[NEohioPAL] Cleveland Play House FusionFest 2009

[Lisa Craig]

INTERNATIONAL FLAVORS HIGHLIGHT CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE FUSIONFEST 2009

Thornton Wilder Adaptation World Premiere at Heart of Multidisciplinary
Festival Now in Fourth Year

 

 

CLEVELAND, OH (March 5, 2009) -- For the fourth consecutive year, The
Cleveland Play House presents FusionFest, the only multidisciplinary
performing arts festival at a regional theatre in the country, from April
29-May 10, 2009. The festival will offer a sampling of international and
“other-worldly” works, including an ancient Japanese art form, Dogugaeshi,
by master puppeteer Basil Twist, performances by Charles Ross of his One-Man
Star Wars Trilogy, and a world-premiere adaptation of Thorton Wilder’s comic
novel Heaven’s My Destination, by Tony-award nominee Lee Blessing and
commissioned by The Play House expressly for FusionFest with support from
The Roe Green Foundation.

 

"This year marks the coming of age of FusionFest,” says Michael Bloom,
FusionFest creator and Cleveland Play House Artistic Director. “The
adventure is anchored by a world premiere play commissioned by The Play
House and includes exciting partnerships with the Cleveland Museum of Art
and The Cleveland Orchestra."

 

Complementing Heaven’s My Destination, for which The Cleveland Play House
received a $25,000 “Access to Artistic Excellence” grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the FusionFest lineup created by Bloom and Play
House Associate Artistic Director, Seth Gordon, includes partnerships with
the Cleveland Museum of Art, Verb Ballets, the Museum of Contemporary Art
Cleveland (MOCA), Karamu House, The Cleveland Orchestra and the Mandel
Jewish Community Center. This year’s New Play Readings feature works by two
members of The Play House Playwrights Unit, Eric Coble and Faye Sholiton.

 

Tickets to most FusionFest events can be purchased by calling The Cleveland
Play House ticket office at (216) 795-7000, ext 4 or online at
www.clevelandplayhouse.com. Ms. Roe Green is the Honorary Producing Sponsor
of FusionFest, presented in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

 


FUSIONFEST 2009 EVENTS

 

Heaven’s My Destination by Lee Blessing, based on the comic novel by
Thornton Wilder




Presented by The Cleveland Play House with support from National Endowment
for the Arts

April 24 – May 17, 2009 ~ Drury Theatre

Directed by Michael Bloom

Tickets Available NOW: $10 to $65; call Play House at 216-795-7000 or online

 

Meet George Marvin Brush—Don Quixote comes to Main Street in the Great
Depression, and one of Thornton Wilder’s most memorable characters.  A
traveling textbook salesman, he is also a fervent religious convert
determined to lead “a good life.”  In a startlingly relevant tale of
religion and tolerance—with poignant and sometimes hilarious
consequences—his travels take him through smoking cars, bawdy houses, banks,
and campgrounds from Texas to Illinois—and into the soul of America.

 

A Brush with Heaven: Thornton Wilder and America’s Spiritual Voice During
the Depression

A Symposium by The Cleveland Play House 

Sunday, April 26th, 4:30pm ~ Drury Theatre

Admission is FREE


An insightful look at The Cleveland Play House’s world premiere production
of Heaven’s My Destination, the life of Thornton Wilder and the inspiration
for his best-selling 1935 novel Heaven’s My Destination, and the
spiritually-conflicted world of its protagonist George Brush. Panelists
include Tappan Wilder, nephew of author Thornton Wilder; Lee Blessing,
playwright, Heaven's My Destination; Clayton Koppes, Professor of History,
Oberlin College; Michael Bloom, moderator.

 

Basil Twist’s “Dogugaeshi” presented by the Cleveland Museum of Art

April 30 – May 3, 2009 @ 3:00pm & 7:30pm  ~ Brooks Theatre

Tickets Available NOW: $39 / $41; call CMA at 1-888-CMA-0033

Master puppeteer Basil Twist unfolds an intimate, abstract, contemporary
journey of images and emotions influenced by the rare  tradition of Japanese
stage machinery, dogugaeshi. This hour-long performance features original
shamisen compositions created and performed live by master musician Yumiko
Tanaka. The multidisciplinary production blends Twist’s signature puppetry
with superb video projection, lighting, and sound design. Not suitable for
children under 12. 

Dorothy Silver Playwriting Award Winner presented by the Mandel Jewish
Community Center

Title TBA

April 30, 2009 @ 7:30pm ~ Studio One

Tickets Available NOW: $10; call Play House at 216-795-7000 or online

 

The Dorothy Silver Playwriting Competition, sponsored annually by the Mandel
Jewish Community Center, is a highly regarded international writing
competition for plays about the Jewish experience.  For over twenty years
countless plays with Jewish themes have been submitted to the competition.
Many past winners have been produced and received national recognition.  The
judging panel is comprised of seasoned theatre professionals drawn from the
Cleveland area, including producers, directors, actors and critics.  Dorothy
Silver, for whom the competition is named, is a well-known and respected
theatre professional who served as the Mandel JCC’s Cultural Arts Department
director for many years.

 

Verb Ballets All Stars presented by Verb Ballets

May 1-2, 2009 @ 7:30pm ~ Bolton Theatre

Tickets Available NOW: $18 / $25; call Play House at 216-795-7000 or online

 

See the world premiere of In the Groove and Over the Top from nationally
respected choreographer and native Clevelander Dianne McIntyre, and a major
revival from Verb Ballets repertoire by Seán Curran, Mozart Piano Trio in C
Major. The pieces in this repertoire also highlight music from the classical
and jazz worlds.  

