MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA and More Set for Target Margin Theater's 25th Anniversary Season

Target Margin Theater celebrates 25 years of theater making with one of America's greatest playwrights. Target Margin's unique and lauded exploration of Eugene O'Neill last season continues this year with Mourning Becomes Electra at the Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street). A rare feat in New York, director David Herskovits tackles all three plays of the Mourning trilogy, creating an immersive world throughout Abrons' historic Playhouse. TMT's Mourning Becomes Electra will be presented in April/March of 2017.

Eugene O'Neill is known for his American realism seen in his earliest full-length play (and Pulitzer Prize-winner) Beyond the Horizon but his career was also defined by bold experimentation in plays like Dynamo, The Great God Brown and Marco Millions. Target Margin's LAB Lead Artists Ann Marie Dorr, Claire Moodey, Bess Rowen, Kathleen Kennedy Tobin and Eva von Schweinitz present some of these thrilling pieces at The Brick (579 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn NY) from November 30 - December 17, 2016, shedding light on yet another dimension of O'Neill's legacy. The LAB will also feature a collaboration with City University of New York students / alumni and Durned Queer-a works-in-progress showing of Mourning Becomes Electra. Target Margin celebrates its 25th Anniversary season with a Blowout Benefit in March 2017 with a one-night only special performance directed by David Herskovits.

"O'Neill sears the heart and cuts directly to the brain. His characters swell like storm clouds in a turbulent sky; his plots twist and turn like myth; everything in his work pushes beyond reason to the unreasonable, the huge and rich and strange. And yet the miracle of Mourning and all his plays is their quiet, ineffable humanity. Amid all this grandeur we always confront real people, in their local, specific, heart-rending intimacy." said Founder/Artistic Director David Herskovits.

The TMT Lab offers smaller, fully-produced productions and has enlisted the talents of over 1,000 theater artists since 1993. At the helm of each production is a Lead Artist-- a director, actor, writer, designer, or puppeteer. TMT curates each season's Lab under an overarching theme then works with each Lead Artist to find the right source material. From then on they are provided a stipend, budget, artistic resources and, most importantly, the freedom to shape their work.

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MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION:

Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill

Directed by David Herskovits

April / May 2017 @ Abrons Arts Center | 466 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002

Love, race, money, and war: Eugene O'Neill captured the essence of our country in his great trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra. For our spring 2017 marathon presentation, each of the three plays that comprise the Mourning trilogy will be staged in a different part of the Abrons Playhouse, with audience moving between the three spaces. Part Greek tragedy, American history play, and family romance, with passionate irreverence, this production of Mourning explodes The American Project. You will never have a ride like it.

Featuring: Satya Bhabha, Mary Neufeld, Stephanie Weeks and Eunice Wong.

Lighting / Scenic Design: Lenore Doxsee

Costumes: Kaye Voyce

Sound Demon: Jesse Freedman

25th Anniversary Blowout

With a special performance directed by David Herskovits

March 2017

TMT turns 25 with an epic one-night only benefit celebration. The party will also include a special one-off performance directed by David Herskovits with contributions by artists from the company's past and present.

TMT LAB PRODUCTIONS:

Unseen O'Neill

December 1 - 17, 2016 @ The Brick | 579 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11211

In this year's LAB Lead Artists Ann Marie Dorr, Kathleen Kennedy Tobin and Eva von Schweinitz revive some of O'Neill's known but rarely seen works including Beyond the Horizon, Dynamo, The Great God Brown and Marco Millions. Plus a theater-making workshop for veterans led by Maurice DeCaul, a panel on adapting O'Neill moderated by Amy Jensen, and Durned Queer-a special in-process showing of Mourning Becomes Electra directed by David Herskovits.

Lead Artists: Ann Marie Dorr, David Herskovits, Kathleen Kennedy Tobin and Eva von Schweinitz

TMT + CUNY Collab

Inspired by Eugene O'Neill's Marco Millions

December 8 + 9, 2016 @ Martin E. Segal Theatre Center | 365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016

Translation, culture, class and race are at the forefront of this inspired retelling of O'Neill's seldom seen satire Marco Millions. Lead Artists Claire Moodey and Bess Rowen in collaboration with City University of New York students, alumni, professors and staff, follow Marco Polo on a journey you will never forget.

Lead Artists: Claire Moodey + Bess Rowen

TMT INSTITUTE FOR COLLABORATIVE THEATER-MAKING:

2017 application open October 1 - 31, 2016

The Institute is a year-long fellowship for five theater artists to expand their artistic practice. Built on TMT's history of nurturing talent, The Institute provides support and space for open-ended questioning and experimentation within, and at, The Edges of the form of theater. Selected Fellows receive a stipend of $1,000, institutional support, and space to meet regularly to discuss, experiment, and rethink their work. This Institute is not a project development opportunity, nor is it a professional development service. There is no curriculum or "teaching" structure. There is no final result or project. The core goal is rigorously to question our own assumptions about what the theater is, what it could be, and what we would like it to be. Applications for our next Institute are open October 1-31, 2016 and announce our next round of Fellows January 2017.

Current 2016 Fellows include: Eliza Bent, Stephen Cedars, Barbara Samuels, Sugar Vendil and Dennis Yue-Yeh Li. Previous Fellows: Avi Amon, Kaaron Briscoe, Tanisha Christie, Morgan Gould, Claire Moodey, Kyoung Park, Cara Scarmack, Sarah Cameron Sunde, Ari Tabei and Peter Mills Weiss.

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Tickets for all performances are available before they go on sale through TMT 2016 / 2017 Season Subscription. For more information, visit www.targetmargin.org/support-us/membership.

Target Margin Theater was founded in 1991 by Artistic Director David Herskovits. For 25 years Target Margin has been praised for its aggressive interpretations of classic texts, lesser-known works, and new plays inspired by existing sources. TMT has presented ambitious re-thinkings of plays by Shakespeare, Chekov, Brecht, Gertrude Stein, and Beaumarchais, among others. TMT has also created original works and new music / opera over the years and has served over 1,000 artists (mostly emerging) through its annual LAB. In addition, TMT is committed to nurturing the creative aspirations of the next generation of theater makers in the TMT Institute, our yearlong fellowship program. The company's artistic and cultural vision has resulted in 41 Mainstage productions including 11 world premieres, 8 company-created works, 3 U.S. premieres and 5 new translations, which have garnered 4 OBIE Awards and employed over 500 Equity actors and hundreds of other theater artists. The company's production of Mamba's Daughters received an OBIE Award, and their epic 2004-06 production of Goethe's Faust received extensive critical acclaim. Recent productions include Uncle Vanya and The Tempest at HERE, Uriel Acosta: I Want That Man! at The Chocolate Factory, Composition...Master-Pieces...Identity, a new solo performance piece from OBIE Award-winner David Greenspan at The Connelly Theater, Drunken With What at Abrons Arts Center, Reread Another at The Brick, called "something kind of wonderful" by Ben Brantley in The New York Times, and, most recently, The ICEMAN Lab at HERE Arts Center called a "bold, playful, vivifying re-creation of the Eugene O'Neill classic." By Laura Collins-Hughes in The New York Times.