The U.S. premiere of Mark Ravenhill's play, Some Explicit Polaroids, takes place at the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts (MIFA), June 14-17. It's presented by the UK's Out Of Joint company, which staged the piece in London last fall. Out of Joint has come across the Atlantic only twice before, with Blue Heart at MIFA in 1999, and The Steward of Christendom at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1997.

Some Explicit Polaroids follows five journeys across a global village where media magnates, celebrities and traders conduct business unrestrained by national boundaries and restaurants, hotels, airports and theme parks increasingly look the same worldwide. As such a political radical recently freed from prison tries to cut through all that and is disappointed to find his old cronies wasting themselves with drugs, house music and erotic experimentation.

Max Stafford-Clark, who staged Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking for Out of Joint, also directs Polaroids.

Previous productions imported to the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts include Corin Redgrave soloing in De Profundis and shows by Dublin's Gate Theatre and the Comedie Francaise.

For tickets and information on Some Explicit Polaroids at the Mendenhall Performing Arts Center in Smith College, Northampton, MA, call (800) 224-6432. -- By David Lefkowitz
and Terri Paddock