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GSP TO LIVE STREAM THE FINAL FOUR PERFORMANCES OF THE WORLD PREMIERE PLAY THE CLUB
GEORGE STREET PLAYHOUSE TO LIVE STREAM THE FINAL FOUR PERFORMANCES OF
THE WORLD PREMIERE PLAY
THE CLUB
WRITTEN BY CHRIS BOHJALIAN
DIRECTED BY DAVID SAINT
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
THE LEAGUE OF LIVE STREAM THEATER
FEATURING
GRACE EXPERIENCE, RYAN GEORGE, ALI
MARSH, BRENDAN RYAN, SAMARIA NIXON-FLEMING, SKYLER HENSLEY, AND FRED WELLER
AVAILABLE TO STREAM MARCH 15 – 17, 2024
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
(March 5, 2024 – New Brunswick, NJ) George Street Playhouse (David Saint, Artistic Director & Edgar Herrera, Managing Director) and The League of Live Stream Theater announced today that The Club, written by Chris Bohjalian (The Flight Attendant, The Lioness) and directed by David Saint, will be available for streaming. The simulcast performances will be held on Friday March 15 at 8pm ET, Saturday March 16 at 2pm and 8pm ET, and Sunday March 17 at 2pm ET. Tickets to the livestreamed performances begin at $49 and are currently on sale at www.lolst.org/theclub.
“We’re thrilled to be partnering with The League of Live Stream Theater to make the world premiere of The Club available for four exclusive live streams,” said George Street Playhouse’s Director of Marketing & Customer Experience Jason Paddock. “Audiences all over the world will get to experience one of George Street Playhouse’s trailblazing new works from anywhere. This opportunity would have been unimaginable when the company began producing theatre 50 years ago.”
Everyone wants to belong to the club, but what will it cost you?
Three married couples collide in a suburban living room one autumn Sunday – what they think is a refuge from the rock ‘n roll turbulence outside their neighborhood – only to discover there’s no escape from the era’s cultural upheaval.
The Club is currently receiving its world premiere at the George Street Playhouse. New York Times #1 bestselling novelist Bohjalian also premiered his critically acclaimed stage adaptation of his novel, Midwives, in 2020 at George Street Playhouse.
Chris Bohjalian’s The Club is rich with biting wit and startling twists as it explores racism, marriage, and the lies we tell ourselves daily. And though the play is set in 1968, it’s eerily timely.
The Club is sponsored by the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.
The cast of The Club includes Grace Experience (Grounded) as Marion Willows, Ryan George (Midwives) as Peter Kendricks, Skyler Hensley (Devil’s Hollow) as Olive Barrows, Ali Marsh (The Commons of Pensacola) as Anne Barrows, Samaria Nixon-Fleming (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) as Angela Kendricks, Brendan Ryan (West Side Story) as John Willows, and Fred Weller (To Kill A Mockingbird) as Richard Barrows.
The Club features set, projection, and media design by James Youmans (Conscience), costume design by Lisa Zinni (Tales From the Guttenberg Bible), lighting design by Tyler Micoleau (The Band’s Visit), original music and sound design by Scott Killian (A Picasso), and wig and hair design by Tommy Kurzman (I Need That). Rick Sordelet (The Lion King) is the Fight Director and Samantha Flint (Having Our Say) is the Production Stage Manager. Casting is by McCorkle Casting.
The performance schedule for The Club is as follows: Wednesday – Saturday at 8pm; Thursday, Saturday and Sunday at 2pm.
Tickets to in-person performances of The Club begin at $25 and are available at www.georgestreetplayhouse.org/theclub.
GEORGE STREET PLAYHOUSE
Under the leadership of Artistic Director David Saint since 1997, George Street Playhouse produces groundbreaking new works, inspiring productions of the classics, and hit Broadway plays and musicals that speak to the heart and mind, with an unwavering commitment to producing new work. As New Brunswick’s first producing theatre, George Street Playhouse became the cornerstone of the revitalization of the City’s arts and cultural landscape. Entering its 50th season, the organization has a rich history of producing nationally renowned theatre. The Playhouse continues to fill a unique theatre and arts education role in the city, state and greater metropolitan region. George Street Playhouse recently announced the appointment of Edgar Herrera as Managing Director, effective June 1, 2023. Beginning with the 2019-20 Season, George Street Playhouse moved to the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center in downtown New Brunswick. Featuring two state-of-the-art theatres—The Arthur Laurents Theater with 253 seats and The Elizabeth Ross Johnson Theater which seats 465—and myriad amenities, the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center marks a new era in the esteemed history of George Street Playhouse. Founded by Eric Krebs, George Street Playhouse, originally located in an abandoned supermarket on the corner of George and Albany Streets, was the first professional theatre in New Brunswick. In 1984, the Playhouse moved to a renovated YMCA on Livingston Avenue, and in 2017 took temporary residence in the former Agricultural Museum at Rutgers University during construction of its new home. The Playhouse has been well represented by numerous productions both on and off-Broadway. In 2018, George Street Playhouse was represented on Broadway with Gettin’ the Band Back Together which premiered on the Playhouse mainstage in 2013. American Son, produced by George Street Playhouse in 2017, opened on Broadway in 2018 starring Kerry Washington and Stephen Pasquale, and was seen on Netflix. Other productions include the Outer Critics’ Circle Best Musical Award-winner The Toxic Avenger. In 2015, It Shoulda Been You opened on Broadway and Joe DiPietro’s Clever Little Lies opened off-Broadway. Both shows received their premieres at the Playhouse. Other productions include the Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Drama League Award-nominated production of The Spitfire Grill; and the Broadway hit and Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play Proof by David Auburn, which was developed at the Playhouse during the 1999 Next Stage Series of new plays. George Street Playhouse programming is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. Grant funding has been provided by the Middlesex County Board of Chosen Commissioners through a grant award from the Middlesex County Cultural and Arts Trust Fund.
THE LEAGUE OF LIVE STREAM THEATER
Jim Augustine and Oren Michels met across the negotiating table during the pandemic, working on a deal they both hoped would be good for the theater industry they loved. Jim was at the time COO of Zuckerberg Media and its subsidiary Assemble Stream Inc. where he had built the models, financing and tech teams necessary to live-stream 2nd Stage‘s production of Clyde’s, a new play from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage. Once Ms. Nottage approved in concept, Oren got to work on behalf of 2nd Stage, where he is a board member, negotiating for the organization’s best interests while hoping to navigate the theater industry that he loved toward sustainability through technology. While negotiating for their separate parties, the two developed a respect for one another’s expertise in business and trust in one another’s passion for supporting theaters.
The partnership they forged resulted in Clyde’s being the first-ever simulcast run of a Broadway show. The experiment proved Broadway’s capacity to distribute productions live to all fifty states, to sell-out live-stream access at prices competitive to in-person ticket sales, and to bring radically new audiences into the 2nd Stage family. Reflecting on the show’s premiere in Rikers Island, two-time Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage said that live-streaming “breaks down barriers…interrogating the notion of whether theater has to be in a box.”
When ZM and ASI pivoted to other opportunities, Jim and Oren reconnected to finish what they had started, this time as a not-for-profit, building upon the ideas that brought them together to support 2nd Stage in the first place, but now for the benefit of not-for-profit theaters everywhere.
Their work, now called The League of Live Stream Theater, brings live, world-class theater into homes, schools and community centers around the world, believing that together, we can make theater more accessible than ever before, drive new audiences to new works, increase awareness for world-class stages and the artists who make their work possible, increase revenues, and help our institutions to thrive for another generation.
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