Kate Whoriskey will direct the season opener to play Oct. 5-23 at The Public Theater's Shiva Theatre.
The cast of Massacre (Sing To Your Children), which features a number of LAB vets, will include Julian Acosta, Elizabeth Canavan (Our Lady of 121st Street), Ron Cephas Jones (Jesus Hopped the A train), Florencia Lozano (Privilege), Adrian Martinez (The Last Days of Judas Iscariot), Jason Manuel Olazábal, Matt Saldívar and Sona Tatoyan.
In the work, Rivera spins a tale of seven people who join together to kill their Granville, New Hampshire neighbor who may or may not stay dead. The work, written especially for LAByrinth’s company of actors, was expected last season, but postponed due to scheduling conflicts.
The Massacre (Sing to Your Children) creative team includes Cameron Anderson (scenic), Mattie Ullrich (costume), Jason Lyons (lighting) and David Meschter (sound and composer).
The new work is part of LAByrinth Theater Company's developmental theater program "where new plays are presented as works-in-progress in a review-free environment," according to a release. "Through this program, audience members are given the unique opportunity to be part of the process of developing new plays." Next up for LAB, starting Nov. 28, will be The Barn Series. This annual collection of staged readings (free and open to the public) of works by up-and-coming as well as established playwrights will feature Carlo Alban's Itringulis, Stephen Belber's A Small Melodramatic Story, Eric Bogosian's 1 + 1, Raul Castillo's City of Palms, Andrea Ciannavei's Pretty Chin Up, Cusi Cram's All the Bad Things, Stephen Adly Guirgis's Little Flower of East Orange, an untitled play by Brett C. Leonard, Megan Mostyn-Brown's Going After Alice and Michael Puzzo's She Talks To Rainbows.
Cram’s All The Bad Things will then go on to further development for a 15 performance engagement with performances starting in late January, 2006. The story follows Fernanda, who lives in a small Greenwich Village apartment with her sick mother and her unemployed husband when she learns of her brother-in law's recent converting to the Mormon faith and her rent stabilized apartment is about to become de-stabilized.
The spring will bring another Rivera world premiere as The Public Theater co presents School of the Americas. Inspired by Rivera’s experience during the filming of his screen adaptation of "The Motorcycle Diaries" and based on historical fact, the new work set in the Bolivian jungle where Che Guevara was captured and held in a one-room school house where a young school teacher insists that speak to the famous revolutionary. Her conversation with Che is the basis for the work which will star John Ortiz (Anna in the Tropics, References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot) as Che Guevara.
Tickets to Massacre (Sing to Your Children) at The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, are available by calling at (212) 239-6200 or in person at the box office. For more information, visit www.labtheater.org.
