First Flight Theatre Company to Present MINA Beginning Next Month

First Flight Theatre Company will present Mina adapted by Richard Width from Bram Stoker's Dracula directed by Karen Eterovich. This production will be presented as part of the 2023 Days of the Dead Festival at UNDER St. Marks (94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009) with performances on Monday, October 23rd at 6:30 pm, Wednesday, October 25th at 8:15 pm and Thursday, November 2nd at 9:45 pm. Tickets ($25 in person) are available for advance purchase at the link below. The performance will run approximately 58 minutes. 

An epic battle of good versus evil, Mina is a solo version of Bram Stoker's Dracula from the point of view of an early STEM girl, Mina herself. The audience will experience this Victorian tale through Mina's eye's, heart, and mind.  A roller coaster of passion, science and storytelling, Mina is suitable for ages 10 and up.

The play features First Flight Company Member Reilly Hacker who recently starred in First Flight's production of Little Women.

The creative team will include Stage Manager Thomas J. Donohoe II and will be produced by Frank Farrell and the First Flight Theatre Company.

RICHARD WIDTH (Playwright) (AEA) performed or directed well over 100 mainstage, young company, residency and staged reading productions with Orlando Shakespeare Theater (OST) as well as adapted Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Forster's Maurice and Poe's Pit and the Pendulum for the stage as a part of their new play development program. He has worked in 

numerous regional theaters, appeared nationally on Guiding Light, One Life to Live, and Vin Diesel's directorial debut film MultiFacial. Most recently, he appeared as George Washington in Maxwell Anderson's Valley Forge with First Flight Theatre Company and will be directing the company's signature production of Dickens by Candlelight: A Christmas Carol at The Hermitage while working full time as a Hospice RN in the northern NJ area.

KAREN ETEROVICH (Director) recently played Mary Philipse in First Flight's 2022 production of Valley Forge. During the pandemic, for First Flight, she directed a Zoom Movie: A Vampire Kiss in the Plague of 1666 by James Fitzmaurice, which won awards in Film Festivals around the world. She also directed The Witlings by Fanny Burney with an international cast on Zoom and received a rave review from Dr. Katie Aske and the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies.  Member: Dramatists Guild, AEA, SAG-AFTRA.  Her solo work includes Love Arm'd, Aphra Behn & Her Pen performed in 135 cities. Cheer from Chawton: A Jane Austen Family Theatrical which premiered in Stockton, California and toured to 30 US cities & the UK.  Instagram @eterovichdaughter & Twitter @lovearmd. 

 

Frank Farrell (Producer & Artistic Director of the First Flight Theatre Company) has recently directed three short films and one full length; Walt Kelly's Songs of the Pogo, The Leaves Were Falling, Salvador and In the Garden of Live Flowers. He was an actor in Chicago for 40 years receiving three Joseph Jefferson acting nominations and recently returned to NYC where he was born. While in Chicago he directed and produced plays for Free Shakespeare Theatre Company, Temporary Theatre, Shakespeare's Herd, Steppenwolf Theater, Raven Theatre, Equity Library Theater Chicago, the North Lakeside Players and Theatre-Hikes. For Citadel Theatre in Lake Forest, IL he directed outdoor productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Spoon River Anthology, Romeo and Juliet and Scapin. Frank has formed six theater companies along the way including Theatre-Hikes in Chicago and, in Grand Haven, Michigan, the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company.  In NYC he wrote, directed and produced Forgotten Soldiers from Our Forgotten War for the First Flight Theatre Company, the seventh theatre group he has formed.  For First Flight he also coordinated several stage readings of Maxwell Anderson's plays in New York City and Chicago. Frank directed and produced last summer's production of Maxwell Anderson's play Valley Forge and this summer's production of Little Women for First Flight at The Hermitage Mansion in Bergen County, New Jersey.  His Zoom film In the Garden of Live Flowers recently won Best Biopic at the Green Academy Awards Film Festival. Since 2015 he has published seven books including Forgotten Soldiers from Our Forgotten War, all available at Amazon.com.

Reilly Hacker is a NJ/NYC based actress with a Bachelor's Degree in Theater from Ramapo College with concentrations in Acting, Directing, and Stage Management as well as a minor in Digital Filmmaking. Some of her previous credits include Meg in Little Women, Kathryn Schaub in Radium Girls, Brooke Wyndham in Legally Blonde, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Agatha in Frankenstein, Officer#2/Musician in Twelfth Night, and Greek Chorus in Antigone. She was also nominated for The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Irene Ryan Acting Award for her role as Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream and received a certificate of merit for ensemble work in Twelfth Night. Reilly would like to thank her friends, family, and mentors for their constant love and support and the team of Mina for making this experience a positive one. She hopes the audience enjoys this version of this classic story.

FIRST FLIGHT THEATRE COMPANY is a not-for-profit founded by Frank Farrell in 2018 is devoted to presenting the plays of 20th century American playwright Maxwell Anderson as well as other playwrights who instill poetry in their writing. Since its start the company has performed live staged readings of Anderson's plays in New Jersey, New York City and Chicago including Valley Forge, Elizabeth the Queen, Mary of Scotland, Sea-Wife, The Masque of Queens, White Desert and The Eve of St. Mark. In addition, the company presented live presentations in New York City of Frank Farrell's play Forgotten Soldiers from Our Forgotten War, Maxwell Anderson's first Broadway play White Desert in Chicago and Dickens by Candlelight: A Christmas Carol at the Hermitage in New Jersey.  During the pandemic First Flight presented play readings on Zoom for the public. These were benefits featuring actors from all over the United States and England and they benefited various not-for-profits. Productions streamed included Maxwell Anderson's one-act plays The Feast of Ortolans, Second Overture, The Miracle of the Danube and Letter to Jackie. Also streamed were A Vampire Kiss in the Plague of 1666 written by James Fitzmaurice, which went on to win many awards on the film festival circuit, Salvador, a play about Salvador Dalí by Richard Young, another film festival winner, and a streaming version of Anderson's White Desert. Post pandemic the company presented at The Hermitage in New Jersey outdoor productions of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Maxwell Anderson's Valley Forge followed by indoor performances of Mina, based on Dracula and a reprise of Dickens by Candlelight: A Christmas Carol. For this past Earth Day in April the First Flight Theatre Company presented streaming performances of In the Garden of Live Flowers, a play about Rachel Carson, which went on to be a winner at this year's Green Academy Award Film Festival. Most recently the company and the Instant Shakespeare Company have joined forces presenting play readings at New York City's various public libraries including Anderson's White Desert and Sea-Wife and upcoming in December Maxwell Anderson's 1924 play What Price Glory.

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