59E59 Theaters Announces Fall 2008 Line Up
By: Robert Diamond Aug. 08, 2008
59E59 Theaters (Elysabeth Kleinhans, Artistic Director; Peter Tear,
Executive Producer) announced their line up of shows for the
Fall 2008 season. Performances are at 59E59 Theaters
(59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison). Ticket price varies.
Tickets to all shows at 59E59 Theaters are available by calling Ticket
Central at 212-279-4200 or online at www.ticketcentral.com. For more information, visit www.59E59.org.
FIRST IRISH FESTIVAL, running September 6 – September 28
The FIRST IRISH FESTIVAL is the first festival celebrating Irish
theater in New York City. Launching at 59E59 Theaters during the month
of September, and produced by Origin Theatre Company, it features the
New York premieres of three contemporary Irish plays as well as the
world premiere of an evening of five short works. The FIRST IRISH
FESTIVAL features the work of critically acclaimed Irish theater
companies from New York, Boston and Washington, DC.
Saturday, September 6 – Sunday, September 28
END OF LINES: An evening of five short plays inspired by journeys on
the NYC subway, written by Gary Duggan, Abbie Spellen, Ursula Rani
Sarma, Pat Kinevane and Morna Regan. Directed by David Sullivan, Julia
Gibson, George C Heslin, Fiana Toibin and Alyse Rothman. Produced by
Origin Theatre Company (NYC). Part of the FIRST IRISH FESTIVAL.
Critically acclaimed Origin Theatre Company challenged five of
Ireland's leading young playwrights to find inspiration in NYC's
underground. In five world-premiere short plays, audiences travel on a
unique journey into the heart and soul of New York City—the subway
system—creating an exhilarating evening of theater.
Tuesday, September 9 – Sunday, September 14
DISCO PIGS by Edna Walsh, directed by Dan Brick and Linda Murray.
Starring Madeline Carr and Rex Daugherty. Produced by Solas Nua
(Washington, DC). Part of the FIRST IRISH FESTIVAL.
Pig and Runt are two 17-year-olds who have grown up sharing everything:
birthday, language, and worldview. But at that moment when pop songs
and life-changing org*sms flash by and last forever, their friendship
begins to implode on the road to adulthood. DISCO PIGS marks the NY
premiere of the Washington, DC-based Solas Nua, which Peter Marks of
the Washington Post called, "the most vital new troupe in D.C." and was
voted the Best New Company by the Washington City Paper in 2008.
Tuesday, September 16 – Sunday, September 21
MOJO MICKYO, written by Owen Mc Cafferty, directed by Stephen Russell.
Starring Colin Hamell and Derry Woodhouse. Produced by Tir NA Theatre
(Boston, MA). Part of the FIRST IRISH FESTIVAL.
A vibrant and faced-paced Tale of Two boys growing up in Belfast during
the summer of 1970. Playing headers, torturing a cantankerous old man,
building huts, spitting from cinema balconies and re-enacting Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, MOJO MICKYO is a classic coming-of-age
story about two boys whose innocence is ultimately betrayed by communal
hatred.
Tuesday, September 23 – Sunday, September 28
LOVE, PEACE, AND ROBBERY by Liam Heylin, directed by Kerry Waters
Lucas. Starring Matthew Keenan, Eric Lucas and Bruce Rauscher.
Produced by The Keegan Theatre (Washington, DC). Part of the FIRST
IRISH FESTIVAL.
Uproarious and bittersweet, Heylin's play spins the escapades of Gary
and Darren- both straight out of prison. Living with a curfew and the
broken pieces of their pasts, they confront life back on the streets of
Cork. Two guys who prove that there may actually be honor among
thieves.
Week of September 29 – Week of October 13
THE NIGHT CARTER WAS BAD produced by Kids With Guns (NYC)
THE NIGHT CARTER WAS BAD is a dramatic comedy about the misbehavior and haphazard love life of a commitment-phobe named Carter.
Wednesday, October 1 – Sunday, October 19
OUTSIDE INN by Andreas Jungwirth, directed by Melanie Dreyer. Starring
Roger Grunwald, Markus Hirnigel and Gabriele Schafer. Produced by
International Culture Lab (New York, New York).
OUTSIDE INN, a murder mystery that takes place on three continents.
