ART, HTC & ICA Celebrating EMERGING AMERICA 5/14-16

The American Repertory Theater, Huntington Theatre Company, and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston have joined forces for the first time to create Emerging America - an annual festival devoted to supporting and launching new voices in American theatre. From May 14 through 16, Emerging America brings some of the country's most promising performers, writers, companies and directors to Boston for a weekend filled with energy, imagination, creativity and drama. For more information, visit www.emergingamericafestival.org Emerging America spans Boston and Cambridge with events happening at all three artistic homes throughout the weekend: the A.R.T. @ OBERON, at 2 Arrow St. Cambridge MA, the Huntington's Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, and the ICA at 100 Northern Avenue, Boston.

OVERVIEW OF FESTIVAL EVENTS AND TIMES:
SUNDAY MAY 2nd
A Moving Festival!
A collaboration with the Harvard Square Business Association's Annual Mayfair. The institutions and artists of the Emerging America Festival create a moving party leading from OBERON to the center of Harvard Square's Mayfair celebration. Join Boston and Cambridge's hottest artists for revelry and fun as they parade across the Mayfair mainstage at 1pm and perform in sideshows and dance parties all day long.Podcast and Walking Tours - launching May 2nd and ongoing throughout the Festival weekend. Find them at www.emergingamericafestival.org
Roam Cambridge and Boston as you discover secret locations and favorite haunts of local and national voices. Hear from artists, leaders, figureheads of Cambridge and Boston, listen to short plays by Huntington Playwriting Fellows inspired by specific locations, and more. Download original podcasts and walking tours created for this festival that celebrate the neighborhoods and artists of each organizations community, past and present. THROUGHOUT THE WEEKEND OF MAY 14-16
The Festival Tent - open May 14th through 16thThroughout the weekend come together at the Festival Tent, just outside OBERON at the A.R.T. where festival-goers can grab a drink and meet the artists and audiences from all over Cambridge, Boston and the nation. Feel the festival spirit all weekend.

FRIDAY MAY 14th
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA)
7:30 pm Disfarmer
"Moving, poignant and occasionally hilarious, Disfarmer is a wonder." - VarietyMike Disfarmer was an Arkansas photographer who left behind a body of work now considered one of the most significant in the history of portraiture. This haunting and original work of puppet theater explores the world of this eccentric and reclusive artist. Award-winning director Dan Hurlin takes puppetry to exquisite heights with the unique "tabletop" style: the handlers operate in full view of the audience, not just manipulating but interacting with the puppet hero. A script by Sally Oswald, a country-meets-avant-garde score by Dan Moses Schreier, and Disfarmer's own photographs complete Hurlin's portrait of this American original.
Tickets: $20 members, students, and seniors; $25 non-members
Additional performance on Saturday, May 15.

Experiment America
9:30 pm
Kick-off party for Emerging America
For the past three years, the ICA has offered late-night events in which art, new media, creativity, and partying come together. These "Experiments" have featured Shepard Fairey and Chuck D, a remixed presidential debate and a giant game of Twister. Each Experiment explored a different possibility for ways to experience art. And while each was different, they had one thing in common-passive participation was not an option. On the opening night of the festival, music, performance, dancing, and the fractured poetry of the American experience surround you throughout the ICA in a collaboration with the A.R.T. and the Huntington to create this once in a lifetime party.
Tickets: $20 members, students, and seniors; $25 non-members
SATURDAY MAY 15th:
The Huntington Theatre Company's Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA
1:00pm & 4:00pmA Double Bill:
Love Song in Two Voices Written and Performed by Amy Herzog | Directed by Portia KriegerIn the wake of a whitewater rafting accident, a mother and daughter redefine their relationship in Amy Herzog's poignant solo piece.