 

New Play Readings presented by The Cleveland Play House

Tickets Available NOW: $10; call Play House at 216-795-7000 or online

 

 

*	A Girl's Guide to Coffee, by Eric Coble

Directed by Seth Gordon 

Sunday, May 3 @ 4:00 ~ Studio One

 




Everything you need to know can be learned behind the counter of the Steamed
Bean Coffee House, at the hands of barista-extraordinaire Alex. Join her as
she grapples with life, love, death and decaf beans in her quest for the
Holy Grail of espresso: The Perfect Latte.

 

*	U.S. v. Howard Mechanic, by Faye Sholiton. Adapted from The Fugitive
Candidate: The Autobiography of Howard Mechanic, The Last Prisoner of the
Vietnam War, by Howard Mechanic 

Directed by Seth Gordon

Saturday, May 9 @ 4:00 ~ Brooks Theatre

 

Shaker Heights native Howard Mechanic never dreamed his presence at a campus
anti-Vietnam War rally would prompt his false arrest on federal charges and
turn him into a fugitive for nearly 30 years. U.S. v Howard Mechanic
examines how one idealist struggles to stay whole while trying to reclaim
his freedom and his life.

 

 

Minstrel Show, or The Lynching of William Brown by Max Sparber, presented by
Karamu

New Play Reading 

May 2, 2009 @ 4:00 pm ~ Studio One

Tickets Available NOW: $10; call Play House at 216-795-7000 or online

 

A retelling of the harrowing story of the real-life murder of an
African-American man in Omaha, Neb., in 1919, through the narration of two
fictional African-American blackface performers.

 

One-Man Star Wars Trilogy by Charles Ross, presented by The Cleveland Play
House

May 6 – 10, 2009 @ 3:00pm & 8:30pm ~ Baxter Stage

Tickets Available NOW: $20 / $29; call Play House at 216-795-7000 or online

 

A one-hour, high energy, nonstop blast through the first three Star Wars
films. The catch is there's only one cast member. Charles Ross, the writer
and solo performer, spent too much of his childhood in a galaxy far, far
away and adulthood has been similar. Ross plays all the characters,
recreates the effects, sings the music, flies the ships, and fights both
sides of the battles.

 

American Music with the Cleveland Orchestra Chamber Players presented by The
Cleveland Orchestra

Friday, May 8, 2009 @ 6:30pm ~ Brooks Theatre

Tickets Available NOW: $40; call Play House at 216-795-7000 or online

 

Members of The Cleveland Orchestra will perform American chamber music from
the 1930s that explores the depths of the human spirit and shared emotional
experiences from this historic era, represented in various works of American
musical legends from Aaron Copland to George Gershwin.

 

Pechu Kucha presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA)

May 8, 2009 @ 8:20pm ~ MOCA

Admission is FREE

Let us now bullet-point our praise for Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, two
Tokyo-based architects who have turned PowerPoint, that fixture of cubicle
life, into both art form and competitive sport. Their innovation, dubbed
pecha-kucha (Japanese for "chatter"), applies a simple set of rules to
presentations: exactly 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. That's it.
Say what you need to say in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely
matched words and images and then sit the hell down. The result, in the
hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to
transform corporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock
performance art. 

 

Roe Green, Honorary Producer, arts patron and community activist, is Chief
Executive Officer of the Roe Green Foundation. With a B.A. in Theatre and
Communications from the University of Colorado and a Masters degree in
Theatre from Kent State University, her experience in stage and business
management includes Cain Park; the Cleveland Opera; and the Cincinnati
Playhouse in the Park.  Today, she is President Emeritus of CAVORT, Inc.,
the Conference About Volunteers of Regional Theatres; serves on the Kent
State University School of Theatre and Dance Advisory Board; the Foundation
Board of Kent State University; the Board of Porthouse Theatre; the Board
for the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in Jupiter, Florida; and the Board of The
Cleveland Play House.  She is responsible for the Roe Green Visiting
Director Series for the School of Theatre and Dance at Kent State and the
University of Colorado and the Green Arts Fund, which supports the Mandel
Jewish Community Center arts and culture programs. Ms. Green recently
received the 2009 State of Ohio Governor’s Award for Arts Patron.

 

The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to
supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the
arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education.
Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal
government, the Arts Endowment is the largest annual national funder of the
arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner
cities, and military bases.

 

Founded in 1915, The Cleveland Play House is the first permanently
established professional theatre in the United States. More than 12 million
people have attended over 1,300 productions at The Play House – including
more than 130 American and/or World Premieres. Today, under the leadership
of Artistic Director Michael Bloom and Managing Director Kevin Moore, The
Cleveland Play House is an artist-driven theatre that serves the Greater
Cleveland community by holding true to its mission: To produce plays of the
highest professional standards that inspire, stimulate, and entertain our
diverse audiences, to conduct training and educational programs that enhance
the quality of life for those we serve and help to insure the future of
theatre.

 

The Cleveland Play House is funded through the generosity of Cuyahoga County
residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, and The Ohio Arts Council which
helps to fund The Cleveland Play House with state tax dollars to encourage
economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all
Ohioans.

 

# # #

 

 

Lisa Craig 
Public Relations Manager 
Cleveland Play House 
8500 Euclid Avenue 
Cleveland OH  44106 
Phone (216) 795-7000 x236
FAX (216) 795-7005 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20090305/de644021/attachment-0003.htm>