Murder in the Cathedral on Pacific St: EXTENDED to 10/10!!!

hillaryemiller

Hi all,
We've had a great run so far, and I'm pleased to announce that TS Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral" at Church of St. Joseph on Pacific Street has been extended until October 10! See below for info about the remaining performances, and check out our recent Times review here: http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/theater/reviews/25murder.html

T.S. Eliot’s
MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL
Directed by OBIE-winner Alec Duffy and featuring original music by OBIE-winner Dave Malloy
NOW EXTENDED THROUGH OCTOBER 10!

Remaining performances:

· Thurs., Sept. 30 – Sat., Oct. 2, 7:30 pm;

· Thurs., Oct. 7 – Sat., Oct. 9, 7:30 pm and Sunday, Oct. 10, 2 pm.
The Church of St. Joseph
856 Pacific Street, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
http://www.murderinthecathedral.com


The New York Times: "Captures the sense of standing in awe of something ineffably vast but that still speaks to you. . . creates an atmosphere that is as authentic as it is otherworldly."

The Brooklyn Paper: “…a gripping, memorable performance.”

Brooklyn, NY – September 27, 2010 – One of Brooklyn’s most majestic cathedrals celebrates the power of the performing arts with a production of T.S. Eliot’s timeless play, Murder in the Cathedral, now extended due to overwhelming response.

OBIE Award-winner Alec Duffy (Three Pianos) helms Nobel writer T.S. Eliot’s classic poetic drama – last staged in New York over 10 years ago – in a dynamic, site-specific production featuring a diverse cast, thrilling staging and an original musical score by Jonathan Larson Award-winning composer Dave Malloy (Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage). The play is staged at The Church of St. Joseph, 856 Pacific Street (at Vanderbilt Avenue) in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

Remaining performances: Thurs., Sept. 30 – Sat., Oct. 2, 7:30 pm; Thurs., Oct. 7 – Sat., Oct. 9, 7:30 pm and Sunday, Oct. 10, 2 pm.

The drama recounts the last month in the life of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who faces certain death for his defense of the Church against the crown of England. As Becket continues in his journey, he confronts the very human drama of individual integrity, the expectations of friendship, and the struggle of will.

This production presents a unique opportunity to experience Eliot’s work in its ideal context: an architectural wonder, built for the sweeping dramatic meditation that the play inspires. For the production, the newly refurbished cathedral of this century-old Prospect Heights institution will be filled with drama, music, and tremendous artistry, offering a unique theatrical experience in an awe-inspiring space. Thomas Becket is played by Godfrey L. Simmons Jr. (Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play) and other cast members include Christopher Burris, Jordan Coughtry, Alexis McGuinness, Lori Parquet, Nikaury Rodriguez, Julian Rozzell, Jr. and Jamie Watkins.

Tickets are free, with a suggested donation price of $10. No advance reservations are necessary. Part of the proceeds from the production will benefit Brooklyn Arts HQ.

Brooklyn Arts HQ is a brand-new non-profit educational organization that offers community-based performance experiences for audiences. With a special focus on cultivating engagement among residents of the surrounding neighborhoods, HQ will produce plays, offer arts workshops for young people, and host a range of programming designed to educate, challenge, and inspire. Brooklyn Arts HQ is committed to encouraging collaboration between artists from a broad range of backgrounds and experiences, and to maintaining professional and affordable theatrical productions and performing arts resources.

ACTOR BIOS

CHRISTOPHER BURRIS (First Tempter/ First Knight) Regional Theater credits: Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Idiot’s Delight, The Winter’s Tale, Playboy of the West Indies), North Shore Music Theatre (Romeo and Juliet), La Jolla Playhouse (Blood Wedding, Sheridan). New York: New Federal Theatre (Jesse), Ensemble Studio Theatre (Jesse), Inwood Shakespeare Festival (Merchant of Venice), Hampton Theatre Company (Six Degrees of Separation), New York Theatre Workshop (Helen's Heart, Neighbors-Workshops), Phare Play (Arcadia), Women's Project (365Days/365 Plays, The Feign'd Courtesans-Workshop), FringeNYC (A Raisin in the Salad: Black Plays for White People, Bang!Bang!Bang!, Mankynde, Caresses), Resonance Ensemble (The Lower Depths, Time to Burn), Shadowland Theatre (Lobby Hero), First Look Theater Company (Five Wishes, Broke). Film: Indelible, Say Hi to Bangkok, Shook, Bank it Like Lebron. TV: “Damage Control,” “The Guiding Light,” “As the World Turns.” www.christopherburris.com



JORDAN COUGHTRY (Fourth Tempter/Fourth Knight) The less we talk, Winter Journey (Hoi Polloi), Amadeus, Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare Theatre of NJ), All's Well That Ends Well, Hamlet (Alabama Shakespeare Festival), Big Bill (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Othello, Don Juan, (Shakespeare Theatre Company), Love's Labour's Lost (Shakespeare Theatre Company/Royal Shakespeare Company), Romeo and Juliet (Human Race Theatre).



