Caborca and Magic Futurebox present: Open up, Hadrian

September 13th – September 30, 2012

Wednesday-Sunday at 7pm

Magic Futurebox
55 33rd Street, 4th Floor
Brooklyn, NY  11232

Caborca Theatre and Magic Futurebox are proud to announce their upcoming co-production, Open up, Hadrian, playing at Magic Futurebox (55 33rd St. 4th Floor, Brooklyn 11232) from September 13th to September 30, 2012. Written by Javierantonio González and directed by Meiyin Wang,Open up, Hadrian is an immersive promenade production that jumps more than 2,000 years and 20,000 square feet, transforming the Sunset Park warehouse into Ancient Rome by way of an excavated film set not so long abandoned.

In the years between the fall of the gods and the rise of Jesus, a young man named Hadrian emerged as Rome’s most philosophical emperor, caught in the midst of two bloody wars of expansion. He loved poetry, theatre, and all things Greek. He was also gay. Open up, Hadrian imagines the life of this highly successful but deeply frustrated man with elements of Greek drama and dark comedy—his anguished love, lofty ideals, and his big, famous wall.

Open up, Hadrian is an irreverent and contemporary play that looks back to a world 2,000 years younger and reads it variously as the nadir of imperial exploitation, a hotbed of radical political thought, a renaissance of engineering, and a raunchily naïve adolescent sex party. As “downtown theatre” comes more and more to mean “outer borough theatre,” this production celebrates an anarchic artistic “empire” throughout New York, voracious as ancient Rome itself. Says Kevin Laibson, Co-Artistic Director of Magic Futurebox: “we were thrilled when Caborca came to us with Open up, Hadrian. To work with artists of such integrity and humor on a piece as high-flying as this is exactly why we started making theater in the first place.”

The play’s creators and collaborators, like the Roman Empire, stretch across much of the known world. PlaywrightJavierantonio González, a native of Puerto Rico, is the artistic director of Caborca and the author of 11 plays and adaptations in both English and Spanish. Two have been published by New York Theatre Experience. He has been a member of the Public Theater’s Emerging Writer’s Group in 2010-11, Van Lier Directing fellow, and was a NYTheatre.com “Person of the Year” in 2010. Singaporean director Meiyin Wang recently collaborated with Magic Futurebox on Tommy Smith’s live radio play Forth. She is a recipient of the 2012 MAP Fund for her upcoming work motherland/ foreign relations (Berkeley Rep Ground Floor Residency), and also the Associate Artistic Producer of Under The Radar Festival. The set will be designed by Korean theatre and opera designer Jian Jung, whose work has been seen at Long Beach Opera, Juilliard, The Living Theatre, and Classic Stage Company among others. Members of the cast include experimental Romanian director Doris Mirescu, whose production of John Cassavetes’s Husbands stunned audiences at 2010’s Under The Radar Festival, Spanish-American actorLuis Moreno* (David Schweizer’s Peer Gynt, Mary Zimmerman’s Arabian Nights), American actors David Skeist* (David Gordon’s Beginning of the End of the… and TFANA’s Shlemiel the First, various with Caborca),Mikey Barringer (HERE’s The Three Seagulls), and B. Brian Argotsinger* (Hoi Polloi’s Baal), and Puerto Rican actors Laura Butler Rivera (BAC’s On the Beach, RipeTime’s Fire Throws), Tania Molina (Various with Caborca including FLORIDITA, my Love; Barceloneta, de noche), Yaremis Félix* (Various with Caborca, and Pregones’sBaile Cangrejero) and Marcos Toledo (Various with Caborca including FLORIDITA, my Love; Barceloneta, de noche). Lighting is by Tim Cryan, Costumes by Elizabeth Groth, and Sound Design by Betsy Rhodes.

Caborca is an experimental theatre company making plays that move seamlessly between the irreverent and poetic, the personal and political, and the highly entertaining and intellectually challenging – inspired by Brecht’s view that to be challenged is also to be entertained. Based in New York City and working in both English and Spanish, the company’s work includes new plays, classical adaptations, and devised creations. Productions and co-productions have included El correo de la noche (IRT Theater), FLORIDITA, my Love (Teatro IATI, Teatro LATEA; published in Plays and Playwrights 2011), Barceloneta, de noche (Teatro IATI, Teatro LATEA), and Pen Knife (Living Theatre).

Magic Futurebox was founded in 2010 as a playground for the development of theatre and other collaborative forms of art that bring audiences together. In the first 10 months of its existence, Magic Futurebox has worked with over 200 directors, actors, designers, musicians, and roboticists on 13 different productions. Currently, Magic Futurebox makes its home in Brooklyn, in 20,000 square feet of rehearsal, development, and performance space, appropriately located in a still functioning factory in Industry City.

Open up, Hadrian is an equity approved showcase

* These actors appear courtesy of Actors Equity Association

TICKET AND SCHEDULE INFORMATION:

http://openuphadrian.eventbrite.com/
Ticket Prices:
$18 / $15 Students & Seniors
September 13th – September 30th, 2012
Wednesday – Sunday, 7pm

Magic Futurebox
55 33rd St. 4th Floor, Brooklyn 11232
N, R, D Trains to 36th St. Station
www.magicfuturebox.com