Directed by Kathy Gail MacGowan, Kentucky Cantata, a new play by Paul David Young with live music by Ashleé Miller and set design by installation artist Franklin Evans, opens at HERE

January 22 to February 8, 2015

"a quiet winner" -- Erik Haagenson, Backstage.com on Paul David Young's In the Summer Pavilion, 59e59 Theaters, 2012 (Critic's Pick)

"intelligently bizarre" -- The Village Voice on Young's Clown Play, FringeNYC, 2013

New York, NY (December 9, 2014)— Paul David Young, author of the 2013 FringeNYC hit Clown Play and the critically acclaimed In The Summer Pavilion, premieres his newest play, Kentucky Cantata, January 22 to February 8, 2015 at HERE, 145 6th Avenue, NYC (enter on Dominick, 1 block south of Spring). The play will be presented Tuesdays to Saturdays at 7 pm and Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets are $18. For tickets and information, contact: here.org or call 212 352 3101. The press night is on Saturday, January 24, 2015. For press tickets and press information, contact: heidi@rieglermedia.net

In this multidisciplinary performance, actors and musicians share the stage to tell the story of a young actress who leaves her rural Kentucky home for New York, where she is raped in a parking lot. The play depicts a mother’s emotional battle as her daughter leaves home, a father’s passionate support for his child, and a young women’s determination to follow her dream. Her naive ambition collides with the struggle of an illegally immigrated Egyptian cab driver.

Directed by Kathy Gail MacGowan —praised for her staging of Broad Channel by James Bosley, The Golden Year by Daniel Damiano, and Young’s In The Summer Pavilion— the play is set to music composed by Ashleé Miller and performed live by Miller along with guitarist Chris Funke and flautist Rebecca Kuehl (DuoEssence). The cast includes Hayley Treider as Carolyn, Marta Reiman as Dora, Dan Patrick Brady as Larry, and Tony Naumovski as Kareem. The abstract, visually provocative set is designed by installation artist Franklin Evans. The lighting design is by Kia Rogers. Scout Isensee will design the costumes.

Kentucky Cantata forges an innovative performative connection between music and theater. Like players in a chamber ensemble, the actors allow the musical material to intertwine with the natural flow and rhythm of their speech. The musicians will join the actors onstage, moving along with them as a kind of shadow cast. Together, the actors and musicians create a unique dialogue that is visually and aurally heightened.

“I am drawn to this novel form of staging involving the relationship between actors and musicians and how spoken text and music enhance a story. The musicians and actors are equal storytellers, each conveying the plot through various media -- music, voice, movement, and text,” stated MacGowan.

The New York Times praised director Kathy Gail MacGowan for her "careful direction" of Young's In The Summer Pavilion at 59e59 Theaters, while Backstage applauded her "empathetic, perceptive direction" of the play. Most recently her work on Broad Channel ("with intensity and precision...directed like a master" -- NYTheaternow) and The Golden Year ("the direction is skilled and razor sharp"—NYtheater.com) were critical successes.

Playwright Paul David Young's In the Summer Pavilion, also directed by MacGowan, was produced to critical acclaim in the 2011 FringeNYC festival (picked as a highlight out of 180 Fringe shows by Backstage, The N.Y. Daily News and The Village Voice) and in 2012 at 59e59 Theaters in New York. The Village Voice hailed his 2013 Fringe hit Clown Play as “completely unconventional” and “intelligently bizarre.” Young won the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award and was a finalist for the Kendeda Fellowship.

Young's work has also been performed at MoMA PS1, Marlborough Gallery, the Living Theatre, apexart, The Brick, LMAK Projects, Lion Theatre, Kraine Theater, Chain Theatre, Red Room Theater and the Kaffileikhusid in Reykjavik. His plays have been developed at Primary Stages, New York Theater Workshop, Alliance Theater of Atlanta and the Kennedy Center. His translations, with Carl Weber, of Heiner Müller’s Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome and Macbeth were published in 2012 as Heiner Müller: After Shakespeare. He is a Contributing Editor at PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press) and writes for Hyperallergic and Art in America. His book newARTtheatre: Evolutions of the Performance Aesthetic was issued by PAJ in 2014.

