Core Creative Productions Premieres DRONES at Planet Connections Festival

Core Creative Productions (CCP) -- the company that produced Chokehold, the Outstanding Overall Production of a New Play at the 2015 Planet Connections Festivity - returns to the festival this year with Drones, a new play written and directed by Anthony P. Pennino. This production is the world premiere of the play. Adapted from an incident in The Iliad, the play imagines an alternative reality where the war between Greece and Troy never ended; the modern technology of warfare (satellites, air strikes, unmanned drones, engineered pathogens) blends into the mythic landscape of Homer's poem. A small reconnaissance squad led by Lieutenant Odysseus (Barry Lee Sheppard) has been patrolling behind enemy lines for months. These four soldiers have had no contact with their headquarters or another human being until they find a lone injured Trojan named Dolon (Vinny Eden Ortega). Is there isolation just a glitch in the equipment, or are they truly the last survivors of two fallen civilizations? It is only then that the overwhelming costs of never-ending war are at last understood. Drones serves as a parable and warning for our contemporary condition of being engaged in constant conflict.

Drones will perform at Tom Noonan's Paradise Factory in the Downstairs Theater, 64 East 4th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues). It has six performances: Saturday June 18th at 12 noon, Tuesday June 21st at 8 pm, Sunday June 26 at 5:30, Saturday July 2nd at 3 pm, Wednesday July 6th at 9pm, and Saturday July 9th at 6 pm. The play is 80 minutes long. The production will benefit Food Bank NYC.

In addition to Chokehold, CCP has produced Rino by Zack Calhoon at The Brick, A Thousand Deaths for the 2014 New York Fringe, and Dia de los Muertos at Teatro La Tea. CCP - headed by Alberto Bonilla, Elizabeth Inghram, and Pennino - is a collaborative theatre troupe that develops plays with the full creative participation of writers, directors, and actors alike.

Pennino is the author of numerous works that have been produced across the country and around the world including CCP's A Thousand Deaths and Dia de los Muertos, The Iron Tongue of Midnight (commissioned by The Neighborhood Playhouse as a final play for its graduating class), I Horatio (2015 New York Fringe Festival and The Rose Theatre, London), and many others. He has been awarded two fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Drama from the University of London. A Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, he currently serves as an assistant professor in the literature program at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Sheppard and Ortega are both veterans of the Planet Connections Festivity. Sheppard starred as Devon in Chokehold, for which he was nominated for Outstanding Actor in a New Play and won as member of the Outstanding Ensemble in a New Play. Ortega was the writer and director of last year's production Hopeless. They are joined by Jamison Monella as Patrolocus who appeared in last year's Citizen Cyborg and in 2014's The Picture (of Dorian Gray) as well as Francesco Andolfi as Ajax and William Hochman as Teucer; Karl Knapp plays Hades. Reuben E. Natan is the assistant director, Emily Hamburger is the stage manager, and Jason Fok is the lighting designer.