A MAP OF VIRTUE Plays 4th Street Theater 2/6-25

At the conclusion of this final season, which begins with the world premiere of A Map of Virtue by Erin Courtney in February, the collective of American Playwrights will have realized full productions by each of its 13 members.

13P states, "Even more remarkable is how successful the undertaking has been: they have won two OBIEs, a sizable grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and much critical praise. Their most recent production, Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die, gave the writer-director (P#11) an opportunity to stretch her artistic boundaries and take the stage herself for the first time. Courtney’s (P#12) turn at the helm, too, epitomizes 13P’s vital function: The collective is helping her to premiere the show on her own terms, with a world-class team that includes director Ken Rus Schmoll (13P’s The Internationalist, Aphrodisiac and Mark Smith; The Foundry Theatre’s FUREE in Pins & Needles and Telephone; Will Eno’s Middletown) and an accomplished cast of actors and designers."

Performances of A Map of Virtue will take place February 6—25 at the 4th Street Theatre. Critics are welcome as of Thursday, February 9 for an official opening of Sunday, February 12. The 4th Street Theatre is located at 83 East 4th Street in New York City. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased by visiting www.13p.org or calling 866.811.4111.

About the show: "In A Map of Virtue, two strangers meet at a diner and a swarm of birds descends. The woman builds her art career around a bird statue that the man leaves behind. He slashes her painting and they become friends. This begins a series of random and violent events that echo the strangeness of their first meeting. A small bird statue guides us through this symmetrical story about the limits of our virtues and what we leave behind."

The play is doubtless informed by Courtney’s training and work as a painter before she was a playwright. In this world premiere, she will see her vision portrayed by a cast that includes Birgit Huppuch as the bird statue. Huppuch last worked with Schmoll in The Foundry Theatre’s Telephone. Schmoll has collaborated with Courtney before, too: He directed her play Demon Baby in 2004.

The cast of A Map of Virtue also features Alex Draper (Howard Barker’s Gary the Thief and No End to Blame, the Presnyakov Brothers’ Terrorism), Jesse Lenat (Michael Kimmel’s The Last Goodbye, Melissa James Gibson’s Current Nobody), Annie McNamara (Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz, Sheila Callaghan’s That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play), Hubert Point-Du Jour (Target Margin’s recent production of The Tempest and The Really Big Once), Jon Norman Schneider (Rehana Lew Mirza’s Barriers, the recent NAATCO production of Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, Julia Cho’s Durango) and Maria Striar (P.S. 122’s Hello Failure, Producing Artistic Director of Clubbed Thumb).

The A Map of Virtue creative team includes Marsha Ginsberg (Sets and Costumes), Tyler Micoleau (Lighting) and Daniel Kluger (Sound and Music).

53rd State Press will publish the text of A Map of Virtue in February 2012 in a volume that also features Courtney’s Black Cat Lost. The book will be available online at www.53rdstatepress.com and at the box office.

After A Map of Virtue, 13P will present its final show, a premiere by Sarah Ruhl (summer 2012; details TBA). Details are forthcoming. 13P’s final season (its “ImPlosion Season) will also include A People’s History of 13P, an oral history video archive that documents the experiences and challenges 13P has faced from inception to implosion. This archive will exist at 13P.org and will include filmed interviews with the playwrights, collaborators and supporters who have championed this new model for a decade.

The season will conclude with an ImPlosion Party, a blowout bash. Date, location and others details will be announced soon.

About the Artists

Erin Courtney (P#12) is currently writing a new play called Service Road, a commission for the Adhesive Theater Company. Her new play Honey Drop was part of the Clubbed Thumb/Playwrights Horizons Superlab and was given a mini-workshop at New Georges. Her other plays include Alice the Magnet, Demon Baby, Quiver and Twitch and Black Cat Lost. She has collaborated with Elizabeth Swados on Kasper Hauser: A Foundling’s Opera, which was produced at The Flea Theater and named one of The Downtown Theater Favorites of 2009 by Tom Murrin of Paper Magazine. Her plays have been produced or developed by Clubbed Thumb, The Public Theater, The Flea, The Vineyard, Playwrights Horizons, NYS&F, and Soho Rep. Demon Baby is published in two anthologies; New Downtown Now, edited by Mac Wellman and Young Jean Lee and published by University of Minnesota Press; and Funny, Strange, Provocative: Seven Plays by Clubbed Thumb, edited by Maria Striar and Erin Detrick and published by Playscripts, Inc. She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb as well as the co-founder of the Brooklyn Writer’s Space. Ms. Courtney teaches playwriting at Brooklyn College. She earned her M.F.A. in playwriting at Brooklyn College with Mac Wellman. A Map of Virtue and Black Cat Lost will be published in 2012 by 53rd State Press.

Ken Rus Schmoll (Director) has directed the 13P productions of Anne Washburn’s The Internationalist, Rob Handel’s Aphrodisiac, and Kate E. Ryan’s Mark Smith. He went on to direct The Internationalist at the Vineyard Theatre and Aphrodisiac at the Long Wharf Theatre. Collaborations with Erin Courtney include her play Demon Baby for Clubbed Thumb, where he is an affiliated artist, and her play Black Cat Lost in Soho Rep’s studio series. Recent credits include Madeleine George’s Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England at Two River Theater Company; FUREE in Pins & Needles, a version of Harold Rome’s 1937 musical Pins & Needles, co-produced by the Foundry Theatre and Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE); Will Eno’s Middletown at the Vineyard Theatre; Ariana Reines’s Telephone for the Foundry Theatre, for which he received an OBIE Award; and the American premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s opera Proserpina for Spoleto Festival USA. His staging at Tanglewood of the world premiere of Charles Wuorinen’s cantata It Happens Like This will be remounted at the Guggenheim in February 2012. Also upcoming: Ellen Maddow’s The Peripherals with the Talking Band. He is currently co-chair, with Jenny Schwartz, of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab.

