Dan Amboyer Tapped For Reading Of Jason Forbach's Play HEATHEN HILL

Currently appearing in The Phantom of the Opera, actor and writer Jason Forbach will receive the Hidden River Arts Playwriting Award on September 9th alongside a 29 hour industry-only reading of his play, Heathen Hill. The reading will be directed by Kevin Newbury (Bel Canto, Kansas City Choir Boy) and will star Dan Amboyer (Younger). Additional casting will be announced at a later date.

Heathen Hill is an ensemble play set in the very near future in an ever expanding Alt-America. Six men in an internment camp for Homosexuals turn toward creativity, art and truth as a way to survive. As the political environment of this country continually spirals toward hostility, the play examines the retaliative strength and liberation found through beauty and expression.

"I was in Washington D.C. performing in a show during the 2016 presidential election and the horrific aftershocks that followed. For the first time in my life I was brought to tears by an election, profoundly disillusioned by the world I lived in. As an actor, I kept feeling how trivial it all was, how inconsequential I felt to be "putting on a show", said Forbach. "After a few months, I happened to come across a quote by Gustave Flaubert. 'Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.' For whatever reason, this struck within me and shattered my depressive haze. That's the word I was looking for. Violent. That was what I needed to ignite my work moving forward. So, that's what I decided to do. I put pen to paper and it has manifested in this play, Heathen Hill."

"Voices of any kind should never be silenced," said Forbach. "As we discover the truths of these powerful, artistic, gay men, we discover what it means to survive. Heathen Hill is a play that isn't a far reaching, fantastical notion. Heathen Hill is a grounded, realistic cautionary tale of what could easily happen anywhere in the world. It is not an absurd notion. In Chechnya, this is no longer a potential reality, but a very real, bone-chilling present. For Jews in Europe and Japanese in America during the second World War, it is a very real past. I can't believe I am saying this, but it is happening, right now, in this country and yet we aren't furiously taking to the streets to stop it. I wanted to examine these horrors fully, making them tangible and immediate for audiences."

Hidden River Arts, the Philadelphia based organization producing the event, is an independent literary, visual and performing arts organization dedicated to the support and celebration of artists by providing varied and supportive services to creative writers and artists of all genres.

More information about Hidden River can be found at www.hiddenriverarts.wordpress.com

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