Theater In Asylum And Laguardia Performing Arts Center Presents Willie Johnson's HEPHAESTUS

The New York-based theater company, Theater in Asylum (TIA) in partnership with Laguardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC)'s Rough Draft Festival, will present three performances of Willie Johnson's Hephaestus at LPAC's Mainstage Theater Black Box in Long Island City.

At once a meditation on labor, dis/ability, and beauty, Hephaestus interrogates our relationships to our bodies, and our ideas of beauty and divinity. Drawing on texts ancient and new, this new play explores the limitations of the body and the self, and our desire to transcend them.

The excellent cast features Alyssa Kim as Prometheus and Athena; Starr Kirkland as Aphrodite, Io, and Bia; Dante Montgomery as Dionysus and Ares; Daniel Stompor as an Automaton & Kratos; Patrick Tombs as Hephaestus; Lauren Winder as Hera, Thetis, and an Automaton; and Miyu Yokota as an Automaton.

Written by award-winning playwright and New York Times published essayist Wilie Johnson, this new play centers around the Greek god Hephaestus, the son of Zeus and Hera who was thrown off Mount Olympus due to his disability. The show follows Hephaestus-God of fire, god of the forge, the worker god-as he tries to get back on Mount Olympus, exploring how the concept of "normality" inherently leads to certain kinds of violence and exclusion.

When discussing what drew him to the subject, Willie Johnson said, "I've always been interested in anomalies and contradictions, and Hephaestus is both of those things. He's an incredibly powerful god who's also got limited mobility due to his disability. He figures into lots of canonical stories, but is never the hero, and despite the fact that he's a god, he's often treated very poorly in these stories. I decided it would be an interesting exercise to make this contradictory underdog character into the hero of his own story."

This production is presented in partnership with LPAC's Rough Draft Festival. The Rough Draft Festival is a two week festival that provides innovative and boundary-pushing artists with space and stipends to further develop their works-in-progress. Allowing artists an opportunity to view their work on its feet, equally the Rough Draft Festival gives audiences a unique, inside peek into the creative process.

Hephaestus will run March 11-13 at LPAC's Mainstage Theater Black Box (31-10 Thomson Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101); Tickets range from $8-15 and are available online at theaterinasylum.com/hephaestus.

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