BrownBear Productions Presents To Protect the Poets 3/31-4/9

Brown Bear Productions presents the world premiere Actors' Equity Showcase production of To Protect the Poets, an "elegant, humorous and inspirational" new play by John Doble. Olivia Harris directs a cast of nine including Elizabeth Alice Murray*, John Isgro*, Laura Butler*, Keet Davis, Elizabeth Dilley, Jillie Simon*, Kiat-Sing Teo, Todd Cole-Tour'e, and Stewart Villilo. Performances will be held at Stage IV Theater at Roy Arias Theatre Center, 300 West 43rd Street, in New York City from Thursday, March 31 through Saturday, April 9. *Member, Actors' Equity Association

Two detectives stand over the dead body of a young woman who has been raped and murdered. Their investigation leads them to a lonely poetry teacher and her sisters to learn if they saw anything that might shed light on the nearby crime. What happens when a detective and his potential witness fall deeply in love, and she learns that to protect women like herself, the man she loves commits an act that violates her deepest principles? When violence, revenge, justice, and passion collide, our need for love challenges the strength of our principles.

Playwright John Doble states, "To Protect the Poetsportrays both timeless and contemporary emotional and social conflicts, paralleled with motifs in classic literature and runs that gamut from comedy to pathos. I'd to think that John Patrick Shanley, and the late August Wilson, and Wendy Wasserstein, just some of the playwrights I admire most, would enjoy it."

Director Olivia Harris is a Lighting Designer and Director working in New York City. She graduated from Drew University in 2010, having worked with populations in Hell's Kitchen, New York City; Newark, New Jersey; Kathmandu, Nepal; and Washington, DC to create innovative theatre work to address the social problems affecting those areas. She has worked with the Actor's Shakespeare Project, Impetuous Theatre Group, Merrily3 Productions, Drew University, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, RIJ Productions, and BrownBear Productions. She is a trained mime, a step dancer, a Leadership Instructor with the Student Leadership Training Program, and an intern with the Metropolitan Opera and Bond Street Theatre.

Playwright John Doble - To Protect the Poets (Finalist, National Arts Club new plays contest, 2010; semi-finalist, Reverie Productions Next Generations Playwrights Contest, 2010); The Mayor Who Would Be Sondheim (International Fringe Festival, NYC, 2005; HRC Showcase Theatre, Hudson, NY, 2006. Finalist, Stage 3 Theatre Company Festival of New Plays, Sonora, CA, 2004; Playwrights' Center's New Play Competition, Minneapolis, MN, 2005; TRU Reading Series, NYC, 2005); Blind Date, a one act play (Samuel French Short-Play Festival, NYC, 2004; selected for The Last Frontier Theater Conference, Valdez, AK, 2005); The Mortgage (Pulse Ensemble Theatre Festival of One-Act Comedies, NYC, 2004); Lefty and Other Stories, a collection of short fiction, Clemson University, 2004 (nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Southern Review Short Fiction award).

To Protect the Poets opens Thursday, March 31 and runs through Saturday, April 9. Show dates and times are Thursday, March 31 @ 8pm; Friday, April 1 @ 8pm; Saturday, April 2 @ 9pm; Sunday, April 3 @ 3pm; Thursday, April 7 @ 8pm; Friday, April 8 @ 8pm; Saturday, April 9 @ 9pm.

To Protect the Poets is performed in two hours with one intermission.

More information is available at www.ToProtectThePoets.com.

Tickets are $15.00 and can be purchased by going to http://www.smarttix.com/ or by calling 212-868-4444. If a performance has not sold out in advance, tickets are also available in person 30 minutes before show time.

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