New Light Theater Project Announces 5 NYC Premiere Plays That Encompass 'A History, Rewritten' For 2018/2019 Season

New Light Theater Project (Sarah Norris, Artistic Director; Michael Aguirre, Producing Director; Jacob Perkins, Literary Manager) will present their most ambitious season to date with five NYC premieres in its 2018-2019 season, all exploring the theme: "A History, Rewritten."

"Each of our plays this season examines how history echoes in the present on both a personal and collective level; as individuals and as a country," says New Light Artistic Director Sarah Norris. "Roaming through our not-too-distant past up to the present moment, these playwrights contemplate appropriation, deception, and the elasticity of time, all in service of the question: can we escape our past by reshaping our relationship to it?"

Kicking off the new season is Owen Panettieri's MEANINGFUL CONVERSATION, with direction from Anaïs Koivisto. The production will run September 7 thru September 22 at the A.R.T./New York Theatres as a co-production with Luis A. Miranda Jr. During a blackout, new neighbors David and Nat engage in unusual conversation and wind up revealing more about themselves than they intend. Two years later, they are thrust back into each other lives when a domestic dispute erupts in their building, forcing them to reexamine their initial encounter in unexpected ways. Tickets on sale soon.

After a successful run at Centenary Stage Company in Hackettstown, NJ, playwright Michelle Kholos Brooks and director Sarah Norris will re-team to present the NYC premiere of HITLER'S TASTERS. Three times a day, every day, a group of young women have the opportunity to die for their country. They are Adolph Hitler's food tasters. Using an anachronistic retelling of a historical footnote, and stretching from the WWII era to today's autocracy, the play asks us to consider what girls discuss as they wait to see if they will live through another meal. Winner of the 2017 Glaspell Award, HITLER'S TASTERS will run at IRT Theatre from October 5 thru 27 as part of New Light's all-female festival.

The festival also includes a reading series of 3 new plays, written and directed by female-identifying artists. The playwright/director pairs will be announced soon.

Winner of the 2018-2019 New Light New Voices Award is Ray Yamanouchi for his play THE AMERICAN TRADITION. With direction by Axel Avin, Jr., the production will run at the 13th Street Repertory Company from January 25 thru February 16, 2019. Set in Antebellum America with an absurd and Brechtian twist, fictitious characters Eleanor-cross-dressing as a white planter-and her husband, Bill-pretending to be her loyal servant-attempt to escape to the free state of Pennsylvania. Their operation is running smoothly until they meet Walsh, a drunk planter and member of the Not All Slavers organization, who steals Bill at a rest stop. Armed with a Glock-19 and her fair skin, Eleanor sets out to rescue him by any means necessary.

New Light is thrilled to bring Deb Margolin's IMAGINING MADOFF, with direction by Jerry Heymann, to NYC from March 1 thru March 23, 2019 after successful runs in Washington D.C. and Boston. Margolin's powerful play finds Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff in prison, determined to control his own narrative for history as he dictates to a visiting biographer stories about his childhood, his family, women, money and an all-night meeting he had with Holocaust survivor and poet, Solomon Galkin. The play explores themes of greed, willful blindness to the truth, and the beauty and danger of absolute faith, either in God or in men. Theater TBA.

Finally, Amina Henry's new play, THE GREAT NOVEL, will round out the season in June 7 thru June 29, 2019. The production will partner with The Flea Theater's Anchor Program, with direction from Sarah Norris. For most of her adult life, Bertha has served as the Brennans' housekeeper. While polishing the silverware and washing the windows, she dreams of honoring the promise she made to her grandmother long ago to write the next great American novel. But as she drafts her story, she can only see the imprints of the Brontë sisters, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and most of all, the Brennans. Spurred on by recurring visits from her Granny in the afterlife, Bertha seeks a new language for a narrative that only she can tell, uninhibited by the ghosts of literary convention.

Other upcoming events and programming:

Submissions for the 2019/20 season open in early July for the The New Light New Voices Award, an annual development platform designed to support one emerging, unique writer and his/her/their submitted play. The winning play is guaranteed a production slot in New Light Theater Project's 2019-2020 season and will be given an opportunity to work with New Light's ensemble and extended network of artists.

New Light Theater Project's 'Black & White Gala' will be held on Sunday, September 23 from 5-10:00pm at The Flea Theater.

NLTP's SPOTLIGHT SERIES will present the revival of Yasmina Reza's LIFE X3 at Urban Stages with direction by Jerry Heymann from November 20 thru December 8.

New Light Theater Project (NLTP) is an ensemble-driven theater company that strives to capture the Little Theater Movement (artistry over commerce; producing new and classic works) in the NYC indie theater community. To accomplish this, NLTP places the ensemble at the center of the process, where all members, regardless of artistic role, bear weight and voice to the stories selected to tell. NLTP devises and develops new work, brings classical texts and revivals to life, and creates a spirit of community for all theatrical collaborations. NLTP illuminates other artists and companies through a network of shared resources, such as The Spotlight and Darkroom Series, while cultivating theatrical partnerships around the world. For more information, visit newlighttheaterproject.com.

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