About Daddy Long Legs- ICT’s 2018 Headliner!

December 4th, 2017

Based on the classic novel that inspired the 1955 movie with Fred Astaire, International City Theatre is thrilled to be starting our 2018 Season with a heartwarming new musical, Daddy Long Legs. Having just closed Off-Broadway in June 2016, Daddy Long Legs has piqued the interest of many theatre-goers, intrigued by this historic, two person show. With an award winning score by Paul Gordon and a touching book by John Caird, Daddy Long Legs is a Cinderella story perfect for the whole family.

Jerusha Abbott is the oldest orphan in the John Grier home until a mysterious benefactor decides to send her to college to become a writer. Required to write him a letter once a month, she is never to know the benefactor’s identity – so she invents one for him; Daddy Long Legs. Although she knows that he will never respond to her letters, so grows fonder of this elusive kindly “old” gentleman. Yet, there is one startling fact that Jerusha has yet to uncover – a fact that will change her life forever. Daddy Long Legs is a beloved rags-to-riches tale of newfound love, in the spirit of Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, and Downton Abbey.

Daddy Long Legs opened Off-Broadway at the Davenport Theatre in 2015, and close June of 2016 after 309 performances. During their run off-Broadway, Daddy Long Legs made theatre history on December 10, 2015 by being the first production, on or off Broadway, to be live-streamed from New York City. While the production didn’t hit the New York scene until 2015, Daddy Long Legs first premiered at the Rubicon Theatre in California in 2009. Before making it Off-Broadway, Daddy Long Legs was taken to London (West-End), Tokyo, & Canada where they show was well-received among audiences everywhere. After closing Off-Broadway, Daddy Long Legs also had three month run in Seoul, South Korea, and continues to be performed in regional theaters around the globe.

Daddy Long Legs has earned itself 13 award nominations, including Best New Musical, and 4 awards, including The Drama Desk Awards ‘Outstanding Book of a Musical’ in 2016. In addition to their awards and accolades, Daddy Long Legs has been charming audiences of all ages, all across the world and ICT’s production will certainly be no exceptions. Daddy Long Legs will perform at the Beverly O’Neill Theatre at Long Beach Performing Arts Center from February 21^st-March 11^th, 2018. To buy tickets or inquire about season subscriptions, please visit www.InternationalCityTheatre.com or call the box office at 562-436-4610.

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2018 Season

September 15th, 2017

International City Theatre’s 2018 Season

 We have officially announced their 2018 line up, and it is going to be a great year for Long Beach theatre. Artistic Director and Producer caryn desai presents her 33^rd Season as a season of “Hope, Humor, and Heart.”

Starting off the year is Paul Gordon & John Caird’s Daddy Long Legs; a Cinderella-story musical about orphan Jerusha and her mysterious benefactor who pays to send her to school on the condition that she writes him letters. It is a beloved “rags to riches” tale of newfound love, in the spirit of Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, and “Downton Abbey.” Following is the west coast premiere of Hansol Jung’s Cardboard Piano, a forbidden love story between a spirited American Missionary’s daughter and a local teenage girl in Northern Uganda, at the peak of their civil war. Cardboard Piano explores violence and its aftermath, as well as the human capacity for hatred, forgiveness, and love.

Next on stage is the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, Patrick Barlow’s The 39 Steps. This two-time Tony award winning treat is packed with nonstop laughs, over 150 zany characters (played by a cast of 4), an on-stage plane crash, handcuffs, and some good old fashioned romance! To balance out the chaos, the fourth production is the tender American classic, Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. This play catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame in 1944, as he premiered this four-character memory play which has strong autobiographical elements to Williams’ own family.

Last but certainly not least, the final production of ICT’s 2018 Season is Long Beach’s very own Alan L Brooks’ play, A Splintered Soul. It is in post World War II San Francisco that we meet Rabbi Kroeller and a group of war refugees as they seek to define their existence in this new tidy post-war America.

