Lia Chang
Jon Norman Schneider (Barriers, The Dumb Waiter, Durango), Birgit Huppuch (The Foundry Theatre’s Telephone), Alex Draper (Howard Barker’s Gary the Thief and No End to Blame, the Presnyakov Brothers’ Terrorism), Jesse Lenat (Michael Kimmel’s The Last Goodbye, Melissa James Gibson’s Current Nobody), Annie McNamara (Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz, Sheila Callaghan’s That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play), Hubert Point-Du Jour (Target Margin’s recent production of The Tempest and The Really Big Once), and Maria Striar (P.S. 122’s Hello Failure, Producing Artistic Director of Clubbed Thumb) are featured in 13P’s world premiere of A Map of Virtue by Erin Courtney, and directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, through February 25, 2012 at the 4th Street Theatre. The 4th Street Theatre is located at 83 East 4th Street in New York City. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased by visiting www.13p.org or calling 866.811.4111.
About the show: “In A Map of Virtue, two strangers meet at a diner and a swarm of birds descends. The woman builds her art career around a bird statue that the man leaves behind. He slashes her painting and they become friends. This begins a series of random and violent events that echo the strangeness of their first meeting. A small bird statue guides us through this symmetrical story about the limits of our virtues and what we leave behind.”
The play is informed by Courtney’s training and work as a painter before she was a playwright.
Jon Norman Schneider has appeared Off-Broadway in Queens Boulevard (the musical) (Signature), Durango (Public), Ching Chong Chinaman (Pan Asian Rep), Barriers (Desipina), A Play on War, and Blind Mouth Singing (NAATCO), among others. His regional credits include A Number (NAATCO/ETOPiA), Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them (ATL/Humana), Pool Boy (Barrington Stage), American Hwangap (Magic), Durango (Long Wharf), and Citizen 13559: the Journal of Ben Uchida (Kennedy Center). TV: “The Electric Company,” “30 Rock,” “Law & Order: CI”. Film: The Normals (upcoming), Lefty Loosey Righty Tighty, Last Night, The Rebound, and HBO’s Angel Rodriguez opposite Rachel Griffiths. BFA, New York University.
The A Map of Virtue creative team includes Marsha Ginsberg (Sets and Costumes), Tyler Micoleau (Lighting) and Daniel Kluger (Sound and Music).
53rd State Press will publish the text of A Map of Virtue in February 2012 in a volume that also features Courtney’s Black Cat Lost. The book will be available online at www.53rdstatepress.com and at the box office.
After A Map of Virtue, 13P will present its final show, a premiere by Sarah Ruhl (summer 2012; details TBA). Details are forthcoming. 13P’s final season (its “ImPlosion Season) will also include A People’s History of 13P, an oral history video archive that documents the experiences and challenges 13P has faced from inception to implosion. This archive will exist at 13P.org and will include filmed interviews with the playwrights, collaborators and supporters who have championed this new model for a decade.
The season concludes with an ImPlosion Party, a blowout bash. Date, location and others details will be announced soon.
About the Artists
Erin Courtney (P#12) is currently writing a new play called Service Road, a commission for the Adhesive Theater Company. Her new play Honey Drop was part of the Clubbed Thumb/Playwrights Horizons Superlab and was given a mini-workshop at New Georges. Her other plays include Alice the Magnet, Demon Baby, Quiver and Twitch and Black Cat Lost. She has collaborated with Elizabeth Swados on Kasper Hauser: A Foundling’s Opera, which was produced at The Flea Theater and named one of The Downtown Theater Favorites of 2009 by Tom Murrin of Paper Magazine. Her plays have been produced or developed by Clubbed Thumb, The Public Theater, The Flea, The Vineyard, Playwrights Horizons, NYS&F, and Soho Rep. Demon Baby is published in two anthologies; New Downtown Now, edited by Mac Wellman and Young Jean Lee and published by University of Minnesota Press; and Funny, Strange, Provocative: Seven Plays by Clubbed Thumb, edited by Maria Striar and Erin Detrick and published by Playscripts, Inc. She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb as well as the co-founder of the Brooklyn Writer’s Space. Ms. Courtney teaches playwriting at Brooklyn College. She earned her M.F.A. in playwriting at Brooklyn College with Mac Wellman. A Map of Virtue and Black Cat Lost will be published in 2012 by 53rd State Press.
