Passage's Solo Flights Fest Continues With Reading of Draw the Circle 3/11

On Friday, March 11 at 8 p.m., Trenton's Passage Theatre will present a special staged reading of Draw the Circle as part of the 10th Annual Solo Flight Festival, written and performed by Deen, and directed by Chay Yew. The reading will be held at the Mill Hill Playhouse, which is located at 205 E. Front Street at the corner of Montgomery Street, in the heart of Trenton's historic Mill Hill district. Free, security-guarded on-street parking is available.

Deen's moving and hilarious story of one transgender man's journey from female to male, told entirely from the point of view of those closest to him -- including his strict Indian immigrant parents and his politically active femme lover. Laid bare is one family's struggle with a child who continuously defies their most basic expectations of what it means to have a daughter... and one woman's commitment to unconditional love.

Draw the Circle was developed in The Public Theater's Emerging Writing Group and presented in a staged reading at The Public Theater's sold-out Spotlight Series in April 2010.

June Ballinger, Executive Artistic Director of Passage Theatre, attended The Public Theater reading, where the piece was developed as part of the Emerging Writing Group. Ballinger stayed for the talk back afterwards and was so moved by the young people who craved this story and who were so deeply affected by it that she was determined to bring Deen to Trenton.

Deen is motivated by the possibility of impacting another person with his work. "If there's one person in the audience who feels less alone because of your play, then you have succeeded," Deen said, recalling the advice that his mentor often told him.

A first generation South Asian American writer, actor and activist, Deen began his undergraduate education at Columbia College but had to leave after two years due to illness.. While regaining his health, he began acting with a community theater in Stockbridge, Mass. After four years, he transferred to UMass Amherst where he designed is own major and wrote the full-length Shut Up! as the culmination of his BA degree. The play won him the Dennis Johnston Playwriting Prize and the James Baldwin Award. His plays have appeared at W.O.W. Café Theatre, Chernuchin Theatre, Theatre Row, Vital Theatre, and the Abrons Arts Center. In his spare time, he has spoken at schools and universities about issues of gender and sexuality, and has taught creative writing to inmates serving time in jail.

Chay Yew is a noted playwright and director whose work has been produced Off Broadway and across the United States. He has served as head of the Asian Theatre Workshop at the Mark Taper Forum, and he is a former resident director at East West Players. As a director he has directed plays at The Public Theater, New York City Workshop, Kennedy Center, Long Wharf Theatre, and Goodman Theatre among others. Chay Yew is the recipient of the 2007 OBIE Award for Direction.

Tickets for Draw the Circle are $10. For tickets, call (609) 392-0766 or visit on-line at www.passagetheatre.org. Tickets will also be available at the door.

Solo Flights Festival continues on Saturday, March 12 at 8pm with No Parole, written and performed by Carlo D'Amore, which was named one of the top ten plays of 2007 in the San Francisco Bay Area and was nominated for an Audience Favorite Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. On Sunday, March 13 at 3pm, Princeton resident Mary Martello, one of Philadelphia's most admired singer/actors, will perform the songs of Kurt Weill in The Style of Weill. A free reading of David Lee White's new play, Slippery as Sin, will take place on Wednesday, March 16 at 8pm and on Thursday, March 17 at 8pm, Passage Theatre will present Barrymore nominee Chandra Thomas in her one woman play Forgive to Forget.
10th Annual Solo Flights Festival

Special Workshop Reading: March 11 @ 8PM
Draw the Circle
Written & performed by Deen, directed by Chay Yew

No Parole
Written & performed by Carlo D'Amore, directed by Margarett Perry
March 12 & 19 @ 8PM, March 27 @ 3PM
Carlo D'Amore will roar into Trenton with a wry, energetic adventure play about his real-life flamboyant, live-for-the-moment con artist mother, who has no trouble posing as an attorney, professor, daycare worker, or diplomat, as seen through the eyes of her young son, who acts as her look-out, bail bondsman, and partner-in-crime.

The Style of Weill
Written and Performed by Mary Martello
March 13 @ 3PM
Princeton-based chanteuse and actress Mary Martello returns this season with a look at the life of Kurt Weill, the stage composer of "Mack the Knife" and "September Song."

First Public Reading of a New Comedy - Free Admission
Slippery as Sin
Playwright: David Lee White, Director: Adam Immerwahr

Forgive to Forget
Written & performed by Chandra Thomas
March 17 @ 8PM
What do you do when police find your father walking through Harlem in shorts and a tee-shirt on the coldest day in January? If you're Brenda, you throw a party. Actor/writer Chandra Thomas poeticizes, sings, dances and speechifies (yes, "speechifies") through the entangled memories of Brenda and her father as they learn what to remember and what to forget.

Wanderlust
Written & performed by Martin Dockery, directed by Jean-Michele Gregory
March 18 @ 8PM, March 20 @ 3PM
An award-winning, comic, true story: After more than a decade of temping, both at work and in relationships, a man embarks on a solo trip deep into Africa, trekking from the Atlantic to the Sahara. There he demands an Epiphany. Any Epiphany. Some proof that though we're temporary, we're more than mere temps.

Black Comedy: The Wacky Side of (Post) Racism
Written & performed by Nancy Giles
March 25 & 26 @ 8PM
Passage Theatre is delighted to welcome back to its stage social commentator, actress and comedian Nancy Giles on Friday and Saturday, March 25 and 26, at 8pm, in Black Comedy: The Wacky Side of (Post) Racism. Giles, who has made her mark dismantling misconceptions about race, feminism and sexism, takes another look at her 1998 Passage Theatre solo show that the Village Voice called "smart and unforgiving."

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