FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BIMA
–
NEW YORK
PRESENTS
ITS
INAUGURAL THEATER EVENT
STANTON
STREET
LIVE! A New Light in December
(readings
of new work and music)
December 1, 2005 --
FROM
NEW YORK
’S
NEWEST JEWISH THEATRE COLLECTIVE,
Robin Carus, Jolyn J. Kramberg, Nicole Raphael,
Allen
Rickman
Laurie Gwen Shapiro, Harriet Spitzer-Picker, and Eric
Winick
One
performance only!
Monday evening, December 19th
The
Historic Stanton Street
Shul
180 Stanton St.
btw. Clinton & Attorney Streets
Tickets:
$5 please call (917) 826-0080
BIMA-
New York
(Robin Carus, Jolyn J. Kramberg, Nicole Raphael, Harriet Spitzer-Picker and
Christopher Thomas, Co-Artistic Directors) has announced the first creative
endeavor of its inaugural season,
STANTON
STREET
LIVE! A New Light in December, an
evening of new work written and performed by members of the Bima-NY theatre
collective.
The evening will feature:
·
M*E*N*S*C*H,
a reading of a new ten-minute play written by Eric Winick and directed by Harriet
Spitzer-Picker;
·
Bringing
Down the Light, a reading of a one-woman play
written by Nicole Raphael, based on a Chassidic tale;
·
Dramatic excerpts from the
award-winning book The Matzo Ball Heiress by
Laurie Gwen Shapiro (co-director, “Keep the River on the Right”)
·
and holiday-inspired
musical selections sung by Harriet Spitzer-Picker and Allen Rickman
M*E*N*S*C*H,
a scabrous send-up of the popular film and TV show “M*A*S*H,” concerns two
renegade rabbis who chill out between grueling Hanukkah services, much to the
dismay of their temple's straight-laced administrator. In Bringing
Down the Light, Ms. Raphael relives a Chassidic tale as she searches for her
righteous ancestor. In The Matzo
Ball Heiress, Ms. Shapiro offers a humorous glimpse of Jewish life and the
making of matzoh.
BIMA-
New York
is a
new Shomer Shabbat (Sabbath observant), artist-run theater company presenting
arts-in-education programs, Off-Broadway productions, and new play and musical
workshops in an effort to examine and explore Judaism’s place in and
relationship to the world at large. BIMA-
New York
’s work allows audiences to experience the sounds and stories of Jews of both
past and modern times. Combining the
art of performance with the discovery of identity and the understanding of
ritual, BIMA-
New York
’s primary goal is to create a new, expansive Jewish theatre., Robin Carus,
Jolyn J. Kramberg, Harriet Spitzer-Picker, Nicole Raphael and Chris Thomas all
share in the artistic directorship of BIMA-New York, bringing together a
collective of years of theater knowledge and a keen interest in exploring the
juncture of Judaism and theater.
Tickets to the performance of
STANTON
STREET
LIVE! Light in December are $5 each and can be obtained by calling
(917) 826-0080.
BIOGRAPHIES
Robin
Carus
(Co-Artistic Director; director Matzo Ball
Heiress) casts independently, as well as for
Theatreworks/USA casting over 150 productions including tours, new musicals and
plays, workshops, and readings. Off-Broadway: A Christmas Carol (Lortel); Walk
Two Moons (Lortel); Cam Jansen (Lamb's Theatre), Like You Like It (including
inceptions at the Beckett Theatre/NYMF, York Theatre, NAMT, ASCAP, BMI,
Century Center); Junie B. Jones (Lortel); The Summer of the Swans (Lortel);
Sarah, Plain and Tall (NAMT, O'Neill Festival, Lortel). Off-Off Broadway: City
of Dreams (EST, Midtown International Theatre Festival); First In Flight (EST),
Roadicide: the Album (HERE). Regional: Queen Esther (
Forum Theatre
,
NJ
). Industrial: FUSE Network
Jolyn
J. Kramberg (Co-Artistic Director; actor, Matzo
Ball Heiress) is both a teacher and an actress. She has taught 2nd
grade at
Manhattan
Day School
for the past 7 years. She was a drama major at
LaGuardia
High School
for the Performing Arts and studied Theater and Education at
Brandeis
University
. Jolyn has appeared off-off Broadway, in student films, and in various
productions both in college and around the city.
