Alley Cat Theater Presenting Staged Reading at CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

Alley Cat Theater (www.alleycattheater.org) will present a staged reading of the script of its upcoming production, Plank, by John Greiner-Ferris and directed by Megan Schy Gleeson, on Wednesday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m. on the main stage of Charlestown Working Theater. The staged reading will be part of the three-week CABINET OF CURIOSITIES FESTIVAL being produced by Theatre on Fire and Charlestown Working Theater. The staged reading is free to the public.

Plank tells the story of Potpee, a woman who is happy and content, adrift in the middle of the ocean. Then she's "rescued." Plank uses a mix of traditional theater and under-represented, nontraditional, experimental theatrical forms such as movement, magical realism, and poetic language to address some compelling issues of our times including climate change, refugees, the TSA, and the individual in society.

Alley Cat Theater is a new theater founded by Mr. Greiner-Ferris that produces new work that is intelligent, compelling, and thoughtful, telling stories by pushing the boundaries of the theater. "This is the public's first chance to see the non-traditional but accessible theater that Alley Cat Theater will be making," said Greiner-Ferris.

THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES is a genre-defying festival of theatre, movement, music, puppetry, and more united under one theme: try something different. The three-week festival will feature one-act and full-length plays and staged readings from Imaginary Beasts, Anthem Theatre Company, Sleeping Weazel, The American Family Happily Institute, Heart & Dagger Productions, Alley Cat Theater, Exiled Theatre, Mass. Theater Experiment, Ingrid Oslund, Fool's Journey, Travis Amiel & Riley Fox Hillyer, Laura Detwiler, Daniel Morris, and Libby Schap & Caitlin Brzezinski.

Theatre on Fire's Producing Artistic Director Darren Evans is serving as curator and lead producer on the project, but the participants are also co-producers. It is envisioned as a truly collaborative effort, with each artist not only presenting their own work, but pitching in to help the others as well. This model of collaborative producing will serve as a pilot for future programming at the Charlestown Working Theater.

"At TOF and CWT, we've been talking for a while, amongst ourselves and in the community, about new approaches and models for co-operative producing," says Evans. "How can like-minded theatre artists and producers work together in a more substantive way to help each other? How do we break out of the traditional competitive, zero-sum paradigm, where an audience member for you is one less for me? How can we share work in progress more and help each other develop as artists The festival is giving us a real-world testing ground for some of these ideas, as well as presenting some kick-ass work that you can't see anywhere else."

For more information on THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES or Theatre on Fire, please visit www.theatreonfire.org.

For more information on Charlestown Working Theater, please visit www.charlestownworkingtheater.org.