Seven Minutes in Heaven
Written by Steven Levenson | Directed by Adrienne Campbell-HoltRelive all the party games you loved/loathed from middle school in this manic, hyper-charged, genre-blurring comedy. Tickets: $20/$15A limited number of press seats will be available at each performance. Club Theater Performances from the A.R.T. at OBERON
4:00 pm
Mrs. Smith Presents... a Benefit for the Carlyle Foundation Empowerment School for People and Cats with Severe and Persistent Challenges Created by David Hanbury and Michael Goldfried | Directed by Michael GoldfriedStarring David Hanbury and featuring Ryan Landry
A laugh-out-loud theater happening that teeters on The Edge of comedy and pathos, in the spirit of Hedwig and Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theater. Tickets: $20/$15
A limited number of press seats will be available at each performance.

6:00 pm
Live from The Edge Created by Universes Universes is an ensemble company of multi-disciplined writers and performers who fuse poetry, theater, jazz, hip-hop, politics, down home blues and Spanish boleros to create moving, challenging, and entertaining theatrical works. Live From The Edge showcases the best of the ensemble's special brand of fusion theater. Tickets: $20/$15A limited number of press seats will be available at each performance.Additional performance on Sunday, May 16 at 8pm

8:00 pm
Particularly in the Heartland Created by The TEAMThe TEAM is the Theatre of the Emerging American Moment, a New York City-based theater company dedicated to dissecting and celebrating the experience of living in America today. In this play about losing sight of America and trying to fall back in love with it, visit a Kansas where parents vanish, aliens grow in cornfields, New Yorkers fall from the sky, and dead Kennedys stop by for Christmas dinner.

Additional performance on Sunday, May 16 at 4pm Tickets: $20/$15A limited number of press seats will be available at each performance.

10:15pm
Post-Living Ante-Action Theater (Club Remix) Created by My Barbarian My Barbarian is Los Angeles-based performance collective whose interdisciplinary projects explore and exhume cross-cultural mishaps and misadventures drawn from history, mythology, art, and popular culture. Improvisation and scripted material collide as the audience is invited into exercises, dances, parlor tricks, and sing-a-longs. Tickets: $20/$15A limited number of press seats will be available at each performance. 12:00am - MIDNIGHT Late Night The Donkey Show and celebrationIn a celebration of the Emerging America Festival and A.R.T's focus on club theater for this inaugural year, join us for a special midnight showing of the disco sensation that takes Cambridge and Boston by storm every weekend at OBERON. Come party on the dance floor to all the 70s disco hits you know by heart as the show unfolds around you.

Tickets from $25

SUNDAY MAY 16th:
12:00pm - 2:30pm
The Huntington Theatre Company's Calderwood Pavilion at the BCAJoin the Conversation! Brunch.
Featuring live music and brunch selections from Panera Bread.Tickets: $5

Club Theater Performances from the A.R.T. at OBERON
6:15pm
Vicious Dogs on Premises Created by Witness RelocationWitness Relocation combines dance and theater with the energy of a rock show, exploding contemporary culture into intensely physical, outrageous, poetic, and sometimes brutal performances in order to question the assumptions of the modern day experience.Tickets: $20/$15A limited number of press seats will be available at each performance. 10:00 pmFestival celebration party featuring Decode Created by Salvatore LaRussa Dance TheatreCelebrate the end of the festival weekend with a raucous party featuring a dance performance where silent dialogues and physical commands are exchanged between dancers throughout the venue.Tickets: $20/$15A limited number of press seats will be available at each performance. RATING: Events range from all ages to 18+ Tickets can be purchased in advance at www.emergingamericafestival.org Diane Paulus, Artistic Director of the A.R.T., commented: "Theater is more than simply a play on the stage: it's a ritual, a social occasion for people to come together and experience community. My hope for Emerging America is that the audience will be able to give feedback to the artists through conversations provoked by the social gatherings that will be at the heart of the festival.""Emerging America is an opportunity to experience today's art - on the waterfront, on the stage and in the streets," says Jill Medvedow, Director of the ICA. "It fits right in with the ICA's commitment to sharing the pleasures, provocation and inspiration of contemporary art with audiences in Boston and beyond."Peter Dubois, Artistic Director of the Huntington Theatre Company, concurred: "You can hear the exciting sounds of new American voices in the works of the Emerging America Festival."

