 News from ATF - Contact: 518-798-7478 or atf@atfestival.org FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE…April 15, 2002 Adirondack
Theatre Festival’s
expanded
season to include Adirondack
Theatre Festival's eighth season will add one week and a fourth show to
run June 19 – July 28 at the Former Woolworths in downtown Glens Falls. Discount
season subscriptions now on sale for $48 or $62. The
Adirondack Theatre Festival’s expanded eighth season will include a wide
variety of new and contemporary plays and musicals for 40 days this
summer! “I’m really
excited by the variety which a fourth show allows us”, says ATF Artistic
Director Martha Banta. “GUYS
ON ICE is a hilarious show which I think will resonate with our North
Country audience. AT HOME IN AN ALIEN LAND is a show we have developed for the
last two years, and our subscribers participated in a reading last summer.
Our musical revue FISHWRAP will showcase new musical theater
writing talent, and BLOWN SIDEWAYS THROUGH LIFE is a play I worked on
Off-Broadway which I’ve been waiting for eight years to be able to
obtain the rights for.” As
previously announced, the season will open Thursday, June 20 with the East
Coast Premiere of GUYS ON ICE, book and lyrics by Fred Alley, music by
James Kaplan. Despite the
chilly temperatures inside the ice shanty, GUYS ON ICE is sure to warm
audiences with its humorous look at life, love, and the meaning of life
from the perspective of two guys named Marvin and Lloyd who have been best
friends for years. GUYS ON ICE will be directed by ATF artistic director
Martha Banta, whose past credits at ATF include ART, WIT, and TIMES OF
WAR. Her recent credits
include the world premiere of HALLOWED GROUND at Portland Stage, PLAYHOUSE
DISNEY LIVE at Disney’s MGM Studios, Orlando, and BARBARA'S BLUE KITCHEN
(ATF premier 2000) at Cincinnati Playhouse. The Wednesday, June 19 preview
performance of GUYS ON ICE will be a “pay what you can” performance
with a limited number of free tickets available that night to anyone who
presents a valid fishing license, subject to availability. ATF’s
second offering, FISHWRAP:
YESTERDAY’S NEWS, TOMORROW’S SONGS, a musical revue inspired by
newspaper headlines form 2001, will run July
2-7. Director Bill Castellino
and co-creator Gilles Chiasson have commissioned new songs by more than
fifteen young theater composers for this revue.
Composers were given newspaper stories from 2001, and have written
a variety of humorous and powerful, songs for a cast of four.
Director Bill Castellino is the Artistic Director of Cherry County
Playhouse in Western Michigan, and has directed and developed numerous new
musicals including the world premiere of HEARTBEATS, which ATF later
produced in 1995. The
third offering will be AT HOME IN AN ALIEN LAND, a solo performance
adapted by the actor Tyrone Mitchell Henderson from the writings of the
acclaimed novelist Richard Wright (Native
Son). AT HOME… was developed with Martha Banta at ATF last summer
while Mr. Henderson was performing in ART, and presented as a reading to
ATF subscribers. “I think
Tyrone has interpreted the stories of Richard Wright in a wonderful and
subtle way. In this piece he portrays six different African-American men
from the time of Reconstruction up to the present.
His transformation of each character shows off Tyrone’s amazing
acting abilities,” says Banta.
Besides ATF’S ART and WIT, Henderson has appeared in the Broadway
tour of BRING IN THE NOISE BRING IN THE FUNK. ATF’s
final show will be BLOWN SIDEWAYS THROUGH LIFE, a funny and touching play
by Claudia Shear, which won an Obie award when it played Off-Broadway in
1994. Before she wrote and
starred in DIRTY BLONDE on Broadway, Claudia Shear wrote BLOWN SIDEWAYS…
about the 64 jobs she had leading up to her dream of working in the
theater. Frank
Rich in the NY Times wrote “It’s a story that will stop your heart: a
poignant investigation of a woman’s search for an identity deeper and
more human than a job description” when BLOWN SIDEWAYS premiered.
Leigh Silverman whose previous credits include the London
production of WIT and regional productions of HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE and
THE RIDE DOWN MT. MORGAN will direct BLOWN SIDEWAYS. The
2002 Adirondack Theatre Festival will also include four Children’s
Workshops on Saturday afternoons beginning June 29, and two evenings of
NEW STUFF AT NIGHT, free performances of new work being developed for
future summers. The
Adirondack Theatre Festival’s eighth season will run June 19– July 28,
all performances at the Former Woolworth Store (217 Glen St.) in Glens
Falls. Discount season
subscriptions are now on sale for $48 for three shows and $62 for the
entire season and can be ordered by calling 798-7479, mailing checks to
ATF, PO Box 3203, Glens Falls, NY 12801, or going to www. ATFestival.org. ATTENTION
MEMBERS OF THE PRESS! |
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