News

Middlebury’s PTP/NYC theatre company will perform Brecht on Brecht (above), one of its three productions this summer in New York.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt., and NEW YORK, N.Y. - PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project), in association with Middlebury College, will present its 32nd repertory season—its 12th consecutive in New York City—running July 17 through August 5 in a limited off-Broadway engagement at the Atlantic Stage 2, located at 330 West 16th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.

The 2018 season will feature a double bill of Howard Barker’s The Possibilities, directed by Professor Richard Romagnoli, and Caryl Churchill’s The After-Dinner Joke, directed by Professor Cheryl Faraone. The double bill begins previews July 10 for a July 17 opening. The summer season will also include a production of Brecht on Brecht, adapted by George Tabori and directed by Jim Petosa, which begins previews July 11 for a July 18 opening.

In The Possibilities, four short plays explore actions unexplainable by logic or rationality. From the biblical Judith to Czar Alexander to a bookseller who hordes her stock for fear that knowledge may fall into the wrong hands to a woman whose dress is investigated by the state as a provocation to men, these four plays contain all of Howard Barker’s signature wit and complexity.

Told in 66 brief episodic scenes, the plot of The After Dinner Joke follows Selby, a young woman who quits her secretarial job to pursue her passion for “doing good.” As a charity worker, she earnestly avoids political issues, only to discover the impossibility of this.

Brecht on Brecht celebrates one of the 20th century’s greatest dramatists in a stunning revue of his life’s work. Featuring songs and scenes from Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Bertolt Brecht’s most famous collaborations, as well as first-hand accounts from Brecht himself, Brecht on Brecht explores the political and social issues the playwright faced as an artist fleeing Nazism for exile in America.

This year’s acting company includes several Middlebury alumni and students including Chris Marshall ’94, Tara Giordano ’02, Lucy Van Atta ’12, and Adam Milano ’15, as well as 2018 graduates Eliza Renner, Sebastian LaPointe, Miguel Castillo, Noah Liebmiller, and Roxy Adviento. Current students include Madeleine Russell, Olivia Christie, Ashley Fink, all from the Class of 2019; and Madeline Ciocci ’20. Stage managers include Alex Williamson ’17 and current students Joey Hernandez, Stephanie Miller, and Coralie Tyler from the Class of 2020. Annie Ulrich ’13 designed all the costumes for the three productions. Kyle Meredith ’19, who works in the Middlebury College Animation Studio, is creating graphics, slides, and moving cartoon images for The After-Dinner Joke.

PTP was founded in 1987 by the artistic team of Cheryl Faraone, Jim Petosa, and Richard Romagnoli, who continue to run the company. Alex Draper is associate artistic director. Since moving to New York in 2007, PTP/NYC has produced 25 main stage productions and numerous late evening readings, workshops, and experimental theatre pieces in its After Dark series.

For performance times and ticket information, visit PTP/NYC online.