Looking Glass Theatre Welcomes Return of EAST OF THE SUN, WEST OF THE MOON Today

Looking Glass Theatre, celebrating 20 years, brings back for a very limited run Frankie Little Hardin's East of the Sun, West of the Moon, a new children's play directed by Julia Sterling Martin and Naima Warden. East of the Sun, West of the Moon performs today, June 1 and Saturday June 8 at 2 p.m at Richmond Shepard Theatre, located at 309 East 26th Street, at 2nd Avenue. Tickets are $15 adults, $12 kids 12 and under atwww.lookingglasstheatrenyc.com. Group tickets also available. Running time is approximately 60 minutes with no intermission.

To save her father and mother, a young daughter makes a promise to live with a beastly bear, whose palace is secretly filled with nasty, bumbling trolls.

In the dark of night, our heroine falls in love with a sweet shy Prince. She makes a promise never to see his face in the light and to keep their love in the dark. But when the tricky trolls convince her to sneak a peak, she breaks her promise and the trolls whisk away the newly un-enchanted Prince.

So what's a girl to do? Save him, of course! On her amazing journey to save her true love, she encounters Hags and Horses and gets help from the Winds. Will she save her hero from the evil trolls? Can she mend her broken promise? Will they live happily ever after? Join us and find out!

Playwright FRANKIE LITTLE HARDIN is playwright, director, actor, producer and general theatre maid-of-all work, currently residing in Newnan, Georgia. She taught theatre history, mask performance and children's theatre at Old Dominion University (1997-2006) and created the family theatre programs ChildsPlay (Generic Theater), PlayTime Theatre (Old Dominion) and The Children's Theatre of Hampton Roads(40th Street Stage, where she also served as Managing Director). Ms. Hardin is the author of 23 works for children's theatre, and six plays for adult audiences, including Willow Song (2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival). The Trashanator, commissioned by the Hampton Roads Waste Authority, which taught thousands of schoolchildren about trash and recycling; Perfect Faith (semi-finalist, 2012 Stanley Drama Award), andThe Greater Love (Utah Shakespeare Festival's New American Playwrights Project, August 2012). Ms. Hardin is a graduate of Georgia Tech, with a BS in Management, and holds a Masters in Humanities from Old Dominion University. She studied at The Goodman School and Del Arte and is a member of The Dramatist's Guild. She and husband Lauriston have two children, Thomas and Mollie. She's an avid reader and a part-time farmer.

Director JULIA STIRLING MARTIN is a director and an acting and directing teacher. She has directed several theatre pieces in the Looking Glass Forum (earning Best Direction among other Forum Awards), NEUROfest, and the Untitled Theatre's 24/7 Festival in addition to writing and directing the short film, Aftermath. Her staged reading of Surfacing was nominated for Outstanding Overall Production of a Reading and Outstanding Performance of a Reading at Planet Connections Theatre Festivity. As an actor, she toured internationally for years as a principal member of Ellen Stewart's Great Jones Repertory Company, starred opposite Mike Myers in the short film, Opposites Attract, and premiered the role of Jane in the Eve Ensler's production, Lemonade. Her current projects include her two young children. She is a graduate of the Columbia MFA theatre program where she studied under the tutelage of Andrei Serban, Anne Bogart and RoBert Woodruff.

Director NAIMA WARDEN is a native Brooklynite; a true New Yorker! She received her BFA from Adelphi University in Theater Arts. Additionally, she attended "The Actors' Studio" at New School University, on a masters' track for directing. Currently she is a certified NYC theater teacher, sharing her talents with many parts of South Brooklyn. She has directed students between the ages of 11-18 in the musicals Grease, Little Shop Of Horrors and You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. This is her first mainstage production at Looking Glass Theatre, where she has directed numerous Looking Glass Forum shows since 2008 and made her playwriting debut with Sign Me (also directed) in the Forum. For her, it's easy to love the wonderment of East of the Sun...

Looking Glass theatre is dedicated to theatricality; plays that acknowledge their existence on a stage. We believe that allowing an audience to remember they are in a theatre expands the power of the group experience and heightens the strength of live theatre. Equally important in our work is exploring a feminine aesthetic. In concrete terms, this means that we have a female artist at the core of every project. Aesthetically, we try to insure that women do not allow their natural instincts to be sublimated by the desire to please the male dominated commercial market.This includes children's shows and educational programming as well as development of new works and annual mainstage productions. In 2009 nytheatre.com said, "Looking Glass Theatre deserves kudos for consistently programming affordable shows for families that really are produced and staged with the youngest theater-goers in mind." The New York Times called Looking Glass Theatre's Adventures of the Puppet Princess "charming" and "especially amusing to children under 10...a substantial introduction to the culture of Bali." The New York Times also described our 2010 production of Betsy is Bored, Bored, Bored, Bored, Bored! as "a briskly paced romp through daydreams." lookingglasstheatrenyc.com

For more about Looking Glass Theatre, follow the group on Twitter: http://twitter.com/LookingGlassNYC, become a friend on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LookingGlassNYC, and check out the blog at http://lookingglasstheatrenyc.tumblr.com/.