Buran Theatre's MAMMOTH Premieres at The Brick This Weekend

MAMMOTH is a poetic and seriously funny new play about love and destruction, invoking the nostalgia of science and the hard data of the human heart. At a moment in time where we can envision our own extinction, this atmospheric new play by Adam R. Burnett will meditate upon why we destroy what we love - from the personal to the universal - and once vanished, what compels us to revive what we've lost.

Journeying from the Siberian tundra to a genetic laboratory to your own backyard, MAMMOTH will be a bounding and far-reaching new work of theatre engaging the surreal and humorous tenor audiences have come to expect from Buran Theatre (The House of Fitzcarraldo, Magic Bullets).

The play will feature elegant design work by Nicholas Kostner and Jennifer Stimple Kamei and a dynamic cast of leading NYC performers including OBIE-winner Tina Shepard.

MAMMOTH: A De-Extinction Love Story written & directed Adam R. Burnett. Featuring Starr Busby (If You Can Get to Buffalo, LaMaMa Cantata), Kristine Haruna Lee (A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes), Erin Mallon (Requiem for Black Marie, Branched), Michael McKim (Magic Bullets), and Tina Shepard (OBIE winner, The Talking Band). Set & co-lighting design by Nicholas Kostner; costume & co-lighting design by Jennifer Stimple Kamei; associate director/dramaturgy by Anne Cecelia Haney; sound design by Casey Mraz; and puppetry design by Mindy Leanse.

DETAILS:

Location: The Brick Theater is located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at 579 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 (between Union Avenue & Lorimer Street)

Directions: L train to Lorimer stop or the G train to the Metropolitan stop, and the theater is less than a block away.

Tickets: $15-30, now on sale - www.bricktheater.com

Performances: May 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23 @ 7:30pm; May 17 @ 3pm

About the Artists:

Adam R. Burnett (writer/director) is a New York City-based playwright and director. Since 2007 Adam has been the Artistic Director of Buran Theatre-a bevy of rotating disparate artists in far-flung locales who collaborate around his theatre texts. Adam's plays have been produced across the United States and in Lithuania and include The Death of Romance, Prelude; Shores of Lake Michigan, Meile be Akcento, Money Buckets!, The House of Fitzcarraldo (co-written with Buran Theatre), Nightmares: A Demonstration of the Sublime, and Magic Bullets. In NYC his work has been seen at The Brick, The Bushwick Starr/Target Margin Theater, chashama, Exit Art, Dixon Place, Incubator Arts Project, and The Silent Barn. As a director Adam specializes in new plays, having directed works by Casey Mraz, Carlo Matos, Theresa Buchheister & Sarah Graalman, and Georgina Escobar.

Nicholas Kostner (designer) is a scenic and lighting designer and Design Director of Buran Theatre. His work with Buran includes designs for The House of Fitzcarraldo, Nightmares: A Demonstration of the Sublime, and Magic Bullets. Mr. Kostner designed the set for the off-broadway production of Triangle at 59E59 and has assisted on numerous regional and Broadway shows since moving to the east coast. Mr. Kostner's past designs in the midwest and on the west coast include productions of The Magic Flute, Tristan Und Isolde, Harold Pinter's Betrayal, The Shape of Things, and Brian Friel's Translations. He works often as an assistant to opera and ballet designer Bob Perdziola. Other work includes the production design for the feature film Reach.

Erin Mallon (performer, co-creator) is an actor, writer and voice artist living in NYC. Recent work as an actor includes: Mac Wellman's solo show Horrocks (and Toutatis too) (Sleeping Weazel), Eric John Meyer's The Sister (Dutch Kills), Buran Theatre's Nightmares (The Brick) and Magic Bullets (Incubator Arts Project), and Sara Farrington's plays Requiem for Black Marie (Incubator Arts Project), Mickey and Sage (Incubator Arts Project) and Untitled Wharton

Project (JACK). Erin's plays have been presented with Urban Stages, The American National Theatre, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Amios Theatre Company, The Collective, Cherry Picking, The Great Plains Theatre Conference and The Brooklyn Generator. Erin's play Branched directed by Robert Ross Parker and produced by InViolet Theater premiered at HERE Arts Center (February 2014). Erin is also a devoted volunteer at The 52nd Street Project, a member of InViolet Theater, the voice of many audiobooks and commercials and founder and co- curator of The Brooklyn Generator.

About Buran Theatre - Buran Theatre is a NYC-based ensemble of disparate multi- disciplinary and intergenerational artists creating new process-based theatre works under the artistic leadership of writer/director Adam R. Burnett. For each project a company of artists is identified to meet around Burnett's text to develop performance, design, music, and dance. Major works include Money Buckets! (2009), Meile be Akcento (2009-2014, international), The House of Fitzcarraldo (2010-2012, national tour), Nightmares: A Demonstration of the Sublime (2013, national tour), and Magic Bullets (2014). Buran Theatre was named a NYTheatreNow 2013 Person of the Year & was recently nominated for 2 New York Innovative Theatre Awards for Magic Bullet - best ensemble and best performance art production. Buran has been presented work throughout NYC, toured throughout the US with presentations in Albuquerque, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Lawrence, KS, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Topeka; and internationally in Lithuania at the Vilnius Chamber Theater

About The Brick - Winner of the The Caffe Cino Fellowship Award, The Brick is Williamsburg, Brooklyn's destination for cutting-edge theatrical experience. The Brick and its company, The Brick Theater, Inc, were founded in 2002 by Robert Honeywell and Michael Gardner. Formerly an auto-body shop, a yoga center, and various storage spaces, this brick-walled garage in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was completely refurbished as a state-of-the-art performance space. The Brick has been home to many critically acclaimed premieres, including Bouffon Glass Menajoree (NY IT Award Winner-Outstanding Play), In a Strange Room (Time Out New York's Top Ten Plays), Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War (NY IT Award Winner-Outstanding Play), Suspicious Package (ITBA Award Winner-Best Unique Theatrical Experience), Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury (NY IT Award Nominee-Outstanding Performance Art Production), Greed: a Musical Love $tory (NY IT Award Nominee-Outstanding Musical), and Nightmares: A Demonstration of the Sublime (national tour). The Brick has hosted some of downtown theater's most innovative artists, including Annie Baker, Young Jean Lee, The Debate Society, Little Lord, Thomas Bradshaw, The Mad Ones, Buran Theatre, and Banana Bag and Bodice.

Pictured: Erin Mallon. Photo by Hunter Canning.