Marsha Ginsberg (Sets and Costumes) is a set/costume designer, and installation artist. Previously with Ken Rus Schmoll: Set and costumes for It Happens Like This (by Charles Wourinen, Tanglewood Music Center, and upcoming Guggenheim Works in Process); Wolfgang Rihm's Proserpina at Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC. Scenic design for Telephone, Foundry Theater, NYC. Recent theater: Habit by David Levine; (Luminato Festival, Mass MoCA, Watermill Center); Our Class (Wilma Theater); Er nichts als er (zu mit Robert Walser), Meetfactory, Praque, CZ; Blue Flower (American Repertory Theater, Elliot Norton Design Award); Why We Have Body, (Magic Theater); Lascivious Something (Women’s Project/Cherry Lane); Bleakhouse (Bauhaus Festival, Theaterhaus Jena); Kafeneion (Athens/Epidaurus Festival, Greece); Knock-Out (Thalia Theater, Hamburg, Theaterhaus Jena). Opera: With director Christopher Alden: Phaeton (Saarlandisches Staatstheater); Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, (Theater Basel); Imeneo (Glimmerglass Opera); Carmen, (Nationaltheater Manheim); In Mahler’s Shadow (Eos Orchestra); Servo Padrone, Pauvre Matelot, Rita, (San Francisco Opera Center). With director Roy Rallo: Ariadne auf Naxos, (Opera National de Bordeaux) The Methusalem Projekt, (Nationaltheater Weimar); Don Pasquale, (Nationaltheater Weimar); La Finta Giardinero (San Francisco Opera Center); Bluebeards Castle and Elektra, (Long Beach Opera).

Daniel Kluger (Sound and Music) New York: Lidless (Page73), After (Partial Comfort), There Are No More Big Secrets (Rattlestick), The Temperamentals (Daryl Roth), Enjoy! (The Play Company), Jailbait (Cherry Lane), On the Levee (LCT3 - Conductor, Pianist), Dov & Ali (The Playwrights Realm), The Cocktail Party (TACT), The Oldsmobiles (The Flea Theatre), The Dining Room (Keen Company), The Americans, The Greeks (Juilliard), Emperor Antony, Tongue of a Bird (NYU). Regional: Pig Iron Theatre Company, People's Light & Theatre, The Arden Theatre Company, Weston Playhouse, Virginia Stage Company, Two River Theatre Company, Todd Mountain Theatre Project, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, American Players Theatre. Visit danielkluger.com for more information.

Tyler Micoleau (Lighting) has designed lighting for over 300 live productions including plays, dance, opera, multi-media performance, and puppetry. He has held visiting artist positions at Yale University, Dartmouth College and for six years served as adjunct faculty at Sarah Lawrence College Department of Dance. Regionally his work appeared at the Spoleto Festival USA, Huntington, Asolo, Wilma, Goodman, A.R.T., Trinity Rep, Alley, Old Globe, Dallas Theater Center, Pig Iron Theatre, Chautauqua, Long Wharf, among others. In New York Tyler has designed lighting for dozens of Off-Broadway theatre companies, including Lincoln Center Theater, MTC, Atlantic Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theatre, New Georges, Soho ThinkTank, Epic Theatre Ensemble, MCC, Page 73, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Mint Theatre, Naked Angels, Barrow Street Theater, Cherry Lane, Les Freres Corbusier, Foundry Theatre, Theatreworks USA, The Play Company, Rattlestick and Soho Rep. Notable design credits include The Hallway Trilogy, Middletown, The Aliens, When The Rain Stops Falling (2010 Lucille Lortel Award), Blasted (2009 American Theatre Wing Hewes Award), Hell House (Hewes nomination), Bug (2004 Lucille Lortel and OBIE Awards), God's Ear, Orson's Shadow, Underneath The Lintel and Mojo. Tyler is the recipient of a 2010 Village Voice OBIE for Sustained Excellence.

About 13P

13P (13 Playwrights, Inc.) was formed in 2003 by 13 midcareer playwrights concerned about what the trend of endless readings and new play development programs is doing to the texture and ambition of new American plays. The 13 playwrights of 13P are Sheila Callaghan, Erin Courtney, Madeleine George, Rob Handel, Ann Marie Healy, Julia Jarcho, Young Jean Lee, Winter Miller, Sarah Ruhl, Kate E. Ryan, Lucy Thurber, Anne Washburn, and Gary Winter.

Together, the collective realizes full productions of new plays. The resources of the company are placed at the disposal of the playwright at work, who serves as the company's artistic director during the production of her play.

At their first gathering in fall 2003, they chose the order of their 13 productions. The process for each production begins with a meeting between the playwright, executive producer, and managing director. The playwright is asked to dream out loud about her ideal venue, director, cast, and other collaborators for the play. 13P orients itself around each playwright within the framework: The artistic director takes full artistic responsibility for the company during her tenure, and they make every effort to realize the playwright’s wishes.

Awarding 13P an OBIE in 2005, the committee wrote, “Not since Circle Repertory have we seen playwrights in New York forging a home for each other.”
For more information, please visit www.13P.org.

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