Off Broadway Prelude Weekend – Series D

In a New York-first, the CUNY Graduate Center will offer a three-day Prelude Weekend featuring work being produced by the city’s distinctive off-Broadway theater community. The Graduate Center’s Martin E. Segal Theatre Center will join with the Alliance of Resident Theatres (A.R.T.)/New York to present 16 A.R.T. member companies, providing a compacted preview of diverse plays being developed for the 2003-04 season and beyond, and a unique forum for showcasing the extraordinary off-Broadway theater scene.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS for Saturday, October 4
(For additional events, see Series A, B, and C)

Elebash Recital Hall

12:00 – 1:30

Jean Cocteau Repertory: Excerpts from The Threepenny Opera
The company will perform songs and scenes from their 2003-2004 season production of Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill musical, The Threepenny Opera. Producing Artistic Director David Fuller will be on hand to discuss the other productions of the season in more detail, as well. Website: www.jeancocteaurep.org

2:00 – 3:30

Clubbed Thumb: Producing New Works by People You Never Heard of…

This Obie award-winning theater company explains how they select and develop their funny, strange and provocative new plays, and discuss the thrills and agonies-artistic and practical-of producing new work by people you’ve never heard of. Playwrights, directors and actors will be on hand to illustrate with fresh chunks of works-in-progress. Website: www.clubbedthumb.org

4:00- 5:30

Salt & Pepper Mime Company: Demystifying Mime
The Salt and Pepper Mime company fuses mime with African American folklore, providing people of color with the opportunity to create work devoid of typecasting and incorporate diversity within the variety arts. The company will present an introduction to mime and explore concepts of exposition, adaptation, introspection, fusion, and reflection.

6:00 – 7:30

The Spartan Theatre: Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn playwrights

As a season preview, Greenpoint’s The Spartan Theatre will perform staged readings of two one act comedies: Freedom’s Bird ( by Williamsburg, Brooklyn native and author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith) and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Chaz (by Greenpoint playwright, Robert Grady). A 15 minute Q & A session will follow. The Spartan will offer three of Smith’s one-acts in mid-November at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center. Website: www.spartantheatere.com