Avant-garde legend Richard Foreman brings his latest piece, Pearls for Pigs to New York's Tribeca Performing Arts Center Dec. 3 - Jan. 4, where it concludes an international tour. Pigs stars Foreman veteran David Patrick Kelly (The Mind King and The Cure) as The Maestro -- a demonic actor, at odds with the artifice of theatre, who feels his sanity being attacked whenever he mounts the stage. He ultimately turns into a buffoon with the power to terrify an audience -- and himself.

This is the New York premiere for Pigs which received its world premiere at CT's Hartford Stage Company in April 1997 and has also been seen at Festival de Theatre de Ameriques in Montreal, the Festival d'Automne in Paris, Rome, and in Los Angeles.

Pigs isn't opening at Foreman's usual venue, his Ontological-Hysteric Theatre (in NY's East Village) because his next project, Benita Canova (starring Joanna Adler and playwright/actor David Greenspan) is rehearsing there for a mid-January opening.

In addition to Kelly, Pearls features Tom Nellis, Stephanie Cannon, Peter Jacobs, David Cote, Scott Blumenthal, Yehuda Duenyas, and John Oglevee.

Foreman is the recent recipient of an Edwin Booth Award, given by City University of NY's Doctoral Theatre Studients. Previous winners include La MaMa's Ellen Stewart, Joseph Papp and Wooster Group.

Recent Foreman plays include Permanent Brain Damage (Risk It! Risk It!), The Universe,I've Got the Shakes, and My Head Was A Sledgehammer. Foreman has won seven Obies, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and the NEA's Lifetime Achievement Award.

-- By Sean McGrath