ALEXIS McGUINNESS (Third Priest) The 49 Project (Fringe NYC), Waxing West at La MaMa, Bucharest and Sibiu, Romania and Stockholm, Sweden, The Lacy Project at the Ohio Theatre, Half of Plenty at SPF, The Drama League's Directors Project of Itamar Moses' Authorial Intent and Abandon at La MaMa. Regional credits include Almost, Maine (Geva Theatre, Syracuse Stage), Twelfth Night (Milwaukee Shakespeare), Safe in Hell, The Ladies of the Camellias (u/s), The Mystery Plays (u/s), and The Black Dahlia (u/s), (Yale Repertory Theatre). She has studied at NTI/Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and the Guthrie Theater, has a BA in Theater from Dartmouth College and an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. She teaches at Fordham University, the Yale Summer Conservatory and is the Director of the Fordham Summer Actors Workshop.



LORI E. PARQUET (Second Tempter/ Second Knight) is an actor, director, playwright, and teaching artist from New Orleans, Louisiana. While pursuing her B.A. in Theater Arts at Cornell University, she starred in Antigone, Metamorphoses, and A Midsummer's Night Dream. As a director, she staged productions of The Colored Museum and for colored girls and blacks boys, an adaptation of Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. She also began working on her one-woman show focused on the events around Hurricane Katrina. Now in New York, she has performed with companies such as Flux Theatre Ensemble, The Drilling Company, and Freedom Train Productions. She recently made her regional theatre debut in BOP: The North Star at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY. She is a member of the ensemble for Dispatches From (A)mended America, a play taken from interviews conducted in the South leading up to Obama’s Inauguration. When she is not acting or directing, she brings her love of theater to the NYC public schools as a teaching artist with Possible Arts, Epic Theater Company and City Lights Youth Theatre.



JULIAN ROZZELL, JR. (First Priest) Credits include The Piano Lesson at the Arden Theatre, No Exit with Imago Theatre, Titus Andronicus at Milwaukee Shakespeare, and Othello at Texas Globe. Julian has also appeared in numerous television programs and commercials. Most recently he was featured in the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards commercial, (a tribute to Michael Jackson) and will appear in the second episode of the new HBO series Boardwalk Empire, produced by Martin Scorsese. Julian is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, and has also studied with The Rybinsk Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia and the Barter Theater in Virginia. He is a Resident Creative Artist for Artel Theatre Company in Los Angeles, California. Julian is also an established painter and percussionist.



GODFREY L. SIMMONS, JR. (Thomas Becket) most recently has been co-writing Dispatches From (A)mended America, a documentary play about the American South during the month before President Obama's inauguration. He also stars in Mark Harris' film about death cults, The Lost Children. He's a member of Epic Theatre Ensemble, where he most recently appeared in Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play. Other Off-Broadway: A More Perfect Union, Widowers' Houses, Einstein's Gift (Epic Theatre Ensemble), The Old Settler (Primary Stages, Audelco Award for Best Supporting Actor), Betty's Summer Vacation (Playwrights Horizons). Films by Mark Harris (Constance, Bloody Mary, Manhole IV), Audrea Topps (Raw Intensity, Hard Candy) and Christina Kotz-Cornejo (The Appointment). He currently teaches acting at Binghamton University, and has also taught at Cornell University and Marymount Manhattan University.



JAMIE WATKINS (Second Priest) is a recent graduate of Vassar College and LAMDA. Favorite productions include Hamlet, The First Quarto; Haarlem Berlin (dir. Rachel Chavkin); Clue; The Blue Room; As You Like It (dir. John Link) & Cop Out.


PRODUCTION TEAM

ALEC DUFFY (Director) is the founder and Artistic Director of the theater company Hoi Polloi. Recent original work includes the OBIE-winning Three Pianos (as creator/performer), which will be presented at New York Theater Workshop this coming season, The less we talk: a meditation on group singing, Dysphoria (Ontological Theater) and The Top Ten People of the Millennium Sing Their Favorite Schubert Lieder, which premiered in New York and toured to Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. Duffy is a Drama League Directing Fellow and was one of seven directors nationwide to be selected for the 2007-09 NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors.



