VOTE THE NEW MOON, By Alfred Kreymburg Indicts The System At Metropolitan Virtual Playhouse

The groundbreaking reading series continues as Obie Award winner Metropolitan Playhouse presents its next free "screened" reading: VOTE THE NEW MOON, by Alfred Kreymborg, live-streamed at no charge, with talkback to follow, on October 24th, 2020 at 8 PM, EDT. Learn more at www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse.

It is time for a new moon, and the citizenry of a small burg must vote. As for the past 72 cycles, one votes for the red, one for the blue...over and over. But this time, in their weariness, allegiances begin to blur. The candidates must speak their piece, but they are indistinguishable. What happens when a democratic process cannot define its choices?

Dedicated to John Reed and Louise Bryant, the play is anarchist in its sympathies and its mistrust of a political class and their supporters. The play was hailed in its time by Arthur H. Moss, editor of The Quill, as "a satire; almost clever enough to excuse Alfred's multitude of literary atrocities." VOTE THE NEW MOON is a challenging, expressionistic play whose dramatic flair and essential mistrust of worn out systems underscores the very real need for a responsible and responsive politics.

Discussion follows the reading, including audience participation.

Cast includes Lisa Barnes, Matt Daniels, Ivanna Cullinan, Chris Harcum, Mark Hofmaier, and Marty McDonough as the Catfish. Directed by Alex Roe. Illustrations by Medusa Studio.

Alfred Kreymborg (1883 -1966) was one of the Provincetown Playhouse artists who hailed from a working class background, and whose sympathies ever lay with the workers of the US and the world. Vote the New Moon is distinctive in its political thrust, others of his plays were more concerned with domestic and emotional life. But a prolific poet as well as dramatist, and early adopter of free verse, his voice sang among the modernists of the age.

With Man Ray, he founded literary magazine "The Glebe," in 1913, and first published Ezra Pound's Des Imagistes. In 1915, he founded "Others: A Magazine of the New Verse" with Skipwith Cannell, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams, and was an early promoter of give Marianne Moore. He co-edited "Broom, An International Magazine of the Arts, with Harold Loeb from 1919 to 1924, and beginning in 1925, edited the annual American Caravan volumes of new writing. Meanwhile, his prolific outpouring of poetry and drama continued through publication of 1950's No More War and other poems. Best known are his puppet plays "Lima Beans" and 'Manikin Minkin," and his verse drama for NBC radio: "The Planets: A Modern Allegory." His autobiography, published in 1925, is "Troubador."

Kreymborg was also a National Master chess player.

UPCOMING READINGS
www.metropolitanplayhouse.org
Every Saturday night at 8 pm

October 31, 2020
THE WAR of the WORLDS, by H.G. Wells and adapted by Howard Koch for Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. A Hallowe'en tradition if there should be one.

November 7, 2020
SHELL SHOCK, by Eugene O'Neill
Election recovery: a former soldier lives with tormenting memories of craven self-interest that earned him a hero's welcome home. Can he reckon with what he's really done?

ARTISTS' RELIEF
The Playhouse's virtual readings serve to help us compensate performing artists, so particularly hurt during this long "pause."
Information about the theater's ARTISTS RELIEF FUND may be found at
www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/covidaid