ABOUT THE AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER (A.R.T.)
The A.R.T. is one of the country's most celebrated resident theaters and the winner of numerous awards - including the Tony Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and numerous local Elliot Norton and I.R.N.E. Awards. It was recently named one of the top three theaters in the country by Time magazine. Founded by Robert Brustein in 1980, over its twenty-nine-year history the A.R.T. has welcomed major American and international theater artists whose singular visions generate and define the theater's work, presenting a varied repertoire that includes new plays, progressive productions of classical texts, and collaborations between artists from many disciplines. The Company has performed throughout the US, and worldwide in twenty-one cities in sixteen countries on four continents. Last year the organization welcomed its new Artistic Director, Diane Paulus, under whose helm the Company began its 30th Season. Under the leadership of Diane Paulus, A.R.T. has developed a new initiative, EXPERIENCE THE A.R.T., which seeks to revolutionize the theater experience through a sustained commitment to empowering the audience. This audience-driven vision has completely transformed the way the company develops, programs, produces, and contextualizes its work. This speaks directly to the A.R.T.'s core mission - "to expand the boundaries of theater." A.R.T. resources give equal importance to the social aspects of theater and the potential for a full theater experience, including interaction and engagement with its audience before, during, and after the production. The initiative involves producing theater cycles that create a festival atmosphere and allow audiences to experience productions in the context of a larger event. By producing and promoting these cycles as citywide events, A.R.T. seeks to attract larger audiences from the greater Boston area and from the rest of the country and world.

ABOUT THE Huntington Theatre Company:
The Huntington Theatre Company is Boston's largest and most popular theatre company, hosting more than 64 Tony Award-winning artists, garnering 36 Elliot Norton Awards, and sending over a dozen shows to Broadway since its founding in 1982. In July 2008, Peter Dubois became the Huntington's third artistic leader and works in partnership with longtime Managing Director Michael Maso. In residence at and in partnership with Boston University, the Huntington is renowned for presenting seven outstanding productions each season, created by world-class artists and the most promising emerging talent, and reaching an annual audience of over 130,000. The company has premiered plays by Pulitzer Prize, Academy Award, and Tony Award-winning luminaries such as August Wilson and Tom Stoppard, as well as rising local literary stars such as Melinda Lopez, Ronan Noone, and Lydia R. Diamond. The Huntington has transferred over a dozen productions to Broadway, more than any other theatre in Boston, including the Broadway hit and Tony Award-winner Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. In 2004, the Huntington opened the state-of-the-art Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, which includes 370-seat and 200-seat theatres to support the company's new works activities and to complement the company's 890-seat, Broadway-style main stage, the Boston University Theatre. The Huntington is a national leader in the development and support of new plays, producing more than 50 New England, American, or world premieres in its 27-year history. The Huntington's nationally-recognized education programs have served more than 250,000 middle school and high school students in individual and group settings and community programs bring theatre to the Deaf and blind communities, the elderly, and other underserved populations in the Greater Boston area. ABOUT THE ICA: An influential forum for multi-disciplinary arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art has been at the leading edge of art in Boston for more than 70 years. Like its iconic building on Boston's waterfront, the ICA offers new ways of engaging with the world around us. Its exhibitions and programs provide access to contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA, located at 100 Northern Avenue, is open Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 am - 5 pm; Thursday and Friday, 10 am - 9 pm; and Saturday and Sunday, 10 am - 5 pm. Admission is $15 adults, $10 seniors and students, and free for members and children 17 and under. ICA Free Admission for Youth is sponsored by State Street Foundation. Free admission on Target Free Thursday Nights, 5 - 9 pm. Free admission for families at ICA Play Dates (2 adults + children 12 and under) on the last Saturday of the month. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our Web site at www.icaboston.org.