Astoria Performing Arts Center has announced details of its 16th season, which will include a world premiere from playwright Christina Quintana, a reading of a new musical about Soviet immigrants living in America, and a rare revival of the Tony-winning Broadway musical Raisin.
All performances take place at the Good Shepherd Church (30-44 Crescent St. in Astoria, NY). Dev Bondarin is the artistic director of APAC.
The season at a glance follows:
Evensong
By Christina Quintana
Directed by David Mendizábal
November 3-19
“Evensong traces the story of Teofilo ‘Teo’ Aguilar, a young Mexican-American gay man and member of New York City's working homeless population. A Texas transplant with big dreams, Teo works as a bank teller, goes on mediocre online dates, and searches for stability and human connection while navigating the tangled shelter system. Using structural elements of choral music and conventions of theatrical magic, Evensong is a tale of survival, growth, and faith in moments of loneliness and solitude.”
Resident Alien
A New Musical Reading
Book, music and lyrics by Katya Stanislavskaya
Directed by artistic director Dev Bondarin
February 2017
“Resident Alien is an original story of a family of three who are part of the third wave of Soviet and post-Soviet immigration to the U.S. in the 1990s. The family –a professor stuck in the past, a musician willing to adapt, and a teenager whose culture shock coincides with her coming-of-age – represents the full spectrum of the successes and failures of the immigrant experience. Resident Alien is about the personal choices every ‘alien’ faces in a new world – which parts of himself or herself to retain, and which to jettison in order to succeed.”
Raisin
Book by Robert Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg
Music by Judd Woldin
Lyrics by Robert Brittan
Based on Lorainne Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun
Directed by Dev Bondarin
May 4-27, 2017
“Raisin is a musical adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's revolutionary A Raisin in the Sun, and has a book co-written by her widower Robert Nemiroff. In segregated 1950s Chicago, Walter Lee Younger and his mother Lena fight over the spending of insurance money. He wants to start a business with friends, while she is eager to move the family out of the south side and into Clybourne Park. Pulsing with the musical beat of the city, Raisin depicts a black family’s struggle in the face of change.”
Visit apacny.org.