Season subscriptions are available now at www.InternationalCityTheatre.com, as well as information on all upcoming shows and events. All shows will perform at the Beverly O’Neill Theater at 330 E Seaside Way in Long Beach. For the box office, please call (562)-436-4610.

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3 great reasons the world needs to know about Henrietta Leavitt

August 4th, 2017

A celestial romance and true story of discovery, Silent Sky explores the life and career of Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) as she fearlessly asserts herself in the male-dominated world of early astronomy. Hired by the Harvard Observatory as a human “computer” to catalog the stars, Henrietta’s story plays out against a landscape of early feminism and universe-revealing science, reminding us all what we can achieve when we allow curiosity and wonder into our lives.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt working at her desk in the Harvard College Observatory

Here are just a few of the reasons we think Henrietta’s story is so important for audiences to see:

1. Without Henrietta’s work with variable stars, our view of the universe would be completely different.  Henrietta’s work allowed astronomers to measure the distances between Earth and distance objects in the night sky. As a result, Edwin Hubble (yes, THAT Hubble) was able to discover that the universe extends beyond the Milky Way Galaxy and that there are in fact thousands and thousands of other galaxies out there. These findings, published only a few years after Henrietta’s death, fundamentally changed the scientific view of the universe and ensured Hubble’s place in the history books.
2. She made all her discoveries while almost entirely deaf. After her graduation from Radcliffe College in 1892, Henrietta contracted a serious illness that took most of her hearing. Despite this, in 1895, she began work at the Harvard College Observatory as a human “computer” under Edward Pickering unpaid. Henrietta’s colleague at the Observatory and friend, Annie Cannon, was also nearly deaf as the result of scarlet fever.
3. She received very little recognition in her lifetime.  While many of her colleagues recognized her brilliance, the only official honor Henrietta has received from the scientific community was the naming of a crater on the Moon and an asteroid after her. Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler considered nominating her for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926. However, Harlow Shapley, the head of the Harvard Observatory at the time, informed Mittag-Leffler that Henrietta had died three years prior, suggesting that it was truly his (Shapley’s) own interpretations of her findings that should be honored.
   

“We are still in the unfortunate rut of under-opportunity and under-representation for women in the sciences and tech,” Silent Sky playwright Lauren Gunderson said. “This play aims to expose and challenge that angering trend with a true story of a woman who changed the course of astronomy and, to the extent that astronomy defines us as a civilization, human life. And she did it in a room with several other brilliant but underpaid, sequestered, unappreciated woman mathematicians who were not allowed to even use the telescopes that the men could.”

Silent Sky runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., Aug. 25 through Sept. 10. Two preview performances take place on Wednesday, Aug. 23 and Thursday, Aug. 24, both at 8 p.m. Tickets are $47 on Thursdays and Fridays, and $49 on Saturdays and Sundays, except for Aug. 25 (opening night) for which tickets are $55 and include a post show reception at Utopia Restaurant. Low-priced tickets to previews are $35. International City Theatre is located in the Long Beach Performing Arts Center at 330 East Seaside Way in Long Beach, CA 90802. For reservations and information, call 562-436-4610 or go to ICT’s Website

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A peek at the process behind our Free Saturday Family Theatre program

August 4th, 2017

Arts Education is a very important part of our mission here at International City Theatre. One of the many educational programs we offer is our Free Saturday Family Theatre series. This series features 1-hour performances that are created specifically for families and younger children. Made possible in part by funding from the Port of Long Beach, these free performances are a wonderful chance for families from all across the greater Long Beach area to expose their children to the arts, regardless of their income level.

An image from our April 2017 Free Saturday Family Theatre performance. The kids were growing from little seedlings into big tall trees!

On Saturday, September 9 at 11:00AM, International City Theatre will present the next show in the series. This show is titled Proud to Be Me, and it was created and will be performed by the acting troupe We Tell Stories. We’ve conducted a short interview with We Tell Stories in order to give you a better sense of the process involved in created and presenting our Free Saturday performances.

