New Ohio Theatre and Theatre 167 present the World Premiere of I Like To Be Here: Jackson Heights Revisited, or, This Is A Mango, conceived and directed by Ari Laura Kreith, and written by
Jenny Lyn Bader,
J.Stephen Brantley, Ed Cardona, Jr., Les Hunter,
Tom Miller, Melisa Tien, and
Joy Tomasko. The play is part of the 2nd annual Theater:Village Festival, and runs from today, September 6 - 27, 2014 in a limited engagement at the New Ohio Theatre, located at 154 Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets in New York City. Previews begin September 6 for a September 8 opening.
Performances are Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 7pm. Special opening night show on Monday, September 8 at 8pm. There is no performance on Wednesday, September 10 and the Sunday, September 21 performance is at 2pm. Tickets are $18 and $16 for students and seniors, and can be purchased online at
www.NewOhioTheatre.org or by calling 1-866-811-4111. For more info visit
www.Theatre167.org, follow on Twitter at @Theatre167, and Like them on Facebook at
www.Facebook.com/Theatre167.
I Like To Be Here: Jackson Heights Revisited, or, This Is A Mango is the newest, edgiest piece from the company that created The Jackson Heights Trilogy ("an epic song of America's most diverse neighborhood" - TheaterMania). In the span of one very late night, new faces encounter existing Trilogy characters and re-imagined scenes. A Bangladeshi cab driver working the night shift yearns for an Ecuadorian woman who rises at dawn to bake bread but does not speak her language. An Irish woman fights to keep her family home in the face of gentrification. A closeted Long Island cop comes into town for a date. Drag queens, car dispatchers, sleep deprived parents, gamblers, insomniacs, and dreamers find one another on the streets of Jackson Heights.
The cast includes Eric Aviles,
Cynthia Bastidas,
J.Stephen Brantley, Brandi Bravo,
Ross DeGraw,
Marcelino Feliciano, Todd Flaherty,
John P. Keller,
Azhar Khan, Mauricio Pita, Jerreme Rodriguez,
Indika Senanayake,
Lipica Shah, Lisann Valentin, Nela Wagman (Director of Obie Award-winning My Left Breast) and Jonathan C. Whitney.
The production team includes Todd Flaherty (Set Design), Serena Wong (Lighting Design),
Kate Mincer (Costume Design), Emily Auciello (Sound Design),
Dan Renkin (Fight Choreography) and Abbey Bay (Stage Manager).
Theatre 167 is a multicultural, multilingual ensemble dedicated to creating imaginative, deeply collaborative plays that investigate cultural complexities. Named for the 167 languages spoken in the world's most culturally diverse neighborhood, Theatre 167 experiments with form and process to develop productions that celebrate a multitude of voices, explore our essential humanity, and build bridges between our diverse communities. It began its life premiering The Jackson Heights Trilogy: 167 Tongues, You are Now the Owner of This Suitcase, and Jackson Heights 3AM -- three full-length multi-writer plays featuring 93 characters speaking 14 languages, performed at 4 venues in Queens and Manhattan. The company is now in its 5th season.
Jackson Heights 3AM was a PBS/NYC-ARTS "Top 5 Pick of the Week," and TheaterMania called the play "a sheer delight from beginning to end." The Brooklyn Rail described You are Now the Owner of This Suitcase as "an irreverent imaginative collage of contemporary folk tales and bumpy real life," and NYTheatre.com lauded the production as "wonderful theatre...full of humor, heart, and imagination...with highly inventive writing." Theatre 167 received 6 New York Innovative Theatre Award nominations for their World Premiere of Pirira, including Best Production, Best Script, and Best Ensemble.
This year's 2nd annual Theater:Village, presented by Axis Theatre,
Cherry Lane Theatre, New Ohio Theatre and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, is entitled E Pluribus and features four new plays celebrating the diversity of America. The Obie Award-winning Theater:Village presents annually a series of new plays in several prominent West Village theaters, based around one playwright or common theme. The goal is to involve the collaboration of many producing partners, deepening community engagements and audience experiences. Theater:Village signifies a major shift in the ways theaters work. It challenges the assumptions that we must cut back and compete more fiercely with each other in order to survive as nonprofit arts institutions, and promotes collaboration and community-conscious programming to expose emerging audiences to essential new work they would not otherwise be able to see. For more info visit
www.TheaterVillage.com.
