Theater for the New City Presents 1st 'Dream Up Festival' 8/8-9/5

From August 8 to September 5, 2010, Theater for the New City (TNC), under the direction of Crystal Field, Artistic Director, will present its first "Dream Up Festival," a theater festival of plays from artists across the country and abroad. It is curated by the theater's Literary Manager, Michael Scott-Price.

"Dream Up" is an all-premiere festival with 22 world premieres and two American premieres, offering a month long anthology of wide-ranging and original theatrical visions.

The Festival opens up Theater for the New City to artists from the country at large and to artists from overseas. Both Ms. Field and Mr. Scott-Price feel it is especially important for the world to know of these artists, whose work needs to be done and needs to be seen. These include emerging writers, whose work will likely become an important contribution to American culture and which is already stimulating and enlightening. There are also mid-career artists whose work is already of great importance and should be viewed by the public, even in a time of declining donations to the arts, when grants not being awarded due to market conditions and there are arts funding cuts on almost every level all across the country and abroad.

Tickets prices range from $12 to $15 (roughly the cost of a movie). Audiences will have the opportunity to view most of the productions at least five times.

Theater for the New City maintains a unique commitment to high artistic standards and community service. In an effort to make theater accessible to all, TNC traditionally sponsors a variety of distinctive, unique events each year, including the Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, which celebrates the artistic and cultural diversity of TNC's Lower East Side community; an annual Village Halloween Ball and an annual summer Street Theater tour that presents a free, live, original musical in thirteen neighborhoods in all five boroughs. Most of these are free to the public.

TNC's Lower East Side Festival of the Arts and Village Halloween Ball offer scenes from plays, solo turns and variety acts, but to-date TNC has never before offered a festival for fully produced shows in repertory. That was the concept when the theater's literary manager, Michael Scott Price, proposed to the theater's founder, Crystal Field, that TNC start a new festival for fully realized works previously unproduced.

The Dream Up Festival staff includes TNC's Executive Director, Crystal Field; the Festival Director/Curator, Michael Scott-Price and TNC's Administrator, Jonathan Weber. The Festival's lighting designer is Alexander Bartenieff. Technical Director is Richard Reta. Festival Publicist is Jonathan Slaff. Production Director is Mark Marcante.

Michael Scott-Price (Festival Director/Curator of Dream Up Festival) has directed in New York City at venues including Chashama, Dixon Place and Collective Unconscious. He has written and directed productions that were presented nationally as well as in Canada, Ireland, and England. Currently, he is also Curator of TNC's "New City, New Blood" reading series and "Scratch Night" (works-in-progress). He is Artistic Director of an experimental theatre company, Asteroid B612 Theatre Company, which made its debut in the 17th Annual HERE American Living Room Series in August 2006. He has studied at the School of Physical Theatre in London, England, at the Odin Teatret in Hostelbro, Denmark and in the International School Theatre Anthropology (ISTA) in Wroclaw, Poland with Eugenio Barba and company. He is a member of Lincoln Center Theater Director's Lab.

For an alphabetical listing of the plays to be presented go to www.jsnyc.com/season/dream_up_alphabetical.htm.

For a day-by-day schedule of productions, please see: www.jsnyc.com/season/dreamup_day-by-day.htm.

Photo Credit: Charlotte Jardat-Katz

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