Metropolitan
Playhouse and JAJ Productions
Presents
the World Premiere of
David
Koteles’
MY
FIRST LADY
Directed
by Jason Jacobs
As a
part of the Metropolitan Playhouse Founder’s Festival
January
18 – 27, 2013
At
Metropolitan Playhouse
New York: The
Metropolitan Playhouse and JAJ Production are proud to present the
World Premiere of David Koteles’ My First Lady, directed by
Jason Jacobs as part of the Metropolitan Playhouse Founder’s
Festival (running January 14- 27) The Playhouse is located at 220 East
4th Street. Tickets are $15-18 and can be purchased by visiting
www.metropolitanplayhouse.org.
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.
Jacobs and Koteles have
collaborated on several projects before, most notably on the award-winning,
GLAAD-nominated BALD DIVA!: The Ionesco Parody Your Mother Warned You
About (published in the NYTE’s
anthology
Playing
with Canons: Explosive New Works from Great Literature by America’s Indie
Playwrights.)
Please
join Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and Thomas Jefferson’s
daughters for tea and pleasantries at the President’s House. All slaves must be
left at the door. In My First Lady a friendly gathering for a cup of tea with
the First Ladies takes a funny and unexpected turn towards a battle of race,
class, and gender in the new American republic.
The cast for My
First Lady include Karla Hendrick (Twelve Night, Blithe Spirit)
, Wendy Merritt (The Great Divide,
The Importance of Being Earnest), , Leah
Reddy (Two Gentleman of Verona), Ashley Denise Robinson (Film:
Waver. Stage: Julius Caesar), Alyssa Simon (Film:
Anniversary Dinner, Stage: Alone), and Deborah White (TV:
“Law & Order,” “Growing Pains”). Associate Producer: Heather
Olmstead. Costumes: Louisa Galante.
Lighting: Christopher
Weston.
My First Lady
By David Koteles; Directed by Jason Jacobs
Performances:
Friday
Jan 18 at 9pm, Sunday Jan 20 at 9pm, Tuesday Jan 22 at 7pm, Sunday Jan 27 at
1:30pm
Running time is 85 minutes
Tickets are $15 -$18 and can be purchase by
visiting www.metropolitanplayhouse.org.
Tickets:
$18
Adults; $15 Seniors (65+) and Full Time Students; $10 Children
The Metropolitan Playhouse is located at 220
East Fourth Street
For more information on the festival please visit
http://www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/
Mr. Jacobs and Mr.
Koteles are available to discuss My First Lady. To arrange press seats or
interviews please contact Springer Associates PR /212 354 4660 /
joe@springerassociatespr.com
JASON
JACOBS
(co-conceiver/ director) is a New York-based theatre director who has
been identified as a 2007 Person of the Year by NYTheatre.com for his
outstanding contributions to the cultural landscape. His productions have
received two GLAAD Media Award nominations and critical praise from The New York Times,
Time Out New York,
The Village Voice,
and TheatreMania.com. Jason's
work probes a broad range of interests with a focus on adaptations of classic
texts and historic material. His original play Another Horatio Alger Story
explores Alger's the 19th century rags-to-riches stories from a
contemporary perspective. He co-created Bald Diva!, a queer twist on
Eugene Ionesco's The Bald
Soprano, blending the Theatre of the Absurd style with contemporary
gay theatre to create a potent theatrical cocktail. In Burlington Vermont, he
initiated an adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya to address the
specific concerns of the rural Vermont community. He also directs bold
interpretations of classic texts, such Oliver Twist, The Tempest, As You Like It, and
The Cherry
Orchard. Jason is also passionate about working on new plays. He has
created dynamic solo productions with Kathryn Blume, founder of the Lysistrata
Project, and Jeremy Lawrence (Lavender Songs -- winner of
a 2008 Backstage Bistro Award). He has also directed plays by Richard Sheinmel
(Post Modern
Living), Jason Schafer (i google myself) and David
Koteles (The Trick
and Bald
Diva). He loves opera and directed Center for Contemporary Opera's
premiere production of Mario
and the Magician.With a strong commitment to teaching and working
with young people, Jason is a teaching artist for Roundabout Theatre Company. He
has taught at Williamstown Theatre Festival and worked as a guest artist at Long
Island University/CW Post Campus, NYU Department of Dramatic Writing, Bay Shore
High School, and Beacon High School in New York City. He co-founded The Theatre
Askew Youth Performance Experience, which empowers lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and questioning youth in the NYC area to develop their unique
theatrical voices, and directed TAYPE's first two initial productions. Born and
raised in Culver City, California, Jason received his undergraduate degree from
Yale and his MFA from Columbia, under the tutelage of Anne Bogart, Robert
Woodruff, Brian Kulick, and Tina Landau. Additionally, he has been spotted on
stage over the years in a range of roles the Grasshopper in James and the Giant Peach,
his own solo piece Poor
Sport, and the enigmatic meterosexual "Tom the Assistant" in Polly
Frost's episodic series Sex
Scenes.
DAVID
KOTELES (co-conceiver / playwright)has
had plays produced on the east and west coasts, including his award-winning,
GLAAD-nominated comedy Bald Diva!: the Ionesco Parody
Your Mother Warned You About. Bald
Diva!
was
later published in NYTE’s
anthology
Playing with Canons:
Explosive New Works from Great Literature by America’s Indie Playwrights.
And
it was listed on numerous end-of-the-year (“Best of the Season”) lists for best
play of 2004. David's enjoyed numerous New York productions, workshops and
readings of his work at such places as Ensemble Studio Theatre, Manhattan Class
Company, The Rattlestick, Alice's Fourth Floor, Primary Stages, The Perry Street
Playhouse, Manhattan Theatre Source, Clemente Soto Velez, the Fresh Fruit
Festival, the Homogenius Festival, Cherry Picking, the Red Room, and the
Westbank Café. A graduate of the Columbia
University
School of the Arts, David has studied playwriting with Theresa Rebeck, Anne
Bogart, Eduardo Machado, Leslie Ayvazian, Frank Pugliese, and Kelly Stuart. He
was also honored with the Richard Rodgers Scholarship and a Howard Stein
Fellowship while at Columbia. David graduated summa cum
laude
from Queens College, where he was made Phi Beta Kappa and earned the John Golden
Award for Playwriting. He has also written several (as of yet unproduced) film
scripts and TV pilots, and David was a finalist for the Writer’s Lab at the
Sundance Film Festival. His play The Cook's
Tour
has received multiple readings starring Estelle Parson, Kathleen Chalfant and
Mary Louise Burke. He’s a staff writer on the webisode sitcom,
Ernie’s
Girls.
He recently adapted the bestselling book You Say Tomato, I Say
Shut Up,
written by married couple Anabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn, which is now on
national tour.
METROPOLITAN
PLAYHOUSE explores America’s
theatrical heritage to illuminate contemporary American culture. The Playhouse
produces early American plays, new plays drawn from American culture and
history, and plays from around the world that resonate with the American
canon
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