Photo Flash: First Look at New Stage Theatre's GARDEN OF DELIGHTS at Theater for the New City

The Theater for the New City presents The New Stage Theatre Company's Garden of Delights, written by Fernando Arrabal and directed by Ildiko Nemeth (NY Innovative Theatre Award nominee), with original music by Jon Gilbert Leavitt (Outmusic Award winner). Garden of Delights runs now through December 2, 2012 in a limited engagement at Theater for the New City's Johnson Theater, located at 155 First Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets in New York City. Get a first look at the production in the photos below!

A beautiful and troubled actress, Lais, is tortured by guilt and isolated in her palatial home. As she fields prying calls from a live celebrity talk show, her memories and emotions manifest before her. In Fernando Arrabal's Garden of Delights, the lines between reality, imagination and remembering blur. Lais is forced to confront the ghosts of her past, and the injuries she has sustained and inflicted.

Garden of Delights showcases the vivid and surrealist imagination of controversial Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal. In The New Stage Theatre Company production, the discrepancy between our interior life and outward actions is illuminated. "I am absolutely convinced that there do not exist two separate worlds, one real, the other imaginary," Arrabal has said. Using projected images and original music, The New Stage production immerses audiences in the world of Lais' psyche, underscoring the interplay of thought and action. As Arrabal has explained, his work "sheds light on the problems we have with ourselves-all the fantasies, all our latent characteristics that we hide." His vision is challenging but never bleak as it grapples with human nature at its most raw.

The cast includes Kaylin Lee Clinton (NY Innovative Theatre Award nominee), Belle Caplis (NY Innovative Theatre Award nominee), Brandon Olson, Chris Tanner, Geraldine Dulex, Denice Kondik (NY Innovative Theatre Award nominee), Francisca Magalhães, Valerie Miller, Florencia Minniti, Devin Nelson, Emma Pettersson, Alexandra Pike, Juliana Silva and Jeanne lauren Smith.

The creative team includes Ildiko Nemeth (Set Design), NY Innovative Theatre Award nominee Federico Restrepo (Lighting Design), Egle Paulauskaite (Costume Design), Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger (Projection Design), Ildiko Nemeth and Catherine Correa (Movement) and Fabiyan Pemble-Belkin (Principal Administrator).

The New Stage Theatre Company founder and Artistic Director Ildiko Nemeth present original and adapted plays that explore the complexities and universality of human experience. Drawing from the traditions of Eastern European theatre and a diverse international ensemble, Nemeth combines all artistic elements of production to create work that overcomes limitations of language, customs, and theatrical convention.

The New Stage Theatre Company (NSTC) was founded in 2002 by Ildiko Nemeth to bring International Artists together through culturally diverse collaborations, and to introduce New York audiences to the work of underrepresented foreign playwrights. Since then NSTC has built its reputation as a "daring downtown experimental group" (Back Stage) with a flair for the dramatically and visually surreal. In 2012 The New York Innovative Theatre Awards cited NSTC's 10th Anniversary as a "story of the year," remarking on the company's "unique brand of sophisticated, inspired and startling stage craft."

Garden of Delights is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The production is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by Spain Culture New York - Consulate General of Spain: a member of the Spain Arts & Culture network.

Performances are Thursdays – Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased online at www.SmartTix.com or by calling 212-868-4444. The running time is 90 minutes. For more information visit www.NewStageTheatre.org. The theater is accessible from the L train to 1st Ave, F to 2nd Ave, N, R to 8th St, or 6 to Astor Place.

Photo Credit: Lee Wexler/ImagesForInnovation.org