Every day is opening night.

Waterwell Announces Fourth Annual New Works Lab @ Ppas: “Salomé of the Moon”—opening Night

Contact:
Rick Miramontez / Michael Jorgensen
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE

WATERWELL
ANNOUNCES FOURTH ANNUAL
NEW WORKS LAB @ PPAS:
“S A L O M É   O F   T H E  M O O N”
OPENING TONIGHT

A WORKSHOP PRODUCTION OF A NEW PLAY BY
NICK JONES

DIRECTED BY
KNUD ADAMS

FEATURING THE
WATERWELL DRAMA PROGRAM CLASS OF 2014

New York, NY (May 8, 2014) – Waterwell, one of the Village Voice’s Best Arguments for Devised Theater and creators of GOODBAR and #9, continues its annual series of new play workshops at the Professional Performing Arts School (PPAS) in Manhattan with Salomé of the Moon, a new play by Nick Jones and directed by Knud Adams. The production opens tonight and continues through Saturday, May 10th at 7p, with an additional Saturday matinee at 2p.

Pizza! Cake! Incest! Murder! Madness! Salome is a Princess who lives in a palace. You'd think she'd be happy, but she is anything but. Her mother barely talks to her, her stepdad drinks too much (and is weirdly always asking her to dance) and there's a prophet in the well who says everyone hates them. Plus, nobody came to her birthday party! By turns hilarious and moving, Salomé of the Moon is a coming of age story about a Princess determined to find love and happiness in an age of cruelty and waste.

“Nick’s been writing some of the strangest, funniest and flat out best plays of the last few years,” said Artistic Director Tom Ridgely in a statement. “And especially now that he’s serving time out in Hollywood, we couldn’t be more thrilled to be premiering a new play of his in New York with the incredible young actors of our Drama Program. To go through the new play process with a writer of his caliber, guided by an artist as sensitive and rigorous and Knud Adams, at this stage in their training, is just an unbelievable gift. Their work is inspiring. The play is hilarious, compassionate and deeply disturbing. And the production is literally a feast. Let’s just say that we are over the moon.”

Designed to stimulate the creation of high-quality new plays for young actors, Waterwell’s New Works Lab @ PPAS offers emerging and established playwrights the chance to develop their work with the support of professional directors and designers and a cast of exceptionally talented high school artists. This annual workshop series presents stripped down, actor-centric productions that add to the canon of thematically rich, complex and original scripts and roles for student actors. Previous NWL playwrights have been A. Rey Pamatmat (A Spare Me, 2013), Bekah Brunstetter (Nothing Is The End Of The World (except for the end of the world), 2012) and Stephen Karam (Emma, 2011); all three plays have been published and are available from Playscripts.

The creative team for Salomé of the Moon also includes James J. Fenton (Scenic Designer), Deanna Frieman (Costume Designer), Bradley King (Lighting Designer), and Daniel Kluger (Sound Designer). The cast of fourteen are all seniors in the Waterwell Drama Program at the Professional Performing Arts School (PPAS).

Performances at the PPAS Auditorium today through Saturday, May 10th at 7:00 p.m., with an additional Saturday matinee at 2:00 p.m. Tickets are free for PPAS students, $20 dollars for adults and can be purchased at www.brownpapertickets.com. PPAS is located at 328 W 48th St in New York, NY. For more information, visit http://www.waterwell.org.


Bios_______________________________________________________________

NICK JONES (Playwright) is a writer for theater, television and film. His most recent play was Trevor, a dark comedy about a lethally frustrated show biz chimp, which was critically acclaimed in New York and Chicago. His previous play The Coward was produced at Lincoln Center/LTC3, where it was nominated for 4 Lortel Awards (winning 2) and is now being made into a motion picture starring Adam Driver and Chris O'Dowd. His show Jollyship the Whiz-Bang at Ars Nova, a puppet rock mu-sical about pirates, also received an extended critically acclaimed run, and was sub-sequently revived for the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater. Nick was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. He earned his Literature/Creative Writing BA from Bard College and a Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting degree from Juilliard. He has received theater commissions from Lincoln Center, Ars Nova, The Old Globe, Manhattan Theater Club, The Huntington, Center Theater Group and South Coast Rep. He currently writes for the critically acclaimed Netflix original series “Orange is the New Black,” (WGA award nominations for Best Comedy and Best New Series, Sat-ellite Award, AFI Award, Peabody Award). More at nickjonesland.com

KNUD ADAMS (Director) is a director of experimental and new plays. He has assisted some of the nation's foremost artists, including André Gregory, The Wooster Group, Richard Foreman, Sarah Benson, and Sam Gold. His recent productions include Annie Baker's Body Awareness (Chester, MA), Sam Alper's Loveplay (Cloud City), Torrey Townsend's Home Universe (Columbia Stages), Max Posner's Gun Logistics (Drama League Directorfest), Carmen (dell'Arte Opera Ensemble), Keep Calm – Cuts From Hamlet (Jimmy's No. 43), and his own play Children of the Future Age (Calliope). Drama League Directing Fellow, Playwrights Horizons Directing Resident, Williamstown Theatre Festival Directing Corps, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Next up: directing Amelia Roper's reading in the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, directing the premiere of the concept concert The Highwayman (Ars Nova's ANT FEST), and serving as Jenny Schwartz's Associate Director on her play 41-derful (Clubbed Thumb). www.knudadams.com

WATERWELL (Arian Moayed & Tom Ridgely, Artistic Directors; Rebecca Schwartz, Director of Education) is a unique ensemble of theater artists dedicated to the creation of new work and the bold re-interpretation of classics. Founded in 2002 by Arian Moayed and Tom Ridgely, the company’s special blend of music, theater and social dialog has been nominated for three IT awards, a Drama Desk, a New York Magazine Culture Award and a Village Voice Best of NYC. The Voice calls them, “dynamic, resourceful and relentlessly entertaining.” And TheaterScene says, “There's no way a written description can do justice to their blazing energy and inventiveness.” The New York Times hails the work as, “brilliant, original and inspired. Alive enough to surprise even the performers themselves,” and TheaterMania writes, “Waterwell has staked a claim on our collective conscience.” Since 2003, Waterwell has also offered structured classes in collaborative playmaking, or “devising”, the process by which the ensemble develops its material. By 2010 those educational activities had grown and coalesced into the Waterwell Drama Program , which now delivers – in partnership with the Professional Performing Arts School (PPAS) – top-quality, year-round, in-school theater training to over 200 NYC public school students. The program addresses the student-artist holistically and demands they develop both as an interpreter and as a creator. Voice and movement work connect with scene study and devising; classroom learning supports rehearsal and performance projects; and everything is designed to be in dialog with what's going on outside the classroom – in their homes, communities and the world at large.

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