11th Hour Theatre Company Opens 2010-2011 Season with RENT 11/5

11th Hour Theatre Company is taking a big leap forward as it opens its sixth season. The all-musical theatre company is pleased to open the season with Jonathan Larson's modern classic, Rent. The show will be presented at Drexel's Mandell Theater, 33rd & Chestnut Streets, from November 5th - 21st, 2010 during 11th Hour's Residency with the Mandell Professionals In Residence Program at Drexel University. The company hopes to close its season with The Great American Trailer Park Musical in June pending the acquisition of the rights. Tickets will be available at www.11thhourtheatrecompany.org or by calling the box office at 267-987-9865.

For 11th Hour, the beginning of this season is a nod back to their beginning. The company made its professional debut in Philadelphia with a production of Jonathan Larson's tick, tick...Boom!. This production of Rent will feature 10 professional actors with eight students from Drexel. This production will be directed by 11th Hour's Resident Director and one of the three company founders, Megan Nicole O'Brien. 11th Hour co-founder and Barrymore Award winner, Michael Phillip O'Brien is portraying isolated songwriter Roger and 11th Hour co-founder and triple 2010 Barrymore nominee, Steve Pacek is playing disconnected filmmaker and narrator Mark. The company is currently finishing casting the rest of the ensemble.

The show is a 1996 Pulitzer Prize, Tony, OBIE, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Drama League Award Winner. Rent is based on Giacomo Puccini's 1896 opera "La Bohème." While creating the piece, Larson took the central storyline of Puccini's masterpiece and placed the characters in 1990s New York City. Throughout the course of this modern classic, characters fall in and out of love, discover how to live their lives in the moment, and realize the importance of the people they care about. The show garnered fast headlines for its message of "No Day But Today," after the sudden death of Larson on the eve of the show's Off-Broadway opening.

11th Hour is looking to go back to the emotional connection that audiences felt seeing the production in its heyday. "We are all huge fans of the show. This is definitely going to be a labor of love. I want people to hear the story for the first time, even if they have heard it before. As a director, reading the script and re-learning the show as a 28 year old as opposed to a 15 year-old fan of the show, I am gaining so much more insight as to what these people are going through. I want to use my deeper understand to give audiences a chance to see this show in a new light."

About Mandell Professionals In Residence
Philadelphia is fast becoming one of the most important places in the country for innovative and exciting theater and dance. MPiRP provides valuable space for some of these up and coming performing arts organizations and artists. Drexel hopes to be an artistic home and fill a void for quality performance space in the Philadelphia performance community.

Residencies vary from a single artist (actor, playwright, director, and choreographer, designer) to a full company in residence. The specifics of each residency vary depending on the needs and talents of the particular partners. Each unique collaboration is designed to benefit both Drexel and the professionals with the goal of giving students a unique educational experience and offering the professionals in residence the resources and diverse talents that Drexel has to offer. Professional residencies have full use of the Mandell Theater complex including rehearsal space, along with limited use of scene and costume shops and a 400+ seat proscenium stage with a fly system.

About 11th Hour Theatre Company
11th Hour Theatre Company is a not-for-profit company committed to expanding one of the truly great American art forms...musical theatre. As one of only two companies in the city dedicated to producing musical theatre, 11th Hour focuses on the intimate relationship that forms between artist and audience when music, theatre and dance come together to entertain, educate and inspire.

 

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