44 YEARS Benefit for Theater for the New City to Feature BRILLIANT TRACES, 6/16

To celebrate Theater for the New City's 44 years of innovative theater on the Lower East Side, Michael Luggio and New York Theatre Academy will present "44 Years Benefit," an evening of food, drink and performances to benefit Crystal Field's formative, historic theater organization on June 16, 2014 at 6:00 at TNC, 155 First Ave.

The evening will feature a performance by the TNC Arts in Education Program at 6:00 PM followed by a cocktail hour and a special production at 8:00 PM of "Brilliant Traces" by Cindy Lou Johnson, performed by Lindsay Van Norman and Giuseppe Penasso, directed by Michael Luggio.

"Brilliant Traces" was first presented by New York's prestigious Circle Repertory Company. The richly imaginative absurdist allegory uses fantastic and often outlandish situations and characterizations to probe into the nature of modern relationships, both sexual and otherwise. In a snowbound cabin in Alaska, a lonely man is visited by a distraught young woman in bridal regalia who has fled her impending marriage in Arizona. These two characters, both wounded and embittered by life, repel and attract each other as their isolation allows them to win solace and understanding through self-awareness and compassion.

A reception will follow the performance.

TNC is a Pulitzer Prize winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service, producing 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC's Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Nilo Cruz, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Vin Diesel, Oscar Nuñez, Laurence Holder, Romulus Linney and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody.

TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and COBU, the Japanese women's drumming and dance group.

TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company's 1997 production of "Between Life and Death," which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals.

TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 42 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.

Tickets to this benefit evening are available and donations are being accepted on the theater's website, www.theaterforthenewcity.net, and at http://www.nycharities.org/Events/EventLevels.aspx?ETID=7308.

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