With funding from the Station North Arts and Entertainment District Second Saturdays, the Strand Theater Company presents our first annual Second Saturday Reading Series. The Reading Series will give one new playwright each month, a chance to have their work produced for an audience. The series will be FREE to the public, and audience members will be asked to provide feedback to the playwright.
This month's play (Saturday, September 10 at 7pm): MASHA! By Dan Kitrosser
MASHA! is a poignant comedy about leaving, coming and staying home. Masha Kohner, a thirty-four year old Lebuvitch divorcee, spends her days tending to Yitta, her sometimes-delusional 98 year old great-grandmother, in their modest house in Monsey, New York. When Masha learns that she must have a double mastectomy due to an aggressive bout of breast cancer, she makes plans to go to Manhattan for the surgery and stay with her estranged lesbian sister, Yael. Except Yael is no longer Yael. Yael is now Jerri and in the process of saving up money so that she too can have a mastectomy, in her case, to become a him. In MASHA! the characters take us from Monsey, to the East Village, even to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, all in the hopes to find home, wherever that may be.
About Dan Kitrosser: Dan Kitrosser is a playwright, performer and storyteller living and working in New York City. His plays and musicals include TAR BABY (with Desiree Burch, Terra Nova Collective at P.S. 122, dir. Isaac Byrne), THE MUMBLINGS (Working Man's Clothes, dir. May Adrales with Ben Beckley; dir. Jess Chayes with David Wilson Barnes and Stephanie D'Abruzzo), NIGHT OF THE BUTTERFLY (45 Bleecker Theatre, dir. Isaac Byrne), BLIZZARD THE WIZARD (Urban Stages, dir. Frances Hill), ON THE WAY TO MY ABORTION (Ohio Theatre, dir. Andrew Davies) and with Bekah Brunstetter and Chisa Hutchinson, Dan co-wrote A GRIMM REALITY (Bryant Park, dir. Isaac Bryne). He has had work developed through The Lark, Primary Stages, Working Man's Clothes and Rabbit Hole Ensemble. A recipient of Brooklyn Arts Council Community Grant for 2010 and 2011, Dan is currently workshopping his adaptation of the Orpheus myth, entitled DON'T LOOK BACK which will tour community centers in Brooklyn in December, 2011. Dan is the resident storyteller for both Central and Bryant Park as well as the Artistic Director of the Writopia Lab Best Playwrights Festival, a festival of plays by playwrights ages 8-18. He teaches playwriting at Writopia Lab and will begin pursuing his MFA for playwriting at The New School for Drama this fall.
Second Saturday Reading Series is brought to you in part by the Station North Art "Second Saturday' Program. The series is partially funded by a grant from the Baltimore Community Foundation. For additional information about the Station North Arts & Entertainment District or the "Second Saturday" series, contact 410-962-7075 or info@stationnorth.org. Visit the Station North Arts & Entertainment, Inc. website at www.stationnorth.org.
The Strand Theater is dedicated to providing opportunities for women artists, writers, designers and directors. With a focus on producing original works, the Strand hopes to foster a love of theater for a new generation of patrons. strand-theater.org
