Dixon Place Premieres ASYLUM, 4/16 - 5/22

Dixon Place (161A Chrystie St.) presents the premiere of Asylum on April 16th at 8 PM. Asylum was written and will be performed by James Braly. The show is directed by Seth Barrish. It will run from April 16th to May 22nd.

Asylum is a darkly comic autobiographical story of a teenaged pot head seeking enlightenment who - on advice of the psychiatrist claiming he was reincarnated from a past life to help him in this life -- checks himself in to a psychiatric hospital before he drops out of high school. The locked ward is full of surprises: kids in straightjackets, often medicated to the point of catatonia, and inpatients who in many ways, are more sane than the outpatients he left behind. Leading him to a disturbing discovery: what seems normal is not, and that this place, full of certifiable lunatics considered to be dangers to themselves and to society, is in some ways more stable than his home. Which begs the question: what is the real asylum?

James Braly is the writer and performer of Life in a Marital Institution, a monologue workshopped at Dixon Place. It premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, sold out NYC's 59E59 Theater, and was transferred Off Broadway to the Soho Playhouse.

Seth Barrish is the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of The Barrow Group-a non-profit theatre company in New York City. Mr. Barrish has worked as an actor, director, playwright, composer, and musical director internationally, Off-Broadway, Off Off Broadway, and in regional theatres for over 30 years.

This Dixon Place commission is made possible, in part, with generous support from the NY State Council on the arts, the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs, and The Greenwall Foundation.

Dixon Place is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 to provide a space for literary and performing artists to create and develop new works in front of a live audience. While other venues of its kind have since died off, or now only present established artists, Dixon Place remains at the heart of the New York experimental performance scene. Taking risks is crucial to the life of Dixon Place, its artists and audiences.

For Reservations & advanced tickets visit www.dixonplace.org or call (212) 219-0736. Show times are Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 PM. Preview performances on April 16 and 17 are $10. Afterwards until May 22nd, tickets are all tickets $25.