Paul, a disillusioned German civic engineer unintentionally
participates in the death of his boss. Rather than going to the
police, Paul runs away to a small town in Arizona. With his mistress by
his side, Paul steals the identity of his former boss and flees across
the Mexican border. The husband and wife Paul and his mistress leave
behind must face a future alone and a past that continues to haunt them.
MADE IN POLAND: A Festival of New Polish Plays, from Week of October 20 – Week of November 24
This six-week celebration of Polish Theater features the US Premieres
of three plays from Poland's leading playwrights. Presented by the
Polish Cultural Institute.
Wednesday, October 22 – Sunday, November 9
THE FILES, written and directed by Ewa Wojciak and Marcin Keszycki.
Starring Ewa Wójciak, Marcin Kęszycki, Adam Borowski and Tadeusz
Janiszewski. Produced by Theater of the Eighth Day (Poznań ,Poland).
Part of the MADE IN POLAND festival.
Founded in 1964, Theatre of the Eighth Day unwittingly became Poland's
foremost political theater of opposition under the Communist regime.
Kept under surveillance by the Secret Police, plagued by the
authorities, and accused of criminality, the theater managed to create
some of the most important Polish performances of the 1970s.
THE FILES was inspired by the theater's discovery of a Secret Police
report on one of their early plays. The author's intellectually
over-ambitious analysis of the play's subversive tendencies was so
grotesquely uncomprehending that it was hilarious. Using Secret Police
reports kept on the theater's members from the 1970s, as well as the
company's own personal letters from that period, and juxtaposted with
portions of the performances to which the police reports refer, THE
FILES draws back the Iron Curtain to give audiences to a striking look
at living and working through an oppressive government regime.
Performed in English.
Wednesday, October 29 – Sunday, November 30
MADE IN POLAND by Przemyslaw Wojcieszek, directed by Jackson Gay.
Produced by The Play Company (New York, New York). Part of the MADE IN
POLAND FESTIVAL.
MADE IN POLAND is an exuberant, funny and fierce play about a
rebellious young man furiously searching for how to live in the new,
post-communist Poland. Along the way he turns to his priest and his
teacher for guidance, gets entangled with gangsters, and meets a girl.
Jackson Gay (Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, Scarcity) directs the
American premiere of this popular hit by one of Poland's foremost young
theatre artists.
Week of November 10 – November 30
THE SANDBOX and THE FIRST TIME, two one-acts by Michal Walczak. Piotr
Kruszynski directs The Sandbox; Marcy Arlin directs The First Time.
Produced by Immigrants Theater Company (New York, New York). Part of
the MADE IN POLAND festival.
THE SANDBOX is about a couple's inability to articulate emotions,
except through the language of globally mass-marketed brand names and
advertising. While sitting in a sandbox, Him and Her try to figure out
how to love each other despite their linguistic challenges
In THE FIRST TIME He and She try to have a sexual relationship, but are
thwarted at each step by the weather, family, hunger, and the punctured
illusions of a post-communist society.
These two comedic plays, both exploring different stages of
relationships, are under laid with that particular brand of cynicism
and absurdism found in Eastern European theater, updated for a newly
global society.
Friday, November 28 – Sunday, January 4
IMPROBABLE FREQUENCY, A musical comedy by Arthur Riordan and Bell Helicopter. Produced by Rough Magic (Dublin, Ireland).
This hugely entertaining and successful musical comedy, IMPROBABLE
FREQUENCY —winner of three Irish Times Theatre Awards including Best
Production and Best Director— is a joyous surreal satire that lifts the
lid on Ireland's beloved neutrality and cuts to the heart of the
tempestuous affair with its nearest neighbor – England!
Based in Dublin in 1941 and inspired by real events, IMPROBABLE
FREQUENCY brings three historical figures together as elements in a
surreal series of absurd plots to overthrow the British, undermine the
Nationalists and subvert the forces of nature.
Wednesday, December 3 – Sunday, January 4
NEW HOUSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION written and directed by Alan Hruska.
Produced by Victory Theater Company with Rock and a Hard Place and Red
Horse Productions (Los Angeles, CA).
Two married couples approaching forty reunite in the lake district town
where they all grew up. It's been fifteen years, but old rivalries and
passions as well as long-buried secrets ignite, and re-entangle, their
relationships. A testy fusion of humor and mystery drives this
world-premiere comedy from Alan Hruska.
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