MIRANDA k HARDY (Light Designer) Murder in The Cathedral is the fourth show she has made with Alec Duffy. Recent projects include Beowulf: a thousand years of baggage with Banana Bag & Bodice, Bellona Destroyer of Cities with Jay Scheib, and Problem Radicals with Object Collection. Her work has been seen in the greater world with The Sewers in Dublin IR (Best Production award) and San Francisco, Untitled Mars in Budapest HU, as well as festival designer for 3 seasons at the Festival di due Mondi in Spoleto, IT. In the midst of all this she makes shadow and story event installations, pursues continuing artistic relationships with Banana Bag & Bodice, TENT, Object Collection, Tom Lee AND has the joy of raising the lovely Tula Marie born November 2009. Miranda holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.



DANIEL IGLESIA (Sound Designer) is a composer, performer, and technologist. Recent performances of his work appeared at Issue Project Room, Miller Theater, Le Poisson Rouge, the Hamburger Klangwerktage (Germany), Ostrava Music Days Festival (Czech Republic), and the 2010 World Expo (Shanghai, China). Upcoming highlights include 3D video systems at the NY Maker Faire, and a concert performance at Queens College. He currently teaches at Pratt and Princeton, where he co-leads the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk).



BECKY LASKY (Costume Design) recent credits include: 365 Plays/365 Days also with Alec Duffy, The Great Recession with The Flea, Precious Little with Clubbed Thumb, Brack's Bachelor Party and Christmas is Miles Away with Babel Theatre, Linus & Alora with Andhow! Theater, Comedy of Errors with Aquila Theater, God of Love winner of a Student Academy Award and The Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn, winner of the Best Short at the Big Apple Film Festival. She has designed for the Roundtable Ensemble, Peculiar Works Project, The Rude Mechanicals (NYC). MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.



DAVE MALLOY (Composer) is the winner of a 2009 Jonathan Larson Grant and is one of the three OBIE-winning creator/performers of Three Pianos, moving to New York Theater Workshop this winter. His recent large-scale work, Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage, a Banana Bag & Bodice musical, enjoyed sold out runs in Berkeley and NYC and received the Bay Area’s 2008 Glickman Award. Malloy has written five full length musicals, including Clown Bible, a gypsy-jazz infused telling of biblical stories from Genesis to Revelation told through clowns ("Best Play of the Year" and "Best Music of the Year," East Bay Express 2007), and Banana Bag & Bodice's Sandwich, a Weill-ian mishmash about eating animals.



HILLARY MILLER (Producer) is a writer from Flatbush. Her plays have been produced at venues including the Cherry Lane Theatre, Dixon Place, and the New York, D.C., and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. She was literary associate at Young Playwrights, Inc., worked in script analysis and development for director/producer Stephen Shainberg (Secretary; Fur), and she is currently the Assistant Director of Downtown Brooklyn: An Urban Writer’s Retreat at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University. BA, Dartmouth College; MFA in Dramatic Writing, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts; doctoral candidate in the department of Theatre at the Graduate Center of CUNY. Teaching: NYC Department of Education, Kingsborough Community College, Baruch College.



ANDREEA MINCIC (Scenic/props designer) collaborated with Hoi Polloi as set designer for Three Pianos, and as assistant set designer for Dysphoria. Other recent work in New York City: Red Over Red (set) with 31Down - Incubator, Nurses in New England (set) with Half Straddle - Ice Factory Festival, Hedda Gabler (costumes) with John Gould Rubin - site specific, town house. Andreea is currently working on: Jet Lag (costumes) with Builders Association – Montclair State University and The Last Castrato (set) with Gap in the Wall Productions – The Connelly Theater. She is member of TENT, Children’s Theatre Company, Theatre Without Borders, and Multi Art Dance Foundation. She holds a MFA in Theatrical Design from the Ohio University.



JESSIE VACCHIANO (Stage Manager) is a graduate of Mason Gross School of the Arts with her BFA in stage management. Recent stage management credits include Three Pianos (Ontological Theatre), Spring Awakening (Red Stage Theatre), The Vigil or the Guided Cradle (Impetuous Theatre Group), Sea Marks (Rutgers Theatre Company), Yuletide Shorts (Mile Square Theater) and Under the Rainbow (Jameson Theater Project).





The Church of St. Joseph is located in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, at 856 Pacific Street, between Vanderbilt and Underhill. Transportation: 2, 3 train to Bergen Street; Q, B train to 7th Avenue, C train to Clinton-Washington Aves, or the 4,5 to Atlantic Avenue. For additional information, call: 718-638-1071.

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www.murderinthecathedral.com