Metropolitan Playhouse Presents 8 New Works and More in Founders Festival, 1/14-27

Metropolitan Playhouse, Obie Award winner for exploring American culture through theater, hosts The Founder's Festival, the theater's eighth annual Living Literature Festival of performances inspired by the lives and works of the individuals who helped to shape America. The Festival is a collection of eight new works by artists and companies from near and far taking their inspiration from the Founding Father's public and private lives. Each new work is presented four times over the festival. (Project descriptions and schedule follow.) Several evenings will be complemented by readings of salient documents.

Additionally, an exhibition of thematically-linked art will be on display in the theater's lobby, and singer Justin Flagg (of the New Students) will perform at an opening reception.

Performances take place daily from January 14 to 27, 2013 at the Metropolitan Playhouse.
Opening Reception and Exhibition: January 14 at 8:30 pm.

Tickets may be purchased online at www.metropolitanplayhouse.org, or by phone at 800-838-3006. Tickets for all programs are $18.

The Founders Festival includes one-act and full-length plays, ranging from adaptation to biographical fantasy. 28 performances over two weeks of new plays by various artists and companies, all inspired by the writing of the founding fathers and mothers of the United States. Drawn from sources as diverse as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Aaron Burr AbiGail Adams, and Phillis Wheatley, as well as iconoclasts like Daniel Shay, these new plays and musicals comprise the 8th Annual Living Literature Festival of new theater drawn from great writers and thinkers in the American estate.

Artist participants in the festival include the New York Neo-Futurists (creators of the long-running, award-winning Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind); LuLu LoLo (Mother Cabrini, Saint of the Immigrants); Montgomery Sutton (La Fin du Monde - 2011 shortlist, Short + Sweeties, Brisbane); Dan Evans (Henry's Lunchroom, "Great job!" - nytheatre.com); Andrea Pinyan (A Brief History of Cross Dressing in the Civil War); Zero Boy (Alice in Zeroland - Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris); Vladimir Zevelinsky (Themes and Variations and Silence - two time finalist for the Heideman Award); and David Koteles (Bald Diva!: The Ionesco Parody Your Mother Warned You About - GLAAD Nominated).

Previous years' festivals were the Poefest (2006), Twainathon (2007), Hawthornucopia (2008-"exhilarating"--nytheatre.com), and Melvillapalooza (2009 "divine.... put the life and works of Melville in a new light" - New Theatre Corps), Another Sky (2010), and A Harlem Renaissance Festival (2011 - "very satisfying indeed" -- nytheatre.com), The Horatio Alger Festival (2012). Metropolitan Playhouse explores America's theatrical and cultural moment. Metropolitan has earned accolades from The New York Times, The Village Voice, BackStage, and nytheatre.com. Notable productions include The Boss, Both Your Houses, The House of Mirth, The Jazz Singer, From Rags to Riches, One-Third of a Nation, The Great Divide, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Drunkard, Dodsworth, The Return of Peter Grimm, Year One of the Empire, The Pioneer: 5 plays by Eugene O'Neill, and Denial.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS (In order of first festival presentation.)

Civility
The New York Neo-Futurists (15 new plays)
present 15 short plays based on George Washington's Rules of Civility. This evening will be accompanied by readings of letters exchanged between John and AbiGail Adams.

The Parchment Copy (A new play)
by Dan Evans A Lulu LoLo Production (New York)
July 4, 1776: the Declaration of Independence proclaimed the birth of our new nation. August 2, 1776 : the Continental Congress reconvened to actually sign the great document. On the eve of the signing, at Benjamin Franklin's home in Philadelphia, eight leading Patriots are drawn together in these perilous times that try men's souls.

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