New Classics Presents Free Reading of LIVELY STONES, 3/18

The New Classics Series wraps up its season on Sunday, March 18th at 7:00 p.m. with Lively Stones by Sarah Katherine Bowden, directed by Erica Highberg and performed in the Charity Randall Theatre at the Stephen Foster Memorial in Oakland. New Classics is a cooperative program presented by the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Theatre Arts and Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre. The series is intended to highlight new works and showcase up-and-coming playwrights.

The reading is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a talk-back with the cast and audience.

Lively Stones by Sarah Bowden places the audience in Puritanical Massachusetts. Founding Americans such as Joseph Cotton, John Winthrop, and Anne Hutchinson fight over control of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Anne seeks to inform her neighbors of remedies for the body to be found on the earth, while Joseph Cotton attempts to lead the flock to remedies of the soul in heaven. John Winthrop, however, wants to control the hearts and minds of his people for political gain. Lively Stones strikes at the ethics of our Founding Fathers and Mothers, and investigates the rocky soil upon which our nation was built.

The reading will feature actors from the University of Pittsburgh Department of Theatre Arts, including Joanna Getting, Laura Gray, Karl Kemmerer, Ethan Miller and Rocky Paterra. The stage manager is Emily Burst.

Playwright Sarah Bowden is a third-year MFA student in the playwrighting program at Ohio University. Previously, she served as an artistic associate at Philadelphia's To The Wall Productions. She co-wrote Grimm & Tonic: An Evening of Adapted Fairy Tales for To The Wall, and had her short play Through the Valley performed as part of the Philadelphia Dramatists Center's 4x4 Festival. Her full-length, Two Sides of a River, was given a staged reading at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. Sarah was the recipient of the 2003 Margaret W. Baker Prize for Fiction and the 2005 White-Howells English Prize for Drama.

Director Erica Highberg is an accomplishEd Pittsburgh theatre artist. She holds an MFA in acting from Point Park University, where she teaches. Highberg's credits include productions with PICT, City Theatre Company, The Rep and Bricolage.

Persons who are unable to attend the reading in person will be able to view it online via LIPLO™ (Live and in Person, Live and Online), a new internet technology pioneered by PICT Operations Director Stephanie Riso and Alex Geis. Geis of 21 Productions and videographer RAndy Griffith of RLG Creations will live-broadcast the readings, and viewers will be able to respond via live chat as they watch the performances on the LIPLO™ website, www.liplo.com.

For more information about "New Classics," contact Josh Storey at 412.624.0933 or jstorey@pitt.edu, or Melissa Grande at 412.561.6000 x203 or mgrande@picttheatre.org.