Nadina Hassan, Steven Telsey, & More To Star In THANKSGIVING Industry Presentation

A premiere staged reading by Yonder Window Productions of Thanksgiving, a new musical play by Julian Henry Lowenfeld, directed by Yonder Window's Artistic Director Katie McHugh, will be held this week in New York. With Music Direction by James Higgins and casting by Roxedge Talent Casting, the industry reading will be presented on Wednesday (March 13) at the Estonian House, 243 E 34th.

The presentation of Thanksgiving will feature a cast that includes Nadina Hassan (Mean Girls), Steven Telsey (Harmony), Patrick Oliver Jones (First Wives Club), Tricia Marciel (From Here To Eternity), Claire Marie Miller (Baldwin Wallace University), and Madeline Brennan (My Fair Lady). Jackie Leibowitz is the stage manager for the reading.

Synopsis

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year's Eve are (or should be, we wish) our three most cherished family occasions...So, naturally, in this special holiday season, what could ever possibly go right for the Appletree family?

Young Gabriel is so in love he could die - but is his love returned? What if it isn't? Do his parents love each other anymore? Will his mother ever sing again, or his father ever write? What will come of his sister's passion for a "bad boy" - and how will Grandma cope with so much change? Although... is real change even likely, or will we keep making the same mistakes our parents and their parents and parents' parents made, if we aren't careful?

With touching music, and witty, thoughtful repartee, Thanksgiving explores the hopes and the patterns of three clashing generations, each in their own ways experiencing love and the changes of age, as they pass through the crucible of our most beloved holidays.

About Julian Henry Lowenfeld

Poet, playwright, composer, and experienced trial lawyer Julian Henry Lowenfeld is acknowledged to be one of the greatest living translators of Russian poetry into English, and also a celebrated authority on the life and work of Russia's national bard, Alexander Pushkin. Julian's book, My Talisman, The Poetry and Life of Alexander Pushkin (a combined anthology of Pushkin's verse and biography of Russia's most beloved poet), illustrated by Pushkin's own drawings, received the Russia's prestigious Pushkin Medal in 2020 for "outstanding literary achievement," as well as the Petropol Prize for Literary Achievement. It was the first time the medals had been awarded to a foreigner, despite the increasingly dark political climate in Russia.

Julian has lectured and performed his translations of Pushkin at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in concert at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, at the Hermitage Theatre in St. Petersburg,, at Moscow's MosKontsert Theatre, at the United Nations, New York, The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., Trinity College, Dublin, the Performing Arts Center of the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Boston Public Library, the Philadelphia Public Library, Pushkin House, London, the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, Lehigh University, The First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, The Russian Cultural Center, Washington, City Hall, Anchorage, AK, Anchorage Public Library, University of Alaska, Fairbanks,The Museum of Russian Art, The Tsvetayeva Musem, Moscow, the Akhmatova Museum, St. Petersburg, the Yesenin Museum, Moscow, and numerous other venues. He has performed his translations and been interviewed at length by the Voice of America, BBC World Service, Rain TV, Echo of Moscow, and many other media. Besides translating the Pushkin, he has also translated verse by Lermontov, Tyutchev, Blok, Mandelshtam, Tsvetayeva, Akhmatova, Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Rilke, Goethe, Heine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Lope De Vega, Machado, Martí, Pessoa, Vinicius de Moraes, Leopardi, Ungharetti, Dante, Catullus, Ovid, and Horace.

Besides Thanksgiving, Julian has just completed the script and score for Even Love's a Melody, a musical adaptation with his verse translation of four plays by Alexander Pushkin. He is also in the process of finalizing his complete verse translation of Eugene Onegin, along with footnotes and commentaries. Julian is also known for his translations of Pushkin's Fairy Tales, as well as Pushkin's long narrative poem The Bronze Horseman, a profound meditation on despotic power, madness, and the danger of humanity's hubristic detachment from nature. A unique four volume DVD set of Russian cartoons, entitled Animated Soviet Propaganda, translated and partially edited by Julian won a New York TImes Critics' Choice award in 2006.

Other works by Julian include the novella Rose-Colored Glasses (a love story framed within an almost farcical courtroom drama), the dark one act comedy Kafka for Beginners, and an anthology of Julian's own poems, mostly about love, entitled Nonetheless.

Visit Yonder Window Theatre Company's website for more information: https://yonderwindow.co/thanksgiving

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