Interactive Theater Workshop COPING WITH HOLIDAY STRESS Announced

The holidays are coming, bringing the stress we love to hate. Family gatherings can be delightful or disastrous, and the anticipation of a potential food fight can be worse than the clean-up. To prepare for these joyous events, the Mental Health Association in New Jersey's New Jersey Mental Health Players and The Theater Project are collaborating to present HERE COME THE HOLIDAYS.

This interactive presentation is designed to brainstorm and strategize about that familiar balancing act: breaking bread with people we may avoid the rest of the year. Hosted by Friends of the Cranford Library at the Cranford Community Center, 224 Walnut Ave, Cranford, NJ.

Admission is free. In HERE COME THE HOLIDAYS, actors will present two scenes involving the preparations for a family get-together with some of the cross-generational, political, and familial culture clashes we know so well, but just before the food begins to fly, a moderator from the Mental Health Association in New Jersey, John Rogers, will invite the audience to comment and dialogue with the character/actors.

The goal is for the people in the room - spectators and performers - to leave with some insights and tools for coping with the festive season. The Mental Health Association in New Jersey's New Jersey Mental Health Players is a highly successful, interactive community education program. The program uses trained volunteers to depict realistic scenarios involving mental health and substance use issues. These presentations provide audiences with a dynamic way to receive basic education about behavioral health problems and become sensitized to the stigma that is often associated with them. Performances usually consist of two customized, audience-specific scenes, each of which is followed by an opportunity for the audience to interact with the players and to ask questions about the issues that have been presented.

Now in its 24th season, The Theater Project is dedicated to nurturing new work and exploring issues of community concern through its play selection. Past presentations have included PROP 8 (marriage equality) STUFF HAPPENS (the Iraq war), and most recently, EXIT PURSUED BY A BEAR, a comedy about a woman who empowers herself to escape from an abusive relationship. Information about its many programs is available at TheTheaterProject.org.

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