American musician Ashleé Miller, praised for her “… color and imagination…” by NPR and winner of the North Carolina Soloist competition, leads a trio of musicians onstage. Miller holds a Doctoral fellowship and is a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center where she studies clarinet with Charles Neidich. Miller teaches at Hunter College and the College of Staten Island.

Installation artist Franklin Evans has exhibited extensively, including MoMA PS1, de Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum, DiverseWorks, RISD Museum, El Museo del Barrio, and The Drawing Center. He created the set for Trajal Harrell's Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning (M), performed at New Museum, The Kitchen, and other venues. The Boston Globe raved about his 2014 shows, "It's breathtaking, and it's daunting. The installations, while brimming with [art] historical imagery, crackle with originality."

Lighting designer Kia Rogers won the 2014 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Lighting Design for Jane the Plain, and nytheatre.com voted her one of its "People of the Year" in 2012. She has been a creative partner with Flux Theatre Ensemble since 2012 and lighting designer and lighting director for Estrogenius since 2006. Rogers worked with MacGowan on Young's In the Summer Pavilion, both at The Living Theatre and 59e59 Theaters ("cinematic lighting" — New York Times).

Movement consultants Marjorie Folkman, who danced with Mark Morris from1996 to 2007, and Kristin Swiat, who for many years performed with Prue Lang in Europe, danced in Robert Wilson's production of Alceste at La Monnaie Opera House and also collaborated with Gaetan Faik (director/writer) on the presentation of La Jeune Fille aux Doigts Dorés at Bruegel Cultural Center, will assist MacGowan.

The cast for Kentucky Cantata includes Hayley Treider: Double Falsehood (Classic Stage Co.), The Best of Everything (HERE Arts Center), Adventures of Tom Sawyer (New Victory Theater), and Bakken Formations (Ars Nova ANT Fest). TV: Orange Is the New Black, Person of Interest, and Law & Order: SVU; Marta Reiman: The Fabulous Kane Sisters (Cherry Lane), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Fulton Theatre Co.), The Great Gatsby (Arizona Theatre Co.), Dangerous (Caldwell Theatre Co.), and Summer and Smoke (Paper Mill Playhouse/Hartford Stage Co.). TV: The Goodwife; Dan Patrick Brady: Laughing Stock (Long Wharf Theatre), Heathen Valley (Annenburg Center), and Curse of the Starving Class (Promenade Theatre/Theatre 890); and Tony Naumovski: Sawbones and The Diamond Eater (Nominated for ‘Outstanding Actor in a Featured Role’ by New York Innovative Theater Award), Final Analysis (Signature Theater), and O.Rex (Gia Forakis and Company). Film: Run All Night (with Liam Neeson and Ed Harris, release 2015). TV: Daredevil (with Rosario Dawson, release in 2015), Person of Interest, and Orange Is the New Black.

This production is a part of SubletSeries@HERE, HERE's curated rental program, which provides artists with subsidized space and equipment, as well as technical support. The play is produced by Go In Her Room Productions in association with Cat on My Head LLC and Re:Gender.

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Kentucky Cantata, Jan. 22 to Feb. 8, 2015 HERE, 145 6th Avenue (enter on Dominick, 1 block south of Spring), New York, New York

Press Contact: Heidi Riegler RIEGLER MEDIA | MARKETING heidi@rieglermedia.net 347 513 5047

Performance schedule: www.rieglermedia.net Tues. to Sat. at 7 pm; Sun. at 2 pm; Mon. dark
Tickets: $18 Tickets & information: here.org or call 212 352 3101 Running Time 1 hour 10 minutes www.kentuckycantata.com