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Metropolitan Playhouse
The American Legacy 220 East Fourth Street ~ New York, New
York 10009
(212) 995 5302 "One of my favorite downtown theaters"
~ Martin Denton, nytheatre.com
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| Playing | Next | Season | Tickets | Company | Location | Mission | History | Links | |
| January
11 - 24, 2016 Seven New Plays Seven Companies All Inspired by the writers, thinkers, experimenters of The Transcendental Age |
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| Emerson
Speaks a theatricalized sermon performed by Mahayana Landowne Frontline Productions presents Leaving Brook Farm* a new play by Nina Howes The Fifth Woman a new play by Toni Schlesinger Winter* by Kelly King an overature of sound, poetry, thought, and nature |
Whitman
Sings*
by John Slade Walt Whitman in folk, gospel, hip hop, and spoken word The Artist of the Beautiful* by Jonathon Ward based on the story by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Poll Tax Matter* by Dan Evans A Lulu Lolo Production a new one act comedy |
PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS |
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| Performances marked with * are AEA
Showcases |
| Emerson Speaks Mahayana Landowne performs Emerson's Divinity School Address in a theatricalized lecture. |
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Double Bill (Two new short plays together in one program) |
| "Leaving Brook Farm"* by Nina Howes Produced by Frontline Productions On the night of March 3, 1846, a disastrous fire totally destroyed a new building at Brook Farm - a utopian community near Boston, Massachusetts. Sophia Ripley has had enough. She urges her husband George to leave what she feels is a losing proposition. |
| "The Fifth Woman" by Toni Schlesinger (Inspired by Louisa May Alcott) Were there were really four or five sisters in author Louisa May Alcott’s family? Was the fifth --- never mentioned in Alcott’s Little Women --- an absinthe-drinking, laudanum-consuming actress on the Continent whose admirers included Nietzsche and an emperor? |
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| WINTER *
A cycle of Transcendentalist poetry, accompanied by hammer dulcimer by Kelly King Kelly King presents an overture of sound, poetry, thought and nature inspired by Frederic Church with Christopher Pearse Cranch, James Russell Lowell, William Ellery Channing, George William Curtis and Julia Ward Howe. Sentiment from Transcendental masters Henry David Thoreau, Molly Vonk and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Original music by Kelly King. "Thought is deeper than all Speech. Feeling deeper than all thought." |
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| WHITMAN SINGS * Walt Whitman in folk, gospel, hip hop, and spoken word written and performed by John Slade Using a great author’s own words in the tradition of “Mark Twain Tonight,” actor/singer John Slade embodies another titan in American literature, Walt Whitman. Twain was the funniest; Dickinson the wittiest; but Whitman was the most inspiring. His times were more divided than our own, but he never lost his faith in America, in life, and the possibility of things getting better. Learn more about Whitman Sings and the album, I Sing Walt Whitman, official entrant in the 57th Grammy® Awards |
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THE
ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL
A new play by Jonathon Ward, based on the story by Nathaniel Hawthorne A meditation on art and the artist's life, based on the Nathaniel Hawthorne short story about a clockmaker's apprentice who falls in love with his master's daughter and loses her to his friend the blacksmith. The day before he leaves for Europe, Owen Warland visits Annie Danforth with a belated bridal present. He's discovered, in the unrealized love of their past, how to live the beautiful life. Inviting her to live it, too, he hopes they may transcend the practical world of 1840s America. |
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| THE POLL TAX MATTER * A one-act comedy by Dan Evans A Lulu LoLo Production In Concord, Massachusetts, 1846, Henry Thoreau is arrested at the local shoemaker’s for refusing to pay his state poll tax as a protest against slavery. His night spent in jail, wearing only one shoe, and jawing with his cellmate, a boisterous outspoken drifter, inspires him to develop his doctrine of civil disobedience. Suddenly a young fugitive slave uses their cell to hide in. |
