News

A Tribute to John Belluso: Artist and Activist

March 3, 2008—New York, NY Sindy Gordon
Saturday, March 8 following the 8PM performance of The Poor Itch
Speakers include Oskar Eustis (Artistic Director of The Public Theater), Lisa Peterson (Director of The Poor Itch) and Victoria Ann Lewis (Founding Director of the Mark Taper Forum's Other Voices Project).
 
ALL TICKETS $10!
 
THE POOR ITCH
By JOHN BELLUSO
Directed by LISA PETERSON
March 7 - March 23
 
With Michael Chernus, Alicia Goranson, Marc Damon Johnson, Piter Marek, Deidre O’Connell, John Ottavino, Susan Pourfar and Christopher Thornton
 
Ian is back from the war in Iraq without the use of his legs but with a full-blown case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and a year’s supply of Oxycontin. Now, he has to face the person he has become after the war. Left unfinished by the late playwright John Belluso, director Lisa Peterson and a company of designers and actors fuse together the final drafts of the script to create a thrilling, highly theatrical interpretation of this profoundly talented writer’s final work.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:
Tues - Fri at 8, Sat at 2 & 8, Sun at 3 & 7

OPEN CAPTION PERFORMANCE: Thurs March 20 at 8. For reservations and info, please email rsvp@publictheater.org.
 
The Public is pleased to partner with the following organizations on The Poor Itch:
Alliance for the Inclusion in the Arts
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
 
3 EASY WAYS TO ORDER TICKETS:
1.    Visit PUBLICTHEATER.ORG
2.    Call 212-967-7555 from 10AM-9PM, Mon-Sun
3.    Visit The Public Theater Box Office at 425 Lafayette Street
(Box Office Hours: Sun & Mon: 1- 6PM, Tues-Sat: 1 - 7:30PM)
 
To order wheelchair seat locations, please call The Public Theater Box Office at 212-260-2400.
 
The Poor Itch is a part of the PUBLIC LAB -- An adventurous series, conceived and presented in association with LAByrinth Theater Company, presenting 7 vital new plays in bare-bones productions every month from February through June.
 
Speaker Biographies:
 
OSKAR EUSTIS became the Artistic Director of The Public Theater in 2005. Before coming to The Public, he served for eleven years as the Artistic Director of Trinity Repertory Company and Chair of the Trinity/Brown Consortium for professional training, which he founded. Directing credits include: Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home (world premiere, Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); Homebody/Kabul (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); The Ruby Sunrise (world premiere); Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director); among many others. He commissioned Tony Kushner’s Angels in America during his tenure as Artistic Director of the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco and directed its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where he served as Associate Artistic Director from 1989-1994. He is currently a professor of Dramatic Writing at New York University.
 
VICTORIA ANN LEWIS, arts consultant/writer/ Founding Director of the Mark Taper Forum's Other Voices Project.  Victoria is the editor of Beyond Victims and Villains: Contemporary Plays by Disabled Playwrights (TCG, Inc., 2006), the first such anthology in the field.  Her writing has appeared in American Theatre, Michigan Quarterly Review, Radical History Review and other anthologies and collections.  Victoria is serving as Chair for the National Summit on Careers in the Arts for People with Disabilities (July, 2009) co-convened by the National Endowment of the Arts and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  Guest scholar/artist presentations include the City Theatre, Pittsburgh;  the Gamm Theatre, Pawtucket, Rhode Island; the Huntington Library Women's Studies Seminar; the UCLA Women's Center,  Occidental College and San Francisco State University.  She is happy to have partnered with playwright John Belluso on Other Voices from 1998-2002 and proud of their many schemes, successful and otherwise, during those years. Victoria is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Redlands in California and holds a doctorate in Theatre from UCLA.   Honors include: the California Arts Council's 2005 Director’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts, the 2004 Arts and Culture Award, Corporation for Disability and Technology Arts,  and the Cornerstone Theater Bridge Award 2002.
 
LISA PETERSON has directed world premieres by many major American writers including John Belluso, Tony Kushner, Beth Henley, Donald Margulies, Jose Rivera, Ellen McLaughlin, Mac Wellman, Polly Pen, Stephen Belber, Naomi Wallace, David Henry Huang, Luis Alfaro, Chay Yew, Bridget Carpenter, Annie Weisman, Alice Tuan, Culture Clash, and many others.  She regularly works at Actors Theater of Louisville, Berkeley Rep, California Shakespeare Theater, Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf, Yale Rep, Hartford Stage, Intiman, South Coast Rep, and Sundance Theater Lab. Her recent credits include King Lear at CalShakes; Major Barbara at the Guthrie; Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner at Hartford Stage; Mother Courage at La Jolla Playhouse and Berkeley Repertory Theatre; and Water and Power at the Mark Taper Forum. Her upcoming projects include Othello for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and a commercial production tentatively entitled Motherhood with Joan Stein and Susan Rose.