For
Immediate Release
January 25, 2008
Winter Heats Up With
Great Lakes Theater Festival’s
FREE Touring Production of Seeing Red
The Festival’s 2008 touring production
will visit twenty-seven venues throughout northern Ohio.
Great
Lakes Theater Festival (GLTF) will launch the world premiere of Seeing
Red, a free outreach touring production scheduled to visit twenty-seven
neighborhood venues throughout northern Ohio, to kick off the company’s Spring 2008
series of Surround
programming.
The production is
written by GLTF Director of Education, Daniel Hahn, and features a touring
company of four actors. GLTF’s Associate Artistic Director, Andrew
May, directs the production.
The Seeing Red tour begins February 19th, continues
through March 19th and is designed to support the
Festival’s upcoming main stage production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. All non-school performances of Seeing Red are free and open to the
public. (Click here for a complete list of performance
venues, dates and times.)
“A program like
the outreach touring production affords communities the unique opportunity to
experience art where they live…right in their own backyards…in their
neighborhoods,” remarked Daniel
Hahn, Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Director of Education, when asked about the
Festival’s annual tour. “There are
a lot of people that don’t go or are unable to go downtown for a variety of
reasons… preventing them from experiencing the plays on our main stage. The outreach tour offers us [GLTF] a
unique opportunity to connect with these people and their
communities.”
Seeing
Red explores the
question of what happens when government
oversteps the bounds of its power and infringes upon the rights of
citizens? For over thirty
years, the United
States government called upon American citizens
to testify before the House Un-American Activities
Committee, where naming names of purported communists was as commonplace as it
was ruinous. Seeing Red dramatizes the actual
testimony of four key witnesses, concluding with Arthur Miller himself, whose
play, The Crucible, serves as an
allegory for these congressional hearings.
Although The Crucible is set
in Salem, Massachusetts of 1692, it was the
congressional witch hunts of the 1940s and 1950s that inspired Miller to write
his epic play. Seeing Red provides a unique historical
context for the Festival’s spring production of The Crucible, and raises important
questions which still have resonance today.
The four-actor
touring ensemble features Cleveland actors David Hansen, Joseph Primes,
Justin Tatum and Elizabeth Wood. The design trio of Joshua Frachiseur (scenic design), Melanie
Boeman (costume design) and Richard Ingraham (sound design) complete the
play’s production team. “I couldn’t be more proud of the
talented production team that we have been able to assemble for this project,”
said Hahn of his artistic collaborators.
“I can’t wait to share their work with the twenty-seven partner venues
that we’ll have the privilege of visiting during our tour of northern Ohio.”
Seeing
Red is a
seventy-minute program that includes an introduction and post-performance
discussion. Times and dates
are subject to change. Call
individual venues for more information about the performances. (Consult the
enclosed tour calendar for a complete list of performance venues, dates, times
and contact information.)
Seeing
Red is part of a series of community programs
surrounding Great Lakes Theater Festival’s upcoming Spring Repertory production
of The Crucible by Arthur
Miller (March 28 – April
27, 2008, at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square). Held throughout northern Ohio from February
through May, the 2008 Surround is
designed for audiences of all backgrounds and ages. All Surround events are free and open to the
public at non-school venues.
For more information, visit the Great Lakes Theater Festival website at
www.greatlakestheater.org/education/surround/
or call the Festival’s education department at (216) 241-5490
x307.
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Media
Contact:
Todd
Krispinsky
Marketing and Public Relations
Director
(216) 241-5490 x
317
tkrispinsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx