WORK/SPACE COLLECTIVE PRESENTS: TURNING THE GLASS AROUND

A NEW PLAY BY PIA WILSON DIRECTED BY HEIDI GRUMELOT

Playwright Pia Wilson and director Heidi Grumelot

PREVIEWS OCTOBER 16 & 17
PRESS PREVIEWS OCTOBER 18 & 19
OPENING NIGHT MONDAY, OCTOBER 20
OCTOBER 16 – NOVEMBER 1 @ TEATRO CIRCULO

Work/Space Collective will present Turning the Glass Around, a new play by Pia Wilson (The Flower Thief) directed by Heidi Grumelot (The Flower Thief: Donnie and the Monsters; punkrock/lovesong), October 16th through November 1st at Teatro Circulo (64 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and Bowery). The cast and creative team will be announced in September.

Turning the Glass Around follows Philip Lee, a first generation Korean-American, as he struggles to cope with his father’s death. His identity crisis — Is he a good son or loving husband, an all-American success story or a foreigner in his own country? — haunts him. Race, love, and the American Dream collide in this new play by Pia Wilson.

Pia Wilson’s Turning the Glass Around is the inaugural production for Work/Space Collective, but playwright Pia Wilson and director Heidi Grumelot are long time collaborators. They have always aimed to break racial stereotypes and reinvent the multicultural narrative of America in their theatrical work. Reviewer Martin Denton wrote about their collaboration on Wilson’s The Flower Thief in 2012: “I was most impressed that The Flower Thief, with an African-American playwright and four African-Americans in the cast, transcends racial boundaries and definitions to tell a story filled with universal themes and characters. I will be eager to see what all of the artists involved with this work come up with next.” Turning the Glass Around is “what’s next” for Wilson and Grumelot. This play will further the artists’ investigations into crucial questions of what does an American look like; who gets to call themselves American; and who will always be the other.

Turning the Glass Around will play at Teatro Circulo (64 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and Bowery) October 16-November 1, Thursday through Sunday at 7:30pm with an additional performance on Monday, October 20 at 7:30pm. Tickets ($18/$15 students & seniors) are available online at www.turningtheglassaround.com or by calling Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006. The performance runs approximately two hours, with a ten-minute intermission.

Pia Wilson (Playwright) is the recipient of the 2014 Sarah Verdone Writing Award, a 2011 Heideman Award finalist for her short play, Turning the Glass Around, and a semi-finalist in the 2011 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. She is a 2012-2013 resident with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace program, a member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, and a 2009 playwriting fellow with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is also a member of The Passage Theatre Play Lab and a member of the 2009 Project Footlight team of composers and librettists. Her play, Generation T, was produced at Adelphi University in March 2014. Her play The Flower Thief was a co-production between Horse Trade Theater Group and The Fire This Time play festival in 2012. Her full-length drama, Red Rooster, was a part of The Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Future Classics reading series as well as the Emerging Writers Spotlight Series at The Public Theater in 2009. Her play All the Pretty Girls was featured in The Looking Glass Theatre’s Spring 2009 Writer/Director Forum and The River Pure for Healing was part of the 2008 Resilience of the Spirit play festival.

Heidi Grumelot (Director) is a freelance director and producer. Formerly the Artistic Director of Horse Trade Theater Group, her Horse Trade credits include: co-creator and producer of the monthly storytelling show TOLD and the founding director of The Drafts, an acting ensemble responsible for new play development and a monthly reading series. Heidi’s New York directing credits include Pia Wilson’s The Flower Thief with The Fire This Time Festival, Donnie and the Monsters with Horse Trade, punkrock/lovesong at The Brick, Dido and Aeneas, A River Pure for Healing, An Absolutely Perfect Life, Accidents Do Happen, and Tom’s Things. Regional directing credits include: Guided Tour for Hibernian Hall in Boston, Dido and Aeneas for the Boston Early Music Festival, A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Pigeon Creek Shakespeare in Michigan, El Shaddai at La Gran Familia in Monterrey Mexico, and The Jungle Book for Yancy Elementary and The Tempest for Stuart Hall Middle School in Virginia. Assistant directing credits include Antony and Cleopatra, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and A Christmas Carol for the American Shakespeare Center. Casting Assistant credits include Impressionism on Broadway, The Cripple of Inishman at Atlantic Theater Company, Shawshank Redemption at The Gaiety Theater in Dublin, Holiday Garland at The Westport Country Playhouse, and Hamlet and Hair with Shakespeare in the Park.

Work/Space Collective (WSC) is the brainchild of Heidi Grumelot, former Artistic Director of Horse Trade Theater Group. Formed as a cooperative of artists working to create new American and international performing arts collaborations, WSC welcomes artists from a variety of backgrounds, genres, and mediums and aims to tell non-normative stories that represent storytellers and audience members of all origins.