The 2010 New Play Festival Closes Tonight With The Poetry of Pizza 10/22

Don't miss the final reading of the 2010 New Play Festival this evening, Friday, October 22nd: The Poetry of Pizza by playwright-in-residence, Deborah Brevoort. Festival admission is free and open to the public. This evening begins at 7:00 p.m. with a discussion led by Ms. Brevoort on playwriting and the importance a staged reading has in the process of script development. The reading of her play will proceed the discussion at 7:30 p.m. followed by a reception catered by Camille's Sidewalk Cafe.

The Poetry of Pizza follows American professor Sarah Middleton as she arrives in Denmark to teach at the University of Copenhagen, only to find her life irrevocably thrown off course when she stops by the Vermundsgade Pizzeria one night for a pizza. She falls suddenly and unexpectedly in love with the pizza maker, Soran Saleen, a Kurdish refugee who wins her heart with his unconventional pizzas. Sarah and Soren's unlikely courtship arouses the curiosity and passions of everyone around them, including an assortment of Danish, Kurdish and American characters, setting in motion a rash of culinary courtships and a chaotic comedy of errors.

The Poetry of Pizza is directed by Centre Stage's Executive and Artistic Director, Glenda ManWaring and its cast includes: Patricia DeVroomen, Peter Haloulos, Kevin Joiner, Catalina Keller, Michele Labar, Daryl Phillipy, Jayce Tromsness, Deb Warren and Jeff Warren. Dialect coaching for The Poetry of Pizza was provided by Jayce Tromsness.

Please note, The Poetry of Pizza is for mature audiences only.

Deborah Brevoort is a playwright and musical theater librettist/lyricist from Alaska who now lives in the New York City area. Ms. Brevoort holds an MFA in Playwriting from Brown University and an MFA in Musical Theater writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where she currently teaches. She also teaches in the MFA playwriting programs at Columbia University and Goddard College. Her other plays include The Women of Lockerbie, which won the Silver Medal at the Onassis International Playwriting competition; The Blue-Sky Boys; The Comfort Team; Blue Moon Over Memphis; The Velvet Weapon; Signs of Life; and Into the Fire. She won the Frederick Loewe Award for King Island Christmas, with David Friedman, and Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing, with Scott Richards. Some of her other current include: Crossing Over, an Amish hip-hop musical with Stephanie Salzman; Embedded, an Edgar Allan Poe opera for the American Lyric Theater; Steal a Pencil for Me, an opera with Gerald Cohen based on the PBS documentary. Ms. Brevoort was an original company member with Alaska's Perseverance Theatre, co-founder of Theatre Without Borders and a New Dramatists member.

For more information about the 2010 New Play Festival or about Centre Stage, visit our website at www.centrestage.org.