Sanguine Theatre Company's New Drama COME BACK UP to Begin Previews in August

Sanguine Theatre Company announced today that it will stage COME BACK UP, a new drama written by Sarah M. Duncan that takes us behind the media mask and challenges our perceptions of victim versus villain. The production will run August 11 - 30, 2015 at The Gym at Judson (243 Thompson Street). The official opening will be on Saturday, August 15th at 8PM. Jillian Robertson directs.

COME BACK UP is a fearless play, touching on sensitive and powerful topics. The focal character, Buddy, is an intellectually disabled black boy who wants to get help his sister transition from purgatory to heaven. She died 11 years ago, and as her spirit resurfaces more strongly, Buddy's mother struggles to face the ghosts of her past, both physical and metaphorical. When Buddy is implicated in a tragic crime, his disability and race cloud public perceptions, and with the walls closing in, forgiveness starts to feel like a foreign word.

A passionate artist/activist, Sarah Duncan draws connections between post-civil-rights-movement racism and the LGBTQ and disability condemnation that continues amid this generation's equal-rights campaign. COME BACK UP calls to mind dark tragedies of the recent past, in which the story we hear from the media is questioned. In this play, we see a fractured family of underdogs struggling to find the truth behind a tragic event; Duncan takes us behind the media mask and challenges our perceptions of victim versus villain.

COME BACK UP received its first public reading at The Gym through Judson's Magic Time reading series. Sarah M. Duncan is a member of Judson Memorial Church and the latest in a long legacy of artists who have grown out of its unique environment. (The most notable example is Al Carmines, whose voice developed at Judson Poets' Theater in the 1960s.)

Sarah M. Duncan (Playwright) is currently based in Brooklyn. She spent fall of 2014 in Germany through the Takt Kunstprojektraum artist-in-residency program in Berlin, completing her current play, Come Back Up, and finishing a first draft of her next play, Beautiful Music for Terrible Things. Sarah's play Post-Racial premiered in Spring 2014 as part of the Acting Apprentice Program's final showcase at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Other plays include: Beat Parable (Baruch College Performing Arts Center, commissioned for the GMHC AIDS Benefit in 2013), Bees and Lions (Sanguine Theatre Company at WOW Café Theater), and Deconstructed (Judson Memorial Church). Sarah is a two-time finalist in Sanguine Theatre Company's annual Project Playwright Competition, and she won in 2012 with Bees and Lions. In 2011, Sarah held an internship at The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. Sarah also curates and performs in poetry events and sings with Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. In her first two years in New York, Sarah and her dear friend and colleague Kate Foster created and produced three theatre festivals/actions entitled Occupy the Empty Space, each centered on a human right. Sarah Duncan holds a Bachelor's Degree in Theatre Performance and Creative Writing from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. In her plays, poetry, and activism, Sarah continues to explore how activism and art can intersect, particularly around issues of privilege, intersectional feminism, and anti-racism/anti-oppression.

Jillian Robertson (Director) is a Brooklyn transplant hailing from Houston, TX. She is a co-founder and the Artistic Director of Sanguine Theatre Company, where she has produced multiple shows over the past six years. As an independent director, some of her credits include: Flamingo, The Pavilion, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, The Drunken City, Bees and Lions (Sanguine Theatre Company), Come Back Up (Judson's Magic Time Reading Series), Gossip (The Puzzle), and The Laramie Project (Under the Umbrella Theatre). She received her BFA from The University of Oklahoma School of Drama. Jillian is a member of APO, and is also recognized as proficient in Unarmed and Single Sword Combat by the Society of American Fight Directors.

Performances of COME BACK UP are on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 8PM, Sundays at 3PM. The first preview performance will be on a Tuesday (July 11th) at 7PM.

Tickets to COME BACK UP are $15 when they are purchased online (in advance) at http://comebackup.brownpapertickets.com and $18 when purchased at the door. COME BACK UP runs August 11-30 at The Gym at Judson (243 Thompson Street, NYC). Sunday, August 23 is a Pay-What-You-Can performance.