1. Can you tell us a bit about the plot of “Proud to be Me”? 

   We Tell Stories production of Proud to be Me consists of three folktales from three different cultures, Mexico, Africa, and Iran. All the stories are about how we see ourselves and how others see us as well. In “El Anciano,” from Mexico, a couple who have different feelings about how nice their house is, go to the wisest man in town to help them find a way to happiness. In “The Frog Who Wanted to Sing,” from Africa, no frog in the forest has ever sung before but our hero doesn’t let that stop him from realizing his dream. In “Cutie Cockroach,” from Iran, a Cockroach tries to find a husband by trying to hide her true self, and finds out in the end that her own beauty shines through.

2. What makes your performances unique? 

   What makes We Tell Stories unique is the way we use audience members on stage, always as integral characters in the story. We don’t ask for volunteers. Instead, we give a direction from the stage and let everybody in the audience do it in his and her seat. Then we find someone who is really doing the task in an interesting way, and we invite that person to come up on stage and play with us. Once on stage, we have total confidence that everything that young actor does will be right, because it is our job to make them right.
   

3. How do you create your shows? 

   How we create our shows is actually the second thing that makes We Tell Stories unique. It’s called “The We Tell Stories Process of Turning Stories Into Plays.” We teach that process in schools to students and teachers as well. It is a series of improvisational exercises that lead us to create our way of telling a story. When we perform the stories we have created, we try to maintain that improvisational feel so that, when kids come up on stage with us, we can go with whatever they give us.
   

4. How is performing for a child audience different from an adult one? 

   Children pay closer attention than adults. Adults have preconceptions that color the way they see things. Kids have no preconceptions so they are always in the moment when watching a story unfold. Even shy children are uninhibited in the way they perceive things. Child audiences are always generous, appreciative, and positively responsive. It’s always fun to perform for kids.

5. What do you think is key to keeping the younger audience engaged? 

   The first rule of education is, “Get their attention.” What better way than with a story. Kids will sometimes get worked up during a show by something exciting that may have happened in the story. Sometimes a big group of kids may get rolling in a way that they begin to lose control. Just going on with the story will always get them back. The main thing is to be clear and direct with the story. As long as kids can see how one thing leads to the next, they will stay engaged. We use a very presentational style that speaks directly to the audience. In fact, the actors have an overriding direction that whenever they are talking to another character on stage (unless that character is being played by a child) they should not look at that character but look at the audience. Continuously relating directly to the audience keeps it engaged.

6. What do you hope the audience takes away from “Proud to be Me”?
   
   First of all, what we want children to go away from every We Tell Story show with is the feeling that, “I could do that!” We want kids to think of this kind of storytelling as a way that they can play at home and at school. We want them to go home with some stories in their pocket. Situations will come up for them in life that will remind them of the story, and then they can take it out of their pocket and it might mean a little more to them each time that happens. The message of the stories in “Proud to be Me” is that we are who we are. Our first job is to find out who that person is, inside of us, and then support that person in whatever he or she wants to do.

Proud to be Me will be presented by International City Theatre on Saturday, September 9 at 11:00AM. The performance is free and open to all, but reservations are required in advance. Please visit this link to make a reservation online. You may also call International City Theatre at 562-495-4595 ext. 103 to make a reservation.

International City Theatre would like to extend a big “thank you” to the Port of Long Beach for helping to make our Free Saturday Family Theatre program possible.

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Meet the cast of International City Theatre’s *Crimes of the Heart*

May 19th, 2017

Set in Hazlehurst, Mississippi in 1974, Crimes of the Heart tells the story of the three Magrath sisters.

Lenny, the oldest sister, will be played by Jennifer Cannon. Jennifer was most recently seen on the ICT stage playing Abigail in the West Coast Premiere of Abigail/1702, directed by caryn desai. Jennifer is an improv artist, dancer, stilt walker, martial artist and co-founder/producer, with brother, Chris, of Arena 36 Productions. She studies acting with Gregory Berger-Sobeck. Jennifer has a Masters in Music from Southern Illinois University and B. A. from Rollins College, Winter Park, FL.

