Condola Rashad, Laila Robins and More Set for Gingold Theatrical Group's OTHERLAND Reading

Gingold Theatrical Group's Shaw New York presents a reading of OTHERLAND, a new play by David Cote, on Monday, July 9 at 7pm at The Players Club (16 Gramercy Park South) in Manhattan. David Staller produces and directs.

Known mostly for its Project Shaw series, now in its seventh sold-out year, Gingold Theatrical Group made history in December 2009 as the first company ever to present every play (including full-length works, one-acts and sketches) written by George Bernard Shaw.

Inspired by Shaw’s transformation from drama critic to playwright, Gingold Theatrical Group (GTG) is also producing a new play development program. The writers in this program are currently on-staff critics or journalists devoted to covering the theater scene. These plays are developed in a workshop process. These plays are to focus on the Shavian precepts involving individual human rights, political and social responsibility, and the comic absurdity of daily life.

As part of this program, GTG presents OTHERLAND, one of the new plays, by invitation only.

In OTHERLAND: In a hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, college student Alice is set for a reunion with her birth mother—who gave her up almost twenty years ago. At the same time, in the same hotel, there’s an international botanical symposium, which has been painstakingly organized by Edgar. Things are not going smoothly for anyone. Alice’s mother is mysteriously late. Half the rooms in the hotel have busted pipes. And a radical eco-activist group that calls itself the Pangaea Liberation Front is mounting an Occupy Wall Street-style protest in the parking lot. Add to this situation a stoner hotel clerk, a militant security officer and Alice’s adopted mother—who shows up in Ethiopia hell-bent on bringing Alice back to the States—and soon identities and agendas are clashing wildly. OTHERLAND is a serious farce about family, creating the self, invasive species, eco-activism, fact versus fiction, race, roots, adoption and how to be authentic in a generic world.

The cast of OTHERLAND features Condola Rashad, Laila Robins, Max Gordon Moore, Shalita Grant, Jaspal Binning, William Demeritt, Jeff Ronan and Wilton Yeung.

Playwright David Cote is theater editor and chief drama critic for Time Out New York. He teaches arts criticism at Brooklyn College. His writing has appeared in Opera News, The Guardian, The New York Times and elsewhere. He has contributed several essays to the Best Plays Yearbook series. He is a contributing critic for NY1’s On Stage and a member of the New York Drama Critics Circle. David has written three popular companion books about hit Broadway musicals: "Wicked: The Grimmerie," "Jersey Boys," and "Spring Awakening: In the Flesh." He is also an early-career playwright and librettist. Besides OTHERLAND, commissioned by the Gingold Theatrical Group, he is currently developing a young-adult puppet opera, The Scarlet Ibis, with composer Stefan Weisman as part of the HERE Artist Residency Program. In November, The Scarlet Ibis will have work-in-progress showing as part of Opera America’s New Works Forum. Other opera: Fade (with Weisman) and Atigun Pass and Fetish (composer Robert Paterson). Fellowships: The MacDowell Colony. In the '90s, he was an actor, working with Richard Foreman, Richard Maxwell and Iranian exile Assurbanipal Babilla. Cote founded and edited the 'zine OFF: the journal of alternative theater (1996-98). B.A. Bard College, 1992. Visit www.davidcote.com.

As part of GTG’s first Shaw New York festival, they’ve just closed the sold-out engagement of Shaw’s Man and Superman as a co-production with The Irish Repertory Theatre, which was filmed for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Library archives. The festival also included several other programs (all open to the public) including the free Shaw Symposium at The Players on June 29th. In addition, the festival presented two events on Saturday June 2nd: The Critic Symposium and the Shaw Concert.

On Monday, July 16, GTG continues Project Shaw with a reading of George Bernard Shaw's Geneva at The Players Club (16 Gramercy Park South).

For more information, call 212-353-7823 or visit www.gingoldgroup.com.