July 6-28, 2012: The Material World, a new musical by Dan Fishback

Dixon Place, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Matthew Keesan, and The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics present the 2012 HOT! Festival Commission:

THE MATERIAL WORLD
A musical by Dan Fishback*
Directed by Stephen Brackett

Starring: Cole Escola, Eleanor Reissa, Molly Pope, Megan Stern, Amy Gironda, Lisa Clair and Leo Schaff

Set in a boarding house in 1921, The Material World features an anachronistic cast of neurotic Jews, all trying to save the planet. Gittel Fenster (Megan Stern), a 12-year-old radical socialist, studies Marxism to prepare for global anti-capitalist revolt, while gay nerd Ian Fleishman (Escola) tests the revolutionary power of Facebook, and the Queen of Pop herself, Madonna (Amy Gironda) meditates on secret Kabbalistic codes to fix a broken universe. The characters grapple with their lofty ambitions and their capacity for failure, to an eclectic score of bouncy electro dance pop, ramshackle twee-folk and classic Tin Pan Alley.  And unlike other pop musicals about Madonna and socialism, this play has scenes in Yiddish.

*Playwright Dan Fishback is a 2012 Hemispheric New York Performance Network (HNYPN) Artist-in-Residence.

• Fridays, & Saturdays, July 6-28, 2012
• 7pm
  Dixon Place
• 161A Chrystie Street
• New York, NY 10002
  Tickets: Advance online: $12 GA / $10 students-seniors / $15 at door
  www.hotfestival.org

The Material World was developed through the BAX / Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist in Residence Program, which is supported by The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), The New York State Council on the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York Community Trust, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Material World is commissioned and first presented by Dixon Place with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and with private funds from the Jerome Foundation and The Peg Santvoord Foundation.

The Material World was also developed through the Artists in Residence program of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU. Led by the Hemispheric Institute and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation’s NYC Cultural Innovation Fund, the Hemispheric New York Performance Network (HNYPN) seeks to create innovative, long-term institutional partnerships with key NYC arts spaces to provide comprehensive and creative support and training for politically engaged local performance-based artists. Core partner institutions are Dixon Place, HERE, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!), La MaMa, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX).