New Worlds Theatre Project's WELCOME TO AMERICA Features Alice Cannon, Donald Warfield and More

New Worlds Theatre Project (Ellen Perecman, Founder & Producing Artistic Director) is set to present WELCOME TO AMERICA this May at the 45^th Street Theatre, with performances beginning today, May 2^nd and running thru May 20^th. First written and produced in NYC in Yiddish in the 1920’s, the play is a cautionary tale about the tensions within one Jewish immigrant family whose patriarch refuses to adapt, while his children want nothing more than to be “Real Americans.” The play will feature direction from Stephen Fried, whose work has been seen at regional theatres across the country, as well as the Sundance Theatre Lab, the Yale School of Drama and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

Starring in the play will be Broadway veterans Alice Cannon (the original casts of Company and James Joyce’s The Dead), Donald Warfield (Watercolor Crisscrossing on Broadway and a frequent star of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival), and Dathan B. Williams (Show Boat on Broadway directed by Hal Prince, also starred as Thurgood Marshall in TheatreWorks/USA tour of The Color of Justice). 

WELCOME TO AMERICA introduces us to Mordechai Maze (Warfield) and his family. Maze was ‘somebody’ in the old country but in America he sorts remnants in a sweat shop in Manhattan’s garment district. With his son, Harry, busy playing baseball and his daughter, Annie, having eloped with his boss’s son, Maze begins to feel more and more like a remnant himself. But when his co-workers try to get him to use his new familial connection to their advantage by asking his new son-in-law for a raise, it proves more than he can handle. “Don’t you know remnants have no value, don’t you know that?” he asks as he begins to feel even more out of place, refusing to let go of the mindset & cultural traditions of his homeland.  

Joining Cannon, Warfield and Williams in the cast will be Josh Odsess-Rubin, Jessica DiSalvo, Claire Kennedy, Alvin Keith and Anthony Peeples. The production will feature set design by Lee Savage, lighting design by John Kernisky and costume design by Alixandra Gage Englund.

WELCOME TO AMERICA will run from May 2^rd thru May 20^th at the 45^th Street Theatre (312 West 36^thStreet, 2^nd Floor) with performances Wed-Sat at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm and Sunday May 13^th at 8pm. Tickets are priced at $18 ($15 for students/members of the military) and can be bought online at www.SmartTix.comor by phone at 212-868-4444.

New Worlds Theatre Project is a 501(c)3 not for profit theatre company committed to giving voice to the extraordinary legacy of authentic Yiddish culture by making early 20th century Yiddish plays accessible to diverse contemporary artists and audiences in modern English adaptations. For more information, visitwww.NewWorldsProject.org

More Articles by This Author...