Pontine Presents Jay O'Callahan's 'Books, Burglars & Broadway'

8 - 11 November, Pontine Theatre kicks off it's 41st Season at its new performance venue, The Plains School, located at One Plains Avenue in Portsmouth's West End. The newly renovated Plains School, a collaboration between Pontine Theatre and the City of Portsmouth, is fully accessible with convenient free parking adjacent. Jay O'Callahan, a Massachusetts-based storyteller, will perform Books, Burglars & Broadway. The production is underwritten by Piscataqua Savings Bank and guest artist accommodations are provided by Martin Hill Inn.

Performances are Thursday at 3pm, Friday at 7pm, Saturday at 3pm and Sunday at 2pm. Tickets are $27 and may be purchased online: www.pontine.org - tickets may also be purchased at the door a half-hour prior to each show, based on availability.

Pontine's season is supported by a grant from the NH State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Mr. O'Callahan's performance features anecdotes about growing up on Pill Hill, a neighborhood on the edge of Boston. In the neighborhood there was a tree seven realms high, a number of eccentrics and frozen salmon floating in a bathtub. The story at the center of the show, Muddy River Playhouse, is about father and son acting in an amateur play directed by an aunt with a sherry flask in one hand, a cigarette in the other and a voice which rises as the sherry empties.

Jay O'Callahan takes a bare stage and single-handedly transforms it into a dynamic and sensitive world filled with compelling characters. His solo performances at Abbey Theatre in Dublin, National Theatre Complex in London, the Olympics, Lincoln Center, Boston Symphony Orchestra and other theaters throughout the world have been applauded by the media, including The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly. The Associated Press trumpeted him as "a theater troupe inside one body." Time Magazine dubbed Jay "a genius."