Nicole Raphael (Co-Artistic Director; writer, actor, Bringing Down the
Light and actor, M*EN*S*C*H) most
recently played Nechumele in The Diaspora Theatre Group production of Carcass.
She played the odd and quirky Susan Jamison in Bonnie Culver’s award winning
play, Sniper. She spent eight months on Ellis Island playing Kasia, a 13
year-old Polish immigrant on her way to
America
in A Taste of Freedom. She
worked two seasons at the Shadowland Theatre playing Julie in Perfect
Wedding and Geraldine in What the
Butler
Saw. Nicole also played the
role of Anne Frank three times (Meadow Brook Theatre, New American Theater,
Penobscot Theatre), and Juliet twice (New American Theater, Riverside
Shakespeare Festival.). She appeared
as
Alice
in You Can’t Take It With You at
The Arkansas Rep and toured as Oliver in Oliver
Twist. BA:
Smith
College
. MA: The Actor’s Studio.
Laurie Gwen Shapiro (author,
The Matzo Stories) is the author of ALA Notable Book The Unexpected
Salami (Algonquin), The Matzo Ball Heiress (Red Dress, a best-selling
book in development as a Henry Street Settlement drama production), and The
Anglophile. Brand X,
Shapiro's first novel for teens, will be published in 2006 by Random House.
Her humorous essay "Oy Christmas Tree, Oy Christmas Tree"
appears in the 2005 Los Angeles Times best-selling Penguin anthology The
Modern Jewish Girl's Guide To Guilt, and will appear in the forthcoming
literary anthology Hot For Teacher. She
co-directed the documentary “Keep The River On Your Right: A Modern Cannibal
Tale,” which garnered over 14 major awards, including the prestigious
Independent Spirit Award for best emerging documentary direction. She has
also co-produced two HBO documentaries films about Frank McCourt, and is now
mid-production on another theatrical length documentary and feature.
Her first play Inventing Color
premiered at The New York International Fringe Festival, and was named one of
the two best productions in Stagepress Magazine.
She writes a popular humorous back column for the Lower East Side
publication Grand Street News, and is herself a fourth-generation native of the
Lower East Side
who still loves there with her husband and daughter.
Harriet Spitzer-Picker (Co-Artistic Director; director, M*E*N*S*C*H and singer)
has appeared in many off and off-off-Broadway productions. Her
acting credits include Kerouac, Macbeth, and Wiseacre
Farm. She has also directed numerous productions. A
member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, her past Directing
Credits include The Biz, Personal
Response, and Blackberry Tea. Harriet
holds a BFA in Theatre from
Pace
University
and an MA in Educational Theater from
New York
University
. She is a former schoolteacher and currently teaches Creative Dramatics
at the Henry Street Settlement. Harriet
was born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and continues to live
there with her husband and 2 year old son.
Christopher Thomas (Co-Artistic
Director) is a theatre professor at
Pace
University
and an award-winning theatre designer in his own right.
Mr. Thomas also serves on the boards of both the Yangtzee Repertory
Company and Harlem Classical Theatre believing in and supporting the power of
ethnically based theatre work.
Eric Winick
(author, M*E*N*S*C*H) hails from
Marblehead
,
Massachusetts
, birthplace of the American Navy. His
play Rearviewmirror was developed at
the 2005 Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference.
Plays produced in NYC include Rose,
Jimmy, and June (Raw Impressions Musical Theatre at LaMama ETC); The
Vocal Lords (Theatre at St. Clements); Lay
Me Down (Reverie Productions at the Present Company Theatorium), Whiskey Down (Mazer Theatre), The
Biz (Expanded Arts), (silent)Metamorphosis
(adapt. from Kafka, Expanded Arts, also dir.), and Ian Fleming Presents Steve Gallin in Nobody Dies Forever (FringeNYC,
also dir.).
Readings
and/or workshops at Theater Masters (
Aspen
), Manhattan Theatre Club (Peaking,
part of the first “6@6” Series), MCC Theatre, and
Reverie Productions. A graduate of
Middlebury
College
, Eric works at Playwrights Horizons as its Director of Marketing.
He is a resident of Park Slope,
Brooklyn
.
For More Information Contact:
BIMA-NY Theatre Company
PO Box 1008, New York, NY 10002
Tel: 1-917-826-0080
FAX:
Internet: feedback@bima-ny.org
