Brooklyn's Brave New World Repertory Theatre Marks 20th Anniversary With OVER AND ABOVE: SONGS OF ENDURANCE

Brooklyn's Brave New World Repertory Theatre, acclaimed for its site specific, immersive productions marks its 20th anniversary Sunday March 5 at 7pm with Over & Above: Songs of Endurance, a one-night only SRO live cabaret performance. This special performance reunites the women artists who worked on BNW's 2020 Zoom presentation of monologues written, directed, and performed by women.

Many independent theatre companies don't survive beyond five years, says Brave New World Rep's co-founder/producing artistic director Claire Beckman, "so we really have reason to celebrate. We know the work we do is important and appreciated. We've been awarded grants from the NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs for 18 years in a row and have received glowing reviews including from The New York Times. We operate out of the home I share with my husband and co-founder, John Morgan, and that keeps overhead low. Every penny we receive goes to paying artists as much as possible but operating on standard Union contracts is challenging. Brave New World Rep (BNW) has been a labor of love that we keep saying just isn't sustainable but survives because we love the work.

"Ultimately BNW couldn't have survived through the pandemic without the support of our remarkable Brooklyn community. Our neighbors have kept BNW alive with generous donations and enthusiastic attendance because they appreciate that we're here. That includes sponsorships from local merchants and dozens of community members who have served on our board of directors over the past two decades."

To celebrate its 20-year anniversary, BNW's choice was something uplifting and cathartic with songs that soothe the soul and lift the spirit. Over and Above: Songs of Endurance features singers Sandra Bargman, BNW company member Sandra Mills Scott, and Laura Patinkin, who with music director Wendy Cavett, have provided songs and hymns that director Claire Beckman has woven together with the poetry of Emily Dickinson, performed by Renée Bucciarelli.

The cabaret's theme resonates with our shared experience of the past three years with Covid-19. Says Beckman, "Renee reached out and asked me to take a look at a one-woman show she is developing about Emily Dickinson. As she no doubt intended, I was struck and moved by Dickinson's life as a recluse and her experience with loss, isolation, and death. It was her identification with a songbird's need to sing even if nobody hears that made me want to feature her in our cabaret. Haven't we all been living this way? Afraid to leave our homes, but desperate to fly? I am grateful to Renee for expanding my understanding of Emily Dickinson beyond the New England spinster trope, and for returning to Brooklyn, from British Columbia to play her for us."

Next up for Brave New World Rep is the long-awaited American premiere in June of The Hook, the unpublished screenplay by Arthur Miller, performed onboard The Waterfront Museum Barge in Red Hook.

Brave New World Rep Presents

Over and Above: Songs of Endurance

Sunday March 5, at 7pm

South Oxford Space, 138 South Oxford St., Brooklyn, NY 11217

A Cabaret in Honor of 20 Years of BNW Rep,

3 years surviving a global pandemic,

And for Women's History Month

Conceived/Directed by Claire Beckman†

Music Director: Wendy Cavett

Stage Manager: Emely Zepeda*†

Singers: Sandra Bargman*, Laura Patinkin*, and Sondra Mills Scott*†

Reimagining the poetry of Emily Dickenson: Excerpts for our times

Compiled and performed by Renée Bucciarelli, from

"Stand Up and Live," her work-in-progress.

With songs to soothe the soul and lift the spirit

* appears courtesy of Actors Equity Association

† BNW Company Members

For the past 20 years, Brooklyn's Brave New World Rep has carved out a site-specific niche presenting re-envisioned classics and works by Brooklyn playwrights. Recent work includes free performances of Elmer Rice's Street Scene, where the company closed off a street in Park Slope, using a tenement building and adjacent street as the stage; Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge (2018) on the Waterfront Barge Museum in Red Hook; and The Plantation, a bold new adaptation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, a post-Civil War story set after emancipation but before the onset of Jim Crow. The immersive production was performed in The Commanding Officer's House on Governors Island in 2017.

Brave New World Rep has earned a reputation of delivering unexpectedly immersive works to communities all around Brooklyn, beginning with its 2005 production of To Kill a Mockingbird, presented on the front porches and sidewalks of a tree-lined Ditmas Park street.

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