Dead Centre's SOUVENIR to Open 11/14 at Abrons Arts Center

Arriving directly from critically acclaimed, sold-out runs in London and Dublin, Ireland's Dead Centre will make their US debut at Abrons Arts Center with Souvenir, written and performed by Bush Moukarzel and directed by Ben Kidd. Souvenir takes Marcel Proust's seven-novelRemembrance of Things Past as its point of departurefor a freewheeling, 56-minute exploration of memory, jealousy and time. The performance will open on the evening of November 14, the centennial of Proust's first novel published in the series: Swann's Way.

Performances of Souvenir will take place November 14-17 and 20-23 at 8:00 p.m. in the Experimental Theater at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street). Tickets are $15 and can be purchased by calling 212.352.3101 or visiting www.abronsartscenter.org.

Rather than a straight theatrical adaptation of the novel's events, Souvenir spins off from Proust's text to create something completely new. Music, magic tricks and goldfish are all part of the innovative world created by Dead Centre, as Moukarzel steals from literary masters including Shakespeare, Orson Welles, and Beyoncé in an attempt to turn the longest book ever written into a scant hour of theater. Just as Proust's novel shifted tenuously between autobiography and fiction, the identity of Souvenir's protagonist slips between the narrator 'Marcel' and that of Moukarzel himself. What emerges is an investigation of the need to understand our place in the world and an assessment of Proust's enigmatic statement that, "it's better to dream your life than to live it."

Souvenir was performed for the prestigious Dublin Fringe Festival in September 2012, marking the first show from Dead Centre, who have gone on to become one of the most exciting companies currently working in Ireland. The initial, sold-out run of Souvenir in Dublin was such a success that the company revived the production for a 2-week run in December 2013. Souvenir also toured to London, playing at the Yard Theatre in May 2013.