Middle sister Meg will be played by Robin Long. Funnily enough, the actress herself is also the middle sister of three sisters. Robin studied acting at Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York. She has appeared on Throwing Shade (TV Land) and can also be seen on Funny or Die’s The Actor on Acting with Kevin Bacon. As a director, she has worked on Next Fall at Macha Theatre in West Hollywood and The Ruby Besler Show at The Oberon in Cambridge. Robin is also trained in horseback riding, and she made us laugh by listing “crab walking” as a “special skill” on her resume!

Youngest sister Babe has just been bailed out of jail after shooting her husband in the stomach. The part of Babe will be played by Megan Gainey. Megan is currently based out of Los Angeles and earned her BA in Drama from UC Irvine. In addition to acting, she is the administrator of Seven Pillars Acting Studio in Los Angeles owned and operated by Sonya Cooke. She also spends her weekends performing for and celebrating birthdays with “Princess and Me Parties.”

The sister’s priggish and insufferable cousin Chick will be played by Alexandra Wright.  In the past, Alexandra has worked with stars like Neil Gaiman, Scott Zigler, and Neil Patrick Harris. She hold’s a BA  from the University of Southern California and an MFA from Harvard University. You can also catch Alexandra performing standup comedy at Flappers Comedy Club, The Comedy Store, and her upcoming Shakespeare comedy podcast, Bard-Ass Bitches.

Into this disturbing but hilarious world of dysfunction that is Crimes of the Heart comes Barnette, an awkward young lawyer who hopes to rescue Babe from her legal predicament. Barnette will be played by Wallace Angus Bruce. Previously, Wallace appeared at ICT as the distraught BBC journalist in the Judy Garland story, End of the Rainbow, and the love-struck but rather dimwitted protagonist, Eraste, in the west coast premiere of David Ives’ period comedy The Heir Apparent.

Rounding out the group is Doc Porter, Meg’s former flame whom she ditched after a brief tryst five years earlier during Hurricane Camille.  Doc will be played by James Louis Wagner, who could be seen most recently as John Jones in The Realistic Joneses at The American Conservatory Theatre. James studied theatre at The American Conservatory Theatre and was trained in acting by the likes of Larry Moss, Tom Irwin & Greg Simms.

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3 reasons LA area theatregoers need to see a play about artificial intelligence

April 13th, 2017

Artificial Intelligence, or A.I., is interesting for many reasons.

1. For one, it is already a large part of our life in the 21st century. A.I. powers self-driving cars, helps you “tag” images on Facebook, powers “Siri” on your iPhone and “Alexa” on the Amazon Echo, helps suggest interesting movies for you to watch on Netflix, and helps you find new music you’ll love on Pandora.
2. Scientists and engineers are making rapid advancements in the field of A.I., often too quick for the legal system to catch up. As a community, we should be discussing the implications of a technology that is so advanced it mimics human consciousness. Does a machine with self-awareness deserve basic human rights? (Or how about a ping-pong playing robot, like above?) If so, which ones?
3. Theatregoing is a deeply social experience, and one of our favorite parts of producing a new play is the discussions that the play inspires after the show. Uncanny Valley will certainly inspire interesting discussions about parenthood, innovation and technology, what makes us human, and the future of life as we know it!

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The robot that inspired the script: BINA48

March 31st, 2017

Uncanny Valley playwright Thomas Gibbons was sitting in the waiting room of a dentist’s office in August of 2011 when he noticed an article in the National Geographic magazine sitting on the table. The article mentioned Bina48, an uncannily realistic humanoid robot designed to look like a real human being named Bina Rothblatt, cofounder of the company who created Bina48.  

