Plays | Performance Space New York

Southern Promises

southern

” is situation satire with a vengeance, and each situation ups the ante for the audience.”
– Margo Jefferson, New York Times

“IMPRESSIVE! are a wickedly shocking double bill that unapologetically flaunt racial conflict…”
– Time Out New York

When the master of the plantation dies, he wills his slaves to be freed, but his wife doesn’t think that good property should be squandered. Pandemonium ensues. The play is inspired by the true story of Henry Box Brown who escaped to the north by mailing himself in a box. Southern Promises provides a unique portrait of the old south.

Playwright provocateur Thomas Bradshaw ignites the stage yet again in his signature inflammatory style. Following sold out and controversial runs at Performance Space 122, including Prophet and Purity, and elsewhere, including Strom Thurmond Is Not a Racist and Cleansed, Bradshaw teams with acclaimed director Jose Zayas (a/d Talk Radio) for an explosive new creation that is not for the faint of heart.
Featuring: Hugh Sinclair*, Lia Aprile*, Erwin Thomas*, Jeff Biehl*, Peter Mccabe*, Sadrina Johnson*, Derrick Sanders*, Matt Huffman.

More Plays by Thomas Bradshaw:

PURITY, PROPHET, CLEANSED and STROM THURMOND IS NOT A RACIST are published by Samuel French, Inc. Learn more about them and get your copies today at https://www.samuelfrench.com

Presented in conjunction with The Immediate Theatre Company and Queens Theater in the Park. Produced in collaboration with the David Schwartz Foundation.

Southern Promises was developed, in part, through IRT Theater’s Artist in Residence Program.
www.irttheater.org

*Appearing courtesy Actors’ Equity. AEA approved showcase.

Photo courtesy of Yi Zhao

Southern Promises is part of Best of Boroughs: as part of our commitment to promoting excellence in the arts in New York City, PS122 partners with esteemed arts organizations from all over the city to present B.O.B., a tour of the brightest local theatre, dance and performance from the five boroughs.

September 7-27, 2008
Wed-Sat 8:30pm
Sun+Mon 7pm
No performance Mon, Sept 15
or Wed, Sept 24
Tickets from $18
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (PS122 members)

Hello Failure

” a rare sort of poet who can bring you along on rhapsodic flights of storytelling, like an expert rafter running the rapids of a wild and unruly word river. ”
– Misha Berson, The Seattle Times

“One of the best new plays of the season”
– George Hunka

“the fluid, quirky groove is Kosmas’ powerfully evocative writing. Kosmas’ is a sharp, prismatic voice that refracts her characters’ language into a new world both oddly familiar and intriguingly foreign. “
– Brook Stowe, theater2k

Kristen Kosmas’ newest work is a sprawling associative neo-realistic comedy of beauty involving seven submariners’ wives, one counterfeit civil war ghost, one lusty renegade hairdresser and a poignant potted plant all making it through the day…barely.

Acclaimed playwright and co-founder of Obie-Award winning Little Theater, Kristen Kosmas will premier her new work Hello Failure at PS122 this season. In Hello Failure, Kosmas’ singular voice and distinctive theatrical sensibility create an oddly affecting and delightfully disorienting world, where bridges and communication collapse, and little attempts at kindness are botched or lost in the mail. Misha Berson of The Seattle Times says Kosmas is “a rare sort of poet who can bring you along on rhapsodic flights of storytelling, like an expert rafter running the rapids of a wild and unruly word river.” Kosmas’ work has been seen across the country and in New York City at venues including Dixon Place, Little Theater, Barbes, BRIC, Nada, the Ontological/Hysteric Downstairs Series, and The Ohio.

Directed by:
Ken Rus Schmoll

Featuring:
Michael Chick,
Benjamin Forster,
Janna Gjesdal,
Megan Hart,
Joan Jubett,
Kristen Kosmas,
Matthew Maher,
Aimee Phelan-Deconinck,
Tricia Rodley
and Maria Striar

Previews: March 2 – 4, 2008
Runs March 6 – 22, 2008
Mon, Thurs – Sat at 8:00pm,
Sundays at 6:30pm
Tickets from $18, $15 (students/seniors)

Susan Sontags A Parsifal

Susan Sontag's A Parsifal

“Jahnke directs with elegance and insight. He provides a luscious sightscape and coaxes excellent work from his actors.” – Village Voice

The world premiere of a trenchant play by legendary Susan Sontag is brought to life in a visionary staging by John Jahnke, founder of The Hotel Savant and former member of Reza Abdoh’s Dar a Luz. In this poetic yet gritty deconstruction of the opera, Wagner’s innocent knight is instead an Uzi-toting soldier seeking arbitrary sex and violence. Jahnke crafts a phantasmagoric epic in which to pit the individual against the system and pose Sontag’s unflinching questions of consequence, accountability and blame.

Featuring Black Eyed Susan, Gardiner Comfort and Okwui Okpokwasili

Approximate running time: 1 hour 5 minutes

February 23-March 5, 2006
Opens Thursday, February 23, 2006
Wednesday-Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday at 5 p.m.
Sunday Afternoon Discovery Feb 26
$20($10 Members)
Please note:
No late seating

Prophet

Prophet Prophet

“Fasten your seatbelts. ‘Prophet,’ Thomas Bradshaw’s lacerating satire, has begun.”-The New York Times

Emerging playwright and provocateur Thomas Bradshaw (Strom Thurmond Is Not a Racist) has had his work produced at venues such as Walkerspace, Richard Foreman’s Ontological Theatre and Bard College. In his new work Prophet, Bradshaw continues to provoke and intrigue. A man wakes up one morning and decides he must kill himself. He is angry with himself for not hitting his wife every time she has an independent thought (as Abraham and Moses would have done). After she dies and God reveals to him that he is the new Prophet, the man takes a new wife, dresses her in slave chains, and begins to preach his newfound gospel of male domination. Simultaneously humorous and disturbing, Bradshaw’s Prophet explores controversial issues in startling and unexpected ways.

Photo: Daniel Rhatigan

Click to read the rave review in The New York Times.

November 30-December 17, 2005
Wednesday-Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays at 4:30 p.m.
$20($10 Members)

Murder

Personal Space Theatrics presents the New York Premiere of Murder, by Hanoch Levin, Israel’s most renowned playwright. Amidst the carnage of a seemingly endless war, Levin presents an unflinching, provocative and universal look at the cycle of violence and revenge. Murder transcends politics, race, religion and sound bites to tell a haunting and deeply moving story about the struggle between vengeance and forgiveness. This celebrated and controversial play has been produced in over twenty countries and a dozen languages.

“Director-adaptor Michael Weiselberg’s staging probes
at the startlingly graphic realities of human suffering, and his cast’s sensitive handling of the play’s intricate language gives this otherwise bleak work color.”
-The Village Voice. Click to read the review.

–Learn more about Personal Space Theatrics

October 15-30, 2005
Opens Saturday, October 15 at 8:30 p.m.
Performs Wednesday-Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays at 4:30 p.m.

Sunday Afternoon Discovery on October 23,
followed by an 8:30 p.m. performance
$20($10 Members)