Midtown Fest. Presents ' Higher Education of Khalid Amir'

The Midtown International Theatre Festival will include award-winning playwright Monica Bauer's latest work, THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF KHALID AMIR. This fast-paced political satire is being directed by Craig J. George (the off-Broadway play Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story) and features Amir Darvish (who played Freddie Mercury in the off-Broadway hit Mercury) leading a cast of seven.  Performances will be at the Workshop Theater Mainstage, located at 312 West 36th Street.  Performances will begin on Tuesday, July 15th and will continue through Sunday, August 3rd.

The Mad Burka Army from the tiny Gulf nation of Abed has burka-ed the Statue of Liberty, and is on a rampage across the USA, burka-ing statues of Greek nymphs and billboards of Angelina Jolie. Suspicion lands on mild-mannered, musical theater loving Abedian professor Khalid Amir. Fueled by the ravings of local television idiot Barry Overdrive, the Governor leans hard on the president of the college, the sexy French former track coach Lucille Ferret, to hunt down the now-missing Amir.  President Ferret also fires a fiery Latina defender of Khalid, Juanita Juarez. The head of the Political Science department, former 60's radical Norm Yablonsky, calls a faculty strike in support of Khalid and Juanita, which causes his love affair with the college president to come to an abrupt halt. Meanwhile, Agent Stewart of the FBI stalks them all, because Khalid's name has shown up on numerous watch lists: "Israeli intelligence, Interpol, Google."
Will Norm Yablonsky rediscover his 60's-fueled courage to "fight the power" one more time and save his friends? What sexy secret is Juanita Juarez hiding under her burka? Can Khalid use a secret love affair from his own past to save the day? And what happens when Agent Stewart shoots off his own thumb? Find out at the Midtown International Theater Festival's production of THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF KHALID AMIR.

The cast for THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF KHALID AMIR includes Joan Barber (Broadway credits include MAN OF LA MANCHA opposite Raul Julia, FOLLIES, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, and many others), Amir Darvish (Off-Broadway's Mercury: The Afterlife & Times of a Rock God, playing the lead singer of Queen; his many television and film credits include Charlie Wilson's War and Sex and the City, and also the smash-hit video game "Grand Theft Auto IV"), Alexander Elisa (The Classical Theatre of Harlem's Black Nativity at The Duke on 42nd Street), Amanda Duarte (Old Money for Theatreworks, also "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"), John Fico (the premiere of A. R. Gurney's Screen Play directed by Jim Simpson at the Flea), Norm Golden ("Guiding Light", "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"), and Tyler Hollinger (Fools In Love at BAM, "All My Children", and the film "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead").
The design team will be Andis Gjoni (Sets), Elliot Lanes (Lighting and Sound Design) and Irma Escobar (Costumes).
Craig J. George, who most recently staged The Taming of the Shrew at the Duke on 42nd Street, will direct.

Monica Bauer is a graduate of Brown and Yale, and was the 2005 Teaching Fellow in the Graduate Playwriting Program at Boston University.  She has studied playwriting with Kate Snodgrass, Gary Garrison, and Craig Lucas. Awards include third place in New Works for Young Women (The Maternal Instinct), and the Audience Favorite Award at Short Attention Span PlayFest (My Trip to the State Pen). Her plays have been produced in Denver, Boston, Cambridge, Atlanta, San Diego, Providence, and New York. Her short play, Two Men Walked Into a Bar, was a semifinalist in this year's Turnip/American Globe Theater 15 Minute Play Festival. Her self-esteem comedy, The Diet Monologues, has been published by JAC Publications. Diet Monologues: The Musical will be seen in a staged reading at the York Theater's Developmental Series for New Musicals. She was invited to both the Great Plains Theater Conference and the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive in 2007. Her play about race, jazz, and Nebraska (My Occasion of Sin) was developed through the support of the Hixson-Lied Foundation at Nebraska Repertory Theater. She is a proud member of ASCAP and The Dramatists Guild.

THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF KHALID AMIR will play the following schedule:
Tuesday, July 15th at 8:30pm
Friday, July 18th at 6:00pm
Sunday, July 20th at 7:30pm
Saturday, July 26th at 12:30pm
Saturday, August 2nd at 2:30pm
Sunday, August 3rd at 12:00pm

Tickets will be $18.00 for all performances.  Tickets may be purchased by calling TicketCentral at 212-279-4200, or online at TicketCentral.com.

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