Brett Singer & Associates, LLC
Theatre
Company Produces Triptych of New Plays While Facing Eviction
The
Interart Theatre Development Series presents
March 15, 2008 - The
Interart Theatre Development Series will present BRIDGE OVER
LAND, a play by Gilbert Girion, directed by the author. Performances will be at
the Interart Theatre Annex, 500 W 52nd Street.
Performances will begin on Friday, April 18th, continuing through Saturday,
May 10th. The Annex is currently facing eviction; see below for details.
About The
Play
BRIDGE OVER
LAND is made up of three short plays: In Dark Land a son
tends to his father who, embarrassed by his own grief over the death of his
wife, steps away from the other mourners. In Tableland, a young man
contends with his mother who is becoming unhinged -- but not without her own
brand of grace and humor. And in Number
Land, a math professor finds himself at the door of one of his former
students. As this unlikely pair negotiate this humorous and awkward visit,
deeper issues of loss and mourning are revealed. In the end, some deeper feelings surface, putting into question
the possibilities between two people who have found an emotional bridge across
a distance of years.
Though not
related by character, the three one-acts are meant to give the feeling of a
cohesive whole; themes from one play are picked up and expanded upon in the
next. Issues of loss, longing and hope are woven through the lives of the
various characters, to the point where they almost connect, but finally don't.
Overall, the three works are about bridges between people and across time.
The cast includes Lisa Chess (Cherry Lane Theatre), David Gelles-Hurwitz
(Ensemble Studio Theatre), producer Josh Liveright, recent Tisch School of
Drama graduate Kati Rediger, and Ed Setrakian, who has appeared in numerous
roles on and off-Broadway (Salome with Al Pacino) and is also a popular
character actor on film ("Zodiac").
The design team will be Arnulfo Maldonado (Sets), Lucrecia Briceno
(Lighting), Jeffrey Yoshi Lee (Sound) and Naomi Wolff (Costumes). Amanda Michaels will serve as Stage Manager.
About Gilbert Girion, Author and
Director
Author and director Gilbert Girion is a playwright and screenwriter.
Produced plays include Faith's Body, Floating With Jane, Broken English, Bad
Country, The Last Word, Fizzle, and Murder In Santa Cruz. His plays Juice,
Glue and Palm 90 (co-written) were produced at Bay Area Playwrights
Festival, where he served as Playwright-in-Residence. Word Crimes received
LA's DramaLogue award for outstanding play. Girion has been commissioned to
write plays by New Writers, Overtones Theatre and New York Shakespeare
Festival. Girion wrote the film "American Blue Note", produced in
1992. He worked with Joseph Chaikin and Bill Hart at Atlantic Center for the
Arts where they developed Bodies, a piece about disability. Bridge
Over Land was initially written for a Playwriting Commission from
Playwrights Horizons. Currently, he teaches Screenwriting and Storytelling at
School of Visual Arts in New York City.
About Josh Liveright, Producer and
Actor
Producer Josh Liveright is a writer, producer, and actor with over twenty
years of experience and myriad projects under his belt. In 1990 he produced Momentary Lapses,
a collection of short plays, featuring writers such as Steven Dietz, Neal Bell,
and John Glore. The production garnered
praise from both the New York Times and the Village Voice. In 1991 he co-founded Zena Group, a
not-for-profit theater and film collective based in TriBeCa. As Zena Group's
artistic director Josh produced New York premieres of plays by Mark O'Donnell,
Jose Rivera, Neena Beber, Richard Strand, and Gilbert Girion; several broadcast
quality videos including Positive Voices, a documentary featuring interviews
with long-term survivors of HIV and AIDS; and original projects such as the
Thoughts Modern Festival of New Works and Timsloft, an ongoing late-night
series of multi-media performance.
Currently Josh is the director of the Interart Theatre Development
Series.
- more -
The Interart Theatre Development Series presents
BRIDGE OVER LAND
Page 2
About the Interart Theatre
The Interart Theatre,
founded in 1970 as a program of the Women's Interart Center, Inc., has worked
with such notable artists as Joanne Akalaitis and Estelle Parsons. Under
Artistic Director Margot Lewitin, Interart's
productions have won ten Obies, as well
as a special Obie grant in recognition of its theatrical achievements, and a Drama Desk award for
its "contribution to the development of contemporary women theatre artists
and exploration of women's issues". A second Drama Desk was awarded for
Unique Theatrical Experience for Franz Xaver Kroetz's Request Concert.
The Interart Theatre Development Series has been developing and producing new material from the ground up since
1996. By engaging with a diversity of theatre artists and offering them much
needed support, the series strives to improve the vitality of theatre within
today's cultural landscape. The overall
goal of the series is to allow artists to work to their fullest potential by
providing an environment of creative freedom and building a strong sense of
community. With this in mind, the
process is just as important as the end result.
About the Threat of Eviction
The venue, the
Interart Annex, is the home of the Interart Theatre Development Series, a program of
the Interart Theatre and the Women’s Interart Center. The Annex, at 500 W. 52nd
Street is currently under threat of
eviction by the Clinton Housing Development
Company (CHDC), which purports to hold a net lease from the City of New
York. As a tenant in good standing at
500, Interart is the only arts tenant at the 500 location who has not been
promised relocation options within the Clinton Urban Renewal Area (CURA).
Margot Lewitin, Artistic Director, believes that there may be a reason.
"Perhaps it is retribution for the Center’s audacity, having sued the City
for Breach of Contract and for currently suing CHDC for attempting to terminate
all the Center’s leases within the CURA," she said. "With an executed
Contract of Sale and after securing all necessary approvals and raising the
necessary funding to complete the renovation and new construction of the
Interart Rehearsal Studio and Cultural Center Complex (IRSC), with construction
ready to begin, the City (under Dan Doctoroff, a former Deputy Mayor in the
Bloomberg administration), cancelled the Contract of Sale. The Center continues in its quest to find
some semblance of justice in the thicket of political financial and legal self-
dealing on the part of the City and CHDC."
BRIDGE OVER LAND will
be performed on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays,
Saturdays and Sundays at 8:00pm. Tickets will be $18.00 for all
performances. Tickets may be purchased
by calling Smarttix.com at
212-868-4444.
At the
Interart Theatre Annex, 500 W 52nd Street
TICKETS:
$18; Call 212-868-4444, or order online at www.smarttix.com
# # #
Phone: (212) 307-7181 Fax: (212) 813-9162