Bina48 is capable of having conversations with humans, and her conversational speech is eerily advanced. You can see a clip of her in conversation below.

The description of Bina48 on LifeNaut’s website states, “As an “ambassador” for the LifeNaut project, Bina48 is designed to be a social robot that can interact based on information, memories, values, and beliefs collected about an actual person.” This is a place where the story of Bina48 gets even stranger: you can go to the LifeNaut site right now and “upload” your brain to the internet by creating a “Mind File” which is supposed to preserve your memories and personality beyond the life of your biological body. Creepy, right?

In Uncanny Valley, we see a robot come to life piece by piece, starting as just a head and shoulders, much like Bina48. Uncanny Valley charts the relationship between Claire, a neuroscientist, and Julian, a highly advanced robot. As Julian is “born” a few body parts at a time over the course of the play, Claire teaches him how to be as human as possible.  Claire educates him in techniques of being as human as possible including mirroring people’s speech, engaging in small talk, playing a musical instrument.

As the play progresses, we explore the painful divide between creator and creation and how we are redefining what it means to be human in the twenty-first century. This humorous and thought-provoking play raises some interesting questions.  Is it possible for a robot to have or understand feelings?   Are feelings and emotions what make us human?  What is the future of life as we know it?

International City Theatre is located at the Beverly O’Neill Theater at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. Uncanny Valley runs from April 19 – May 7.  Show times are Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 2 pm.  Regular tickets are $35 – $55. For tickets, call 562-436-4610 or buy online at www.InternationalCityTheatre.org

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Meet the Playwright of Uncanny Valley: Thomas Gibbons

March 27th, 2017

Thomas Gibbons has been the playwright-in-residence at InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia for about two decades now. His plays have been seen at the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, off-off-Broadway at Blue Heron Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Actors Express, Florida Stage, Unicorn Theatre, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Arizona Theatre Company, Center Stage, New Repertory Theatre, Aurora Theatre, Roundhouse Theatre and many others. He is the recipient of seven playwriting fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Roger L. Stevens Award from the Fund for New American Plays, a Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwriting Award, an NAACP Theatre Award, two Barrymore Awards for outstanding new play, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

According to an interview Gibbons did with Herald Mail Media, playwriting was not something he had originally planned on making his career. It was during his senior year studying fiction writing at Villanova University when he took a playwriting class and one of his scripts ended up being produced by a local theatre company. “It was just dumb luck,” he said. “I never thought of being a playwright. I hadn’t seen all that many plays at that point. I don’t think I quite appreciated it at the time how lucky I was, but the experience was wonderful and I felt I had stumbled into what I was supposed to be doing. I never went back to writing fiction.”

Gibbons says he hopes audiences will leave the theatre with “some questions” after seeing one of his plays. That is definitely the feeling our audiences will leave with after seeing Uncanny Valley at International City Theatre.

In an interview with CATF, Gibbons says “one of the things I want people to think about is this: as technology blurs the line between human and mechanical, artificial or whatever word you want to use – how is that going to change our definition of humanity?”

“As I began to work on the play, the word, “valley” became very important because it has many metaphysical implications: the valley between life and death, the valley between the creator and the created, the valley between parents and children.  I’ve come to realize that this play is very much about parents and children.”

“I’m always happiest when people tell me they’ve seen one of my plays and then they went out and had a good argument in a restaurant for two hours,” he said with a laugh. “When I hear that, I feel like I’ve done my job.”

We think ICT audiences will be talking about this play long after it ends, because the material is so timely and so universally relevant. In a world where technology is becoming more and more advanced, can innovation go too far? How far is that? Is it possible for a robot to have or understand feelings?   Are feelings and emotions what make us human?  What is the future of life as we know it?

International City Theatre is located at the Beverly O’Neill Theater at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. Uncanny Valley runs from April 19 – May 7.  Show times are Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 2 pm.  Regular tickets are $35 – $55. For tickets, call 562-436-4610 or buy online at www.InternationalCityTheatre.org

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