BIOS
ARI LAURA KREITH (Director) is Theatre 167's Artistic Director. She conceived and directed The Jackson Heights Trilogy - 167 Tongues, You Are Now The Owner Of This Suitcase, and Jackson Heights 3AM - published by Indie Theatre Now and excerpted in the
Lincoln Center Theater Review. She recently directed the World Premiere of Pirira Off-Broadway, which received 6 NYIT Award nominations and was published in TheaterForum. Her regional and international credits include My Other Voice in Michigan (Best of Best-Detroit Free Press), Myths and Hymns (European Premiere), World's Fair Plays (NY Times Critics' Pick-Queens Theatre, NY), and Double Vision (NYC Fringe/Encores selection). She is a graduate of Yale University.
JENNY LYN BADER co-founded Theatre 167 and co-authored all three parts of The Jackson Heights Trilogy. Her other plays include Manhattan Casanova (Hudson Stage), winner of the
Edith Oliver Award (O'Neill Center), also staged at Guild Hall (w/
Mercedes Ruehl); Mona Lisa Speaks (Core Ensemble), seen at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in Palm Beach and the Berklee College of Music; and None of the Above (New Georges, w/
Alison Pill), available from Dramatists Play Service. She is a Harvard graduate. (
www.jennylynbader.com)
J.STEPHEN BRANTLEY's plays include Pirira (Theatre 167, dir. Ari Laura Kreith), just published in the international journal Theatre Forum and nominated for 6 NYIT Awards; Eightythree Down (Hard Sparks), and Chicken-Fried Ciccone (Frigid Festival, dir.
David Drake), nominated for 2 NYIT Awards. An Indie Theatre Now 2013 Person Of The Year, his plays are available on Indie Theatre Now. One of the scenes he wrote for Theatre 167's Jackson Heights 3AM was published in the
Lincoln Center Theater Review. He is a graduate of NYU's Experimental Theatre Wing. (
www.jstephenbrantley.com)
ED CARDONA JR.'s credits include La Ruta (Working Theater), American Jornalero (Intar Theatre), Leveret's Lesson (St. Andrew's College, Aurora Canada). Ed's work has been published by NoPassport Press, Dramatic Publishing and Smith and Kraus Publishing. He received his M.F.A. in playwriting from Columbia University where he received the
John Golden Award for his thesis play, PICK UP POTS!
LES HUNTER wrote for all three parts of the Jackson Heights Trilogy (Theatre 167). His other plays include Cyrano de Bergen County, New Jersey (published by Playscripts, Inc.) and Biggest Break (Artistic New Directions). (
www.leslielarshunter.com)
TOM MILLER's plays Apollo's Lute and Snap! were performed in San Francisco's Venue 9 and Exit theaters, and his short play, Fin de Circle, was included in the Brooklyn Playwrights Collective's Confronting Chekhov festival.
MELISA TIEN co-authored We Play for the Gods (Women's Project). Her other plays include Yellow Card Red Card (Women's Project Lab) and Familium Vulgare (Rising Circle Workshop). She's a member of Women's Project Lab 2010-2012 and an affiliate of Rising Circle Theatre Collective. (
www.melisatien.com)
JOY TOMASKO has developed and presented work at St. Ann's Warehouse Puppetry Lab, Soho Think Tank, with the Internationalists in both New York and Berlin, and with Project Por Amor in both Cuba and Miami. A former Jerome Fellow, MacDowell Colony Fellow and Women's Project NYSCA Playwright-in-Residence, Joy's plays include A Stranger Stroll (Figment NYC), Surrender (LPAC Lab) and Unfold Me (Summer Play Festival). (
www.joytomasko.com)
NEW OHIO THEATRE is a two-time OBIE Award-winning presenting venue that serves Manhattan's most adventurous theatre audiences by developing and presenting the boldest, most innovative work of today's vast independent theatre community. They believe the best of this community, the small artist-driven ensembles and the daring producing companies who operate without a permanent theatrical home, are actively expanding the boundaries of where American theatre is right now and where it's going. New Ohio Theatre nurtures, strengthens, and promotes this community; as they reestablish the West Village as a destination for mature, ridiculous, engaged, irreverent, gut-wrenching, frivolous, sophisticated, foolish, and profound theatrical endeavors. The theatre is accessible from the #1 train to Christopher St. or A, B, C, D, E, F or M train to West 4th St. For information, visit
www.NewOhioTheatre.org.
