Our Mondays at Monarch new play selection for May will be SURVIVAL by German Baruffi.
SURVIVAL by German Baruffi
Jacob, an 85 year old Holocaust survivor, and Gloria, his Dominican home attendant, struggle, collide and fight as they are confronted with dark secrets from the past that marked them and allowed them to survive…at least till today.
Tuesday, May 14th @ 7pm
This is a closed developmental reading and is by invitation only.
Our Mondays at Monarch new play reading for April will be Sanka, Ya Dead Mon? by Philip Dallman.
Sanka, Ya Dead Mon? follows Ben and his journey with the movie Cool Runnings, through which he finds out what is truly important in life.
Monday, April 8th @ 7pm
115 MacDougal Street
New York, NY 10012
Take the A,C,E,B,F or M to West 4th Street, the R train to 8th Street,
or the 1 train to Christopher Street
To rsvp: email info@monarchtheater.org!
This month, Monarch Theater NYC has the pleasure of providing a 
cold read of Guillem Clua’s Promised Land, translated by Marion Peter Holt and directed by Melanie Sutherland. This cold read will help prepare the team for their upcoming reading of Promised Land, which will take place as part of the PEN World Voices Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in April.
PROMISED LAND
by Guillem Clua
translated by Marion Peter Holt
Promised Land is a farce on the subject of climate change and the inefficiency of international organizations to stop its terrible consequences. The play is set in the future at the United Nations headquarters in New York City and tells the story of the president and the diplomatic delegation of a fictitious country, Malvati, that is about to sink under the sea. Comedy, melodrama, political intrigue and mythology intertwine to make Promised Land one of Guillem Clua’s more reality-aware plays but also one of his funniest. Although an array of characters appear in the play, the script requires only four actors. Clua has given the roles of the mythological Malvati, one self-satified UN official, and some twenty-five delegates from different countries to a single actor. It can only be called an actor’s tour-de-force.
Guillem Clua
Although Guillem Clua is one of the most promising voices in a new generation of Catalan playwrights born in the 1970s, he was still considered marginal in his native Barcelona until the critically-acclaimed production of his epic play Marburg at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya in 2010. The following year his taut and chilling chamber musical Killer, with a score by Xavier Mestres, became a resounding success in Barcelona and has since been staged abroad. In 2012 he completed Promised Land, in which he combines comedy, pungent political satire, and mythology to create a provocative play about the consequences of climate change. His irresistible gay comedy Smiley: A Love Story opened in November 2012 at Barcelona’s fringe Sala FlyHard—a tiny theatre that has become the proving ground for innovative plays by leading young Catalan playwrights. The sell-out and critically-praised production later moved to the Teatre Lliure for an addional month, and is currently enjoying a run at a commercial theatre on the Ramblas. In March 2013 another new play, Invasion, opened in Madrid. Clua is best known abroad for his earlier disturbing political drama Skin in Flames, which has had five productions to date in the United States.
Marion Peter Holt
Marion Peter Holt is a writer and a translator of contemporary Catalan and Spanish theatre. His translations of plays by Buero-Vallejo, López Rubio, Skármeta, and other dramatists have been staged in New York and London, and by regional and university theatres throughout the United States, including Baltimore’s Center Stage, the Wilma Theatre, Chicago’s Bailiwick Repertory, the Atlanta Alliance Theatre, the San Jose Repertory Company, and the San Diego Repertory. In June, 2010, his translation of Sergi Belbel’s Blood had its Australian premiere at TheatreWorks-Melbourne. His most recent translations are Guillem Clua’s acclaimed Marburg, which is featured in the spring 2011 issue of TheatreForum, and Clua’s provocative farce on climate change, Promised Land. He is an emeritus professor of Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center and has been a visiting lecturer at the Yale School of Drama, Hunter College, and Barcelona’s Institut del Teatre. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
January’s Mondays at Monarch featured the work of playwright Ken Nielsen.