Ken Rus Schmoll (Director) has directed the 13P productions of Anne Washburn’s The Internationalist, Rob Handel’s Aphrodisiac, and Kate E. Ryan’s Mark Smith. He went on to direct The Internationalist at the Vineyard Theatre and Aphrodisiac at the Long Wharf Theatre. Collaborations with Erin Courtney include her play Demon Baby for Clubbed Thumb, where he is an affiliated artist, and her play Black Cat Lost in Soho Rep’s studio series. Recent credits include Madeleine George’s Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England at Two River Theater Company; FUREE in Pins & Needles, a version of Harold Rome’s 1937 musical Pins & Needles, co-produced by the Foundry Theatre and Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE); Will Eno’s Middletown at the Vineyard Theatre; Ariana Reines’s Telephone for the Foundry Theatre, for which he received an OBIE Award; and the American premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s opera Proserpina for Spoleto Festival USA. His staging at Tanglewood of the world premiere of Charles Wuorinen’s cantata It Happens Like This will be remounted at the Guggenheim in February 2012. Also upcoming: Ellen Maddow’s The Peripherals with the Talking Band. He is currently co-chair, with Jenny Schwartz, of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab.
Other Articles by Lia Chang:
Desipina & Co. Presents Pooja Kumar, Sunkrish Bala, Joe Petrilla, Eileen Rivera, Jon Norman Schneider & Rajeev Varma in Rehana Lew Mirza’s Barriers at HERE
Christine Toy Johnson, Jaygee Macapugay, Jon Norman Schneider to perform in National Asian Artists Project: Discover: New Musicals at 47th Street Theatre
Jon Norman Schneider is Making a Splash in Pool Boy at the Barrington Stage Company’s Musical Theatre Lab
Photo Call: BD Wong and the Cast of Heading East at the Asia Society
Linsanity: Sports Illustrated Cover Guy New York Knicks Starting Point Guard Jeremy Lin
Athol Fugard’s Blood Knot, starring Colman Domingo & Scott Shepherd in The Alice Griffith Jewel Box at The Pershing Square Signature Center through March 11, 2012
Photos: AALDEF 2012 Justice in Action Honorees Parkin Lee, Jean Koh Peters and Fareed Zakaria
Remembering Civil Rights Leader Gordon Hirabayashi,1918- 2012
Broadwayworld.com Photo Flash: Library of Congress’ IN REHEARSAL Exhibit
Cindy Cheung’s solo show SPEAK UP CONNIE, directed by BD Wong at Stage Left Studio has been extended, February 5-15, 2012
broadwayworld.com: Photo Flash: SPEAK UP CONNIE In Rehearsal
Celebrate Chinese New Year w/ David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish
Ma-Yi Theatre Company Presents Qui Nguyen’s THE INEXPLICABLE REDEMPTION OF AGENT G at Theatre Row’s Beckett Theatre, 2/7 – 3/4
Photos: Yellow Fever Playwright Rick Shiomi Explores New Territory with An All-Female Cast
Photos: “How To Succeed” stars Daniel Radcliffe, Rose Hemingway and John Larroquette at Lord & Taylor for Windows Unveiling
Multimedia: Promises, Promises’ Stars Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes at Lord & Taylor Fifth Ave
Photos: David Duchovny, John Earl Jelks, Amanda Peet, Tracee Chimo opening night of Neil LaBute’s The Break of Noon
Click here for the Lia Chang Articles Archive and here for the Lia Chang Photography Website.
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Lia Chang. Photo by Brianne Michelle Photography
Lia Chang is an actor, a performance and fine art botanical photographer, and an award-winning multi-platform journalist. In 2010, the Library of Congress established The Lia Chang APA Theater Portfolio in the Asian Pacific American Performing Arts Collection housed in the Library of Congress Asian Division’s Asian Pacific American Islander Collection.
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