transformation and her family’s attempts to prevent it. Dually inspired by the visual work of artists such as Robert Lepage and Theatre de la Jeune Lune and creation myths and scientific facts, EVOLUTION seeks to illuminate the self-contained world of a family – how family members construct each other’s identities while trying to shape their own, how decades can be spent inhabiting an “assigned” persona and how, in the process, we can lose any certainty as to what our "true identity" is.

Winner of an American Theatre Wing Award, a Village Voice Obie Award and the Dramatist Guild's James Kirkwood Award for fostering new work by contemporary playwrights, MENTOR PROJECT is the cornerstone of Cherry Lane's development program, each year pairing leading dramatists with emerging writers for a full season of script development, casting, rehearsals and a showcase production of the mentored playwrights' works in the Studio Theatre.

MENTOR PROJECT has become an important national launching pad for new writers and their plays since it was begun in 1998 by Angelina Fiordellisi and Susann Brinkley along with Founding Mentors Edward Albee, Charles Fuller, A.R. Gurney, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein and Michael Weller. The list of more than 40 playwrights whose early works at MENTOR PROJECT have led to significant productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway and on stages around the world include: Katori Hall, Rajiv Joseph, Christopher Shinn, Anne Washburn, David Adjmi, Julia Cho, Anton Dudley, Sheila Callaghan, Colin McKenna, Bathsheba Doran and Molly Smith Metzler.

MENTOR PROJECT productions are not open for review.

Patricia Buckley is a founding member of the three-woman theatre company, Gams On The Lam, (Franklin Furnace Emerging Artist Award) whose ground-breaking shows combining roughhouse slapstick, satire and dance have toured extensively in the US, Canada, Latin America and Europe for 10 years. Ms. Buckley was a writer and performer with the Tony-award winning Minneapolis company, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, collaborating and touring with the company, and with The Actors’ Shakespeare Company. Other writing projects include Syracuse Stage’s BACKSTORY PROGRAM and various projects with the Oxygen Network.

Mentor Jean Claude van Itallie is one of the original playwrights at La MaMa and Joe Chaiken's Open Theater whose credits include THE SERPENT, AMERICAN HURRAH, MOTEL along with more than 30 other works including WAR, SEX AND DREAMS, THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD, FEAR ITSELF and the gay-themed WAR and ANCIENT BOYS. He was one of three actor-writers in the performance piece GUYS DREAMIN' 1997 and is the author of "The Playwright's Workbook." His classic translations of Chekhov are performed frequently throughout the U.S.

Director Michele Chivu has directed LAByrinth Theater Company's PRETTY CHIN UP and 7 CAPTIVA ROAD, along with THE MAIDS at the Chocolate Factory, RHINOCEROS and I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER at Center Stage/NY; EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS for Vampire Cowboys, among others.

EVOLUTION will be presented at the Cherry Lane Studio Theatre (38 Commerce Street) from Tuesday, March 13, 2012 to Saturday, March 24, 2012.

Performances are scheduled from Tuesday, March 13 to Saturday, March 24, performing Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7:00pm and a Saturday matinees at 3:00pm. Tickets are $18 (plus $1 facility fee) and can be purchased by calling 212-352-3101 or online atwww.cherrylanetheatre.org.

The other featured productions in 2012 MENTOR PROJECT are: RELATIVE PITCH by Elizabeth Rose, mentored and directed by Gretchen Cryer (February 21 – March 3), and
MAMMA ROMA by Anne DeSalvo, mentored by David Rambo, directed by Rob Urbanati (April 3-14). Also this season, MENTOR PROJECT will debut the program's first-ever commissioned play, Lisa Ramirez's PAS DE DEUX (LOST MY SHOE), to be given two public staged readings (dates TBA). Ms. Ramirez will be mentored by Cynthia Hopkins.

Angelina Fiordellisi is Founder and Artistic Director of Cherry Lane Theatre.

The Mentor Project continues Cherry Lane Theatre's long and rich history of presenting works by both emerging and seasoned playwrights that reveal the social consciousness of our ever-changing world. Now 87 years old and New York's longest, continuously-running Off-Broadway theatre, Cherry Lane's roster of iconoclastic writers whose work has been at home at the theatre since the 1920s includes O'Neill, Saroyan, Auden, Albee, Odets, Orton, Mamet, and Lanford Wilson. Such distinctive actors as Ruby Dee, James Earl Jones, Colleen Dewhurst, Cicely Tyson, Frank Langella, Tyne Daly, Estelle Parsons, Dennis Quaid and Judith Ivey have performed on its stage.

For more information about THE MENTOR PROJECT or The Cherry Lane Theatre, please visit www.cherrylanetheatre.org.

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