Photo Flash: First Look at PTP/NYC's NO END OF BLAME and GOOD at Atlantic Stage 2

PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project), in association with Middlebury College, presents its 30th repertory season, its 10th consecutive in New York City, running from July 5 - August 7, 2016 in a limited 5-week Off-Broadway engagement at The Atlantic Stage 2, located at 330 West 16th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.

This season's line-up includes a revival of Howard Barker's No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming, directed by PTP's Co-Artistic Director Richard Romagnoli (a NYIT Award nominee), and a revival of C.P. Taylor's Good, directed by PTP's Co-Artistic Director Jim Petosa. Previews begin on July 5 and openings begin on July 12. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the shows below!

In a harsh, relentless ride through history, Howard Barker's No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming explores the role of the artist in society and the struggle for freedom of expression. Starting with a harrowing depiction of war with an attempted rape and a near execution in the Carpathian Mountains during WWI, the protagonist is the brilliant Hungarian political cartoonist Bela Veracek (loosely based on the celebrated German cartoonist Victor Weisz). Running from Hungary at the end of the First World War to the newly emergent Soviet Union and then to a pre-WWII Britain, Bela is constantly at odds with the governments he lampoons, and the newspapers that admire his talent, but expect conformity and absolute submission. No End of Blame is a provocative play of ideas and a scathing commentary about the censorship of art.

Audiences who were stunned by last season's Scenes From An Execution will immediately see Jan Maxwell's fierce and unsparing Galactia reflected in Alex Draper's uncompromising Bela Veracek. As always, Richard Romagnoli directs Howard Barker's work.

The cast for No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming includes NYIT Award nominee Alex Draper (Scenes From An Execution, Gertrude - The Cry and Pentecost with PTP), David Barlow (Scenes From An Execution, Gertrude - The Cry and Serious Money with PTP), Stephanie Janssen (A Delicate Balance and Death of a Salesman on Broadway, Crave with PTP), Valerie Leonard (An Ideal Husband on Broadway, The Europeans and The American Dream with PTP), Christopher Marshall (A Hard Heart with PTP), Jonathan Tindle (Scenes From An Execution and Pentecost with PTP), Christo Grabowski (Pentecost and Monster with PTP), Nicholas Hemerling (Scenes From An Execution with PTP), Alexander Burnett, Shannon Gibbs, Steven Medina, Ashley Fink and Gabrielle Owens.

The production team includes Hallie Zieselman (Set Design), Mark Evancho (Lighting Design), Danielle Nieves (Costume Design), Gerald Scarfe (Cartoon Projections) and Eric Conner Marlin (Production Stage Manager).

How did it happen? How did a nation go mad? How were normal people transformed into brutes, devoid of ordinary humanity? How were the Nazis made? Hitler's own anti-Semitism is clinically explicable. But after he had ordered the mass extermination of Jews, how did he get apparently normal Germans to carry those orders out? Set partly inside the mind of a 'good' man, Professor John Halder, Good watches a normal German slowly succumb to the rising madness, slipping the bonds of family and friendship.

The cast for Good includes Michael Kaye, Tim Spears (A Question Of Mercy with PTP), Valerie Leonard (An Ideal Husband on Broadway, The Europeans and The American Dream with PTP), Christo Grabowski, Judith Chafee, Adam Ludwig (Scenes From An Execution, Spatter Pattern and Somewhere in the Pacific with PTP), Noah Berman (The Castle and Monster with PTP), Caitlin Rose Duffy (Pentecost with PTP), Amanda Whiteley and Jesse Garlick.

The production team includes Hallie Zieselman (Set Design), Mark Evancho (Lighting Design), Jessica Lee Vankempen (Costume Design) and Evangeline Rose Whitlock (Production Stage Manager).

Blame's Bela Veracek and Good's John Halder are the extreme ends of a continuum...the artist who continually positions himself in opposition to the status quo, and the benign scholar who compromises his way to the unthinkable.

For exact performance days and times visit PTPNYC.org. Tickets are $35, $20 for students and seniors, $17.50 for previews, and can be purchased online or by calling 1-866-811-4111.

Photo Credits: Photographer Stan Barouh and Illustration by Gerald Scarfe for NO END OF BLAME. Images courtesy of Boston University Photography for GOOD.

Alex Draper as Bela Veracek in NO END OF BLAME

Alex Draper as Bela Veracek and Megan Byrne in NO END OF BLAME

Alex Draper as Bela Veracek (kneeling) in NO END OF BLAME

Michael Kaye as Professor John Halder and Tim Spears as Maurice in GOOD

Michael Kaye as Professor John Halder in GOOD

Michael Kaye as Professor John Halder in GOOD