Abingdon Theatre Company's Around the Table Reading Series Will Begin with ARANCINI, a New Play by Joey Merlo

Abingdon Theatre Company (Chad Austin, Artistic Director) will begin the new decade in its 27th season by presenting its "Around the Table Reading Series" a critical program serving the company's mission to create new work by emerging and established artists. The readings are free to the public and focus on challenging and thought-provoking subject matter.

The first reading in the series will be Arancini, a new play by Joey Merlo, directed by Ran Xia at Theater 71 (152 West 71st Street - just east of Broadway) on Monday, January 27th at 7pm.

In Arancini, when a mother and her two daughters gather to cook the famous arancini recipe left behind from their recently deceased Nonna, they begin to unravel her mysterious life, revealing their own generational wounds in the process.

"Abingdon has been presenting new works for the past twenty-seven years Off-Broadway," says Chad Austin, Abingdon Theatre Company's Artistic Director. "I am so happy to continue to give voice to emerging and established artists through our reading series."

The cast will feature Orietta Crispino, Irene Glezos, Summer Minerva, Nicole Pursell, Ian Saraceni, Ava Saraceni and Caitlin Zoz.

Tickets for Arancini are FREE, although reservations are required and may be made online here.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Joey Merlo (Playwright) is a 2019 New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellow. Produced plays include: The Witch of St. Elmora Street (Dixon Place, Access Theatre), This Boy Cometh to the Mountain (Rough Draft Festival) and Athens on the Half Shell (LPAC) He is a graduate of NYU.

Ran Xia (Director) is a Shanghai born, Brooklyn based interdisciplinary theatre artist. Resident director at the Flea and the Tank (In Blue, The Tallest Man in the World, Independent Study). Member of Pipeline Playlab 2020.

The Abingdon Theatre Company is dedicated to developing and producing brave, new American work by emerging and established artists. The company provides a safe home where playwrights, directors and actors can collaborate within a supportive and nurturing environment. We search for stories about the human experience that reflect our social, political, historical and cultural diversity. We are acutely aware of the theatre's power to unite disparate population groups through stories about common human interests, and we strive to shed light on a variety of perspectives. In January 1993, a group of five professional theatre artists eager for ongoing collaboration and greater control over their creative lives gathered in a brownstone near New York City's Abingdon Square Park for a series of bi-weekly readings of new plays. After a few months of informal meetings, enthusiasm swelled and the artists pooled their theatrical experience to establish an open-door home where they could collaborate, invite their colleagues to join the process, and develop new plays. Twenty-two years later, Abingdon has collaborated with more than 200 playwrights, produced 85 New York and World Premiere plays, presented more than 700 readings, staged 175 ten-minute plays, and commissioned 6 one-act plays.

www.abingdontheatre.org