1989 (or Fighting Was His Element)
It’s the spring and fall of 1989. The Soviet Union is about to collapse and Karl, a Danish communist and union organizer, has disappeared from his housing development on a mission to assassinate Michael Gorbachev, Secretary General of the USSR. Far away, in the U.S.A. his estranged son, Fred, learns of Karl’s disappearance. He convinces his reluctant mother, Viola, that they have to find Karl, and the mother and son duo embarks on a journey back to the “old world” and, in doing so, are forced to reckon with the consequences of the dream and reality Communism in their lives and in the history of the continent. On their journey, Fred and Viola wrestle with the living ghost of Communism and the history of their family.
In 2010 Brian Bauman took Monarch’s Playwriting Workshop led by Migdalia Cruz and John Jesurun in which he worked on his new play A Crucible. His play is now being produced by Perfect Disgrace Theater at the Wild Project!
Perfect Disgrace Theater presents
A CRUCIBLE
A Darkly Comic New Play
Written by Brian Bauman
Directed by Kate Gagnon
Coming to Wild Project January 10-19, 2013.
A CRUCIBLE follows the drama club at Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception high school as it sets out to stage Arthur Miller’s classic play, The Crucible. Conflicts erupt when ideas about sexuality and contemporary performance begin to influence the young performers and their approach to the production. Fueled by a passion for black magic and avant garde tropes, the young women and men stage a coup to build a performance that addresses their lives. This original play re-appropriates the writing of Arthur Miller, as well as Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol’s diaries, John Huston’s film The Misfits and other texts.
Performances January 10 – 19, 2013:
Thursdays – Sundays 8pm
Saturday Matinee 3pm
Additional Performance Wednesday, January 16 at 8pm
The Wild Project is located at 195 East 3rd Street in Manhattan. Tickets are $18 general admission, $15 students and seniors and can be purchased at Wild Project’s Website.
This month’s Mondays at Monarch reading series will feature the work of playwright Diana Delgado.
After the Fire mixes poetic language with realism to explore the most primal states of human existence through a series of fractured monologues. Set in the “interstices” the play is an expressionistic foray into the lives of Arthur, a kite brought down by a gale; Angela, part of the ocean; The Old Woman, Arthur’s mother; Crazycake, a feminist vigilante; and Albert, a man standing beneath a green light. Employing minimal stage directions, the play begins in media res, with Albert lighting a cigarette and asking his audience, “I want to know if you’re going to record this—or if you’re gonna take a chance and just try and remember what I’m about to tell you.” From there, the plot alternates, revealing each characters’ connective past in a dream-like meditation of family, taboo and authenticity of memory.
This is a closed reading.
This month’s Mondays at Monarch reading will be a round 2 workshop reading of Moderato Cantabile, an adaptation of the Margeurite Duras novella. This is a closed reading.
Please keep sending your new plays to info@monarchtheater.org for consideration for the Mondays at Monarch program! Accepted plays receive rehearsal/ performance space for their open or closed reading, as well as a stipend for the director and actors, and feedback for further development from the Monarch staff.
Tickets for Monarch’s New York International Fringe Festival show WOMEN OF SMOKE are now on sale!
A whore. A saint. A runaway mother. In a family of women bent on destroying themselves, can Isabel’s mother save her from the dangers of a West Texas border town? Join Isabel as she discovers the ghosts in her family’s closet.
Jimmy’s No. 43 | FringeNYC Venue #4
43 E. 7th Street (b/t 2nd and 3rd Ave.)
Saturday, August 11th @ 7:15pm
Sunday, August 12th @ 3pm
Wednesday, August 15th @ 9pm
Friday, August 17th @ 9pm
Sunday, August 19th @ 12pm
Thursday, August 23rd @ 5pm
For tickets: www.WomenOfSmoke.com
For more information about the show, visit:
Previous Mondays at Monarch play Women of Smoke, written by Brandi Bravo, will be presented as part of this year’s 2012 New York International Fringe Festival! Monarch will be producing this play, and Monarch’s own Artistic Director Jennifer Ortega will be directing. Check back soon for updates, or visit www.fringenyc.org!
Our May Mondays at Monarch reading series will be featuring Rehmat Qadir’s My Beautiple Wife.
My Beautiple Wife
directed by Wale Ogundipe
