LOS ANGELES, CA (August 15, 2019) – Greenway Arts Alliance (Whitney Weston and Pierson Blaetz, Co-Founders and Co-Artistic Directors) announces its 2019-2020 Season, which includes the Los Angeles Premiere of The Chinese Lady, co-produced with Artists at Play; the Tony and Olivier Award-winning “Best Play”— The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the 4th Annual L.A. Get Down Festival, A Celebration of Hip Hop and Spoken Word. The season productions and festival will be presented at Greenway Court Theatre (544 N. Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles).
“We are excited to be starting our season with the Los Angeles Premiere of The Chinese Lady and to work with our partners, Artists at Play. Greenway Arts Alliance is dedicated to presenting plays that represent Los Angeles' landscape and we believe it’s important to provide a platform for diverse stories to be told,” said Whitney Weston, Greenway Arts Alliance Co-Founder, and Co-Artistic Director. She added, “We also enjoy creating intimate experiences with Broadway and internationally acclaimed hits like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at our Greenway Court Theatre. We hope that fans of the novel or play will come and see this theatrical event directed by Kate Jopson.”
Pierson Blaetz, Greenway Arts Alliance Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director shared, “We’re also thrilled to be collaborating once again with Festival Director Shihan Van Clief. Every year, in celebration of National Poetry Month, Shihan curates an exciting range of poetic programming, national team competitions for cash prizes and engaging workshops taught by the industry’s leading spoken word performers. And, we are honored that the L.A. Get Down Festival continues to serve as an annual must-attend event by poets and poetry audiences around the country.”
Flex subscriptions for Greenway Arts Alliance’s 2019-2020 Season are available for $60.00, which includes The Chinese Lady, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and one event at the 4thAnnual L.A. Get Down Festival. For more information about the season, visit www.GreenwayCourtTheatre.org or call 323-673-0544.
The Chinese Lady
By Lloyd Suh
Directed by Rebecca Wear
September 5 – 29, 2019
Opening Night: Saturday, September 7 at 8:00 pm
Inspired by the true story of America’s first female Chinese immigrant, The Chinese Lady is a dark, poetic, yet whimsical portrait of America through the eyes of a young Chinese woman. Afong Moy is 14 years old when she’s brought to the United States from Canton in 1834. Allegedly the first Chinese woman to set foot on U.S. soil, she has been bought and put on display for the American public as “The Chinese Lady.” For the next half a century, she performs for curious museum-goers, showing them how she eats, what she wears, and the highlight of the event: how she walks with bound feet. As the decades wear on, her celebrated sideshow comes to define and challenge her very sense of identity. The Chinese Lady blurs the line between the observed and the observer and gives us new eyes on the history of American entitlement and immigration. Featuring Amy She and Trieu Tran, with Hao Feng and Stephanie Wong.
Named a New York Times Critic’s Pick in November 2018, the Times said of The Chinese Lady, “Extraordinary play…piercing…heart-rending…” and “…gently comical drama…”
Lloyd Suh is the author of The Chinese Lady, Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery, American Hwangap, The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra Go!, Jesus in India, and others, produced with Ma-Yi, Magic Theatre, EST, NAATCO, PlayCo, Denver Center, Milwaukee Rep, ArtsEmerson, Children's Theatre Co, and more, including internationally at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and with PCPA in Seoul, Korea. He has received support from the NEA Arena Stage New Play Development Program, Mellon Foundation, NYFA, NYSCA, Jerome, TCG, Dramatists Guild, and residencies including NYS&F and Ojai. He is an alum of Youngblood and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and was a recipient of a 2016 Helen Merrill Award and the 2019 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. From 2005-2010 he served as Artistic Director of Second Generation and Co-Director of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab and has served since 2011 as the Director of Artistic Programs at The Lark, and since 2015 as a member of the Dramatists Guild Council.
Director Rebecca Wear’s credits include Samsaraby Lauren Yee (Coeurage Theatre); If the Saintsby Eric Conner Marlin (Metro Baptist); Obedient Steel by Chloe Brown (HERE arts); and I Run with You by Anna/Kate (Women’s Center Stage). She associate directed the world premiere of Lynn Nottage’s Sweat (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage). Rebecca is a resident director with HERO Theatre, previous associate artist at The Orchard Project, and is pursuing a Ph.D. through a Chancellor’s Fellowship at University of California, Santa Barbara. She is also a 2019 National Directing Fellow (Eugene O'Neill/NNPN/Kennedy Center/SDC).
Single tickets for The Chinese Lady are available at GreenwaCourtTheatre.org/TheChineseLady.
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| Kate Jopson |
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
A Play by Simon Stephens
Based on the novel by Mark Haddon
Directed by Kate Jopson
November 1 – December 8, 2019
Opening Night: Saturday, November 2 at 8:00 pm
Fifteen-year-old Christopher has an extraordinary brain: He is exceptional at mathematics but ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched, and he distrusts strangers. Now it is seven minutes after midnight, and Christopher stands beside his neighbor’s dead dog, Wellington, who has been speared with a garden fork. Finding himself under suspicion, Christopher is determined to solve the mystery of who murdered Wellington, and he carefully records each fact of the crime. But his detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a thrilling journey that upturns his world.
Winner of the 2015 Tony Award for Best Play. "This adaptation by the acclaimed playwright Simon Stephens is intensely, innately theatrical; it is also funny and extremely moving…resonates with quality." —Telegraph (London). "…just terrific…a profoundly moving play about adolescence, fractured families, mathematics, colors, and lights…dazzling." —Independent (London). "A beautiful, eloquent, dazzlingly inventive show about the wonders of life." —Evening Standard (London).
Simon Stephens has written many plays that have been translated into more than 30 languages and produced all over the world. He is a professor of playwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University, an associate playwright at the Royal Court Theatre, the artistic associate at the Lyric Hammersmith in London, and the Steep Associate Playwright at Steep Theatre in Chicago.
Kate Jopson specializes in experienced-based productions that utilize the unique history, architecture, or environment of a theatre or site. She recently directed her first short film Protect & Serve, and a web series called The Web Opera about cyberbullying and privacy violations. Recent Theatre credits: Hole in the Sky (Circle X Theatre); Mad Hatter Gin & Tea Party (Fever Up Productions) Candide (Santa Cruz Shakespeare); Fefu & Her Friends (Circle X Theatre/J.U.S.T Toys Productions, LA); 1984 (Greenway Court Theatre, LA); An Accident (Griot Theatre, LA), Twelfth Night (Coeurage Theatre Co. LA); Second Skin (The West/The Flagship Ensemble); A Willow Grows Aslant (La Jolla Playhouse—Without Walls Fest.). She has assisted at the Seoul Arts Center, La Jolla Playhouse, ACT (SF), California Shakespeare Theatre, and The Magic Theatre among others. Former Artistic Director of Circle X Theatre.
This production is also the final component of Greenway’s literacy program, GreenwayREADS, where 21 LAUSD English and Drama classes work with Greenway Institute for the Arts’ teaching artists, receive a copy of the book to keep and see a matinee performance of the play at the Greenway Court Theatre free of charge.
The 4th Annual L.A. Get Down Festival
A Celebration of Hip Hop and Spoken Word
Festival Director Shihan Van Clief
Produced in association with Da Poetry Lounge
Weekends in April 2019
The L.A. Get Down Festival is a celebration of hip hop and spoken word. Da Poetry Lounge Co-Fonder Shihan Van Clief serves as the Festival Director.
The Festival lineup and schedule will be announced at a later date.
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