FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: January 12, 2005
Contact: Christa Skiles
Public Relations Director
513-345-2242, ext. 232

CINCINNATI PLAYHOUSE IN THE PARK ANNOUNCES
FIFTH SEASON LINEUP FOR ALTERACTIVE

(CINCINNATI) – Bilingual poetry, edgy sketch comedy, a classic American troubadour and a brand new show from a returning favorite are highlights of the 2005 alteractive series at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Now celebrating its fifth year, the Monday evening series starts February 7 with seven weeks of diverse performances.

alteractive brings the best of alternative artists, including monologists, performance poets, musicians and improvisational comedians to Playhouse audiences. Shows are staged in the intimate cabaret-style setting of the Rosenthal Plaza. Doors open for alteractive at 6:30 p.m., with performances starting around 7 p.m. Tickets are just $12 for adults and $8 for students.

This year’s alteractive schedule features:

Escandalo Poetico
Bilingual Performance Poetry
February 7, 2005

The growing Hispanic and Latino community in the Greater Cincinnati area in recent years has sprouted many Latino artists. Escandalo Poetico, which translates as “Poetic Riot,” brings together five local Latino poets to express their inner-voice through poetry. The readings are conducted in both English and Spanish and are accompanied by background music and acting. According to director Victor M. Vélez, Escandalo Poetico will challenge the power of communications, the power of expression, the power of culture and, ultimately, the power of the word.

Totally Realistic Productions
Superbowl and Other Stories
February 14, 2005

Superbowl and Other Stories has nothing to do with the Super Bowl and even less to do with football. Instead these three short works of fiction, by award-winning writer Donna Sellinger and performed by her with Jo Marvel, are funny and chilling examinations of varying aspects of everyday life: kids, family and Americana. Using intense and dynamic storytelling, the two actors portray more than a dozen characters with distinct stories told simultaneously. Starring elements include a melting ice-cream cake, a shaving basin, a hurricane and the side of the highway. According to VIEW magazine, “The dialogue has an often poetic beauty and Sellinger inhabits her many characters with a dark conviction that stuns as she jumps between the stories … this is a must-see.”

Totally Realistic Productions was founded in 2001. Productions by the group have been performed at the Hamilton Fringe Festival and Toronto Fringe Theatre Festival in Canada, the Minnesota Fringe Festival and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, where Superbowl was rehearsed and workshopped.

Glenis Redmond
Performance Poetry
February 21, 2005

Glenis Redmond provides alteractive audiences with a one-woman poetry experience. She weaves her personal story as she validates her daily existence as a mom, a daughter, a woman and an artist. Ms. Redmond heralds her African-American heritage with poems that reflect how she has struggled, survived and ultimately thrived. With a richly textured voice that is as earthy, fierce and passionate as a musical instrument, she creates poems that dance with words and evoke vivid images.

Ms. Redmond has traveled the United States and Europe inspiring audiences young and old. She is the author of three chapbooks — Naming It, If I Ain't African and Word Power— and her first full-length book of poetry, Backbone, recently was published by Underground Epics. She also is the recipient of numerous poetry awards, including the Carrie McCray Literary Award and study scholarships from the Vermont Writing Center and Atlantic Center for the Arts. She is the 1997 and 1998 Southeast Regional Individual Poetry Slam Champion and twice placed in the top 10 in the National Individual Slam Championships.

Tim Miller
US
February 28, 2005

After two previous sold-out appearances at alteractive, most recently in 2003, monologist and gay activist Tim Miller returns to Cincinnati with his new show. Fast, funny and furious, US ricochets between Miller’s love affair with Broadway musicals to an exploration of gay marriage, exile and the injustices lesbian and gay people face in the United States. The piece careens from a 10-year-old’s plan to flee the country to escape the war in Vietnam (Man of La Mancha), to a meditation on why a Southern California child spoke in an English accent (Oliver) to a surreal tug of war at the border of Canada and the U.S. as the Niagara Falls rushes between his legs (“Don’t Rain on My Parade.”) According to the Chicago Reader, the show is “timelier than ever … US boils with Miller’s distinctive mix of anger and humor, literate intelligence and rock-star stage presence.”

Tim Miller is an internationally acclaimed performance artist who gained notoriety in the 1990s as one of the “NEA Four,” artists whose grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were rescinded based on the content of their work. He is also the co-founder of two of the most influential performance spaces in the country: Performance Space (P.S.) 122 in New York City and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. He is the author of the book Shirts & Skin and his solo performance works have been published in the play collections O Solo Homo and Sharing The Delirium. Miller’s newest book Body Blows, an anthology of six of his performance scripts, was published by University Of Wisconsin Press.

Christine Lavin in Concert
Singer/Songwriter/Guitarist
March 7, 2005

Described by the Boston Globe as “the classic American troubadour” and by Billboard magazine as “captivating,” Christine Lavin is nationally and internationally renowned for her songs about relationships and modern life, which have made her a mainstay on the New York folk scene for more than 20 years. She combines an irreverent attitude with a hilarious onstage presentation, complete with pre-show knitting circles and a signature baton twirling finale. Her 17 solo albums include Sometimes Mother Really Does Know Best, I Was in Love with a Difficult Man and Please Don't Make Me Too Happy, and her song “Sensitive New Age Guys” is part of Joan Micklin Silver’s off-Broadway production of A … My Name Will Always Be Alice while “Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind” is in the touring show Sex: The Musical.

Christine Lavin is the winner of a National Association of Independent Record Distributors and Manufacturers (NAIRD) Award, two New York Music Awards and five American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) composer awards. Backstage magazine named her the 2001 Outstanding New York Singer/Songwriter of the Year. Also a New York City radio host and freelance writer, Lavin has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Sunday Today Show and NPR’s All Things Considered and performs more than 100 concerts annually.

Locals Only Night
March 14, 2005

Local names take the spotlight for the entire alteractive evening on March 14. Featured are Antaesop, a group made up of local artists Roesing Ape, Nikol Soluski, Rachel Cook and Sam Womelsdorf, performing an original story with a fairy-tale quality that uses live acting and filmed shadows and landscapes projected from behind a screen so that live acting shadows interact with puppet, scenery and video shadows; Ra Sessions, offering an eclectic mix of poetry and hip hop; and Moving Art Dance Co. presenting Grrls with Guns, an original dance piece exploring the societal images and gender stereotypes that girls experience throughout their lives and examining what it means to be a woman.

The Defiant Thomas Brothers
Sketch Comedy Duo
March 28, 2005

Seth and Paul Thomas comprise The Defiant Thomas Brothers. The two aren’t really related — Paul is a white guy from Wisconsin; Seth is a black man from California — but they are brothers in spirit with sketch comedy that is edgy, hip and irreverent and high-energy performances that are part throwback, part new-school and totally entertaining. According to Chicago magazine, “The Chicago-based sketch-comedy team with an edge exploit everything from religion to abortion, while providing a bit of comic relief with their confounding filial relationship … and questionable singing voices.”

Both members of the duo are graduates of the Second City Conservatory. They opened their underground comedy show on November 1, 2002 at Frankie J’s MethaDome Theater in Chicago’s historic Uptown. The Defiant Thomas Brothers also have performed in the Miami Improv Festival, the Chicago Improv Festival, Chicago Sketchfest, Seattle Sketchfest, as part of the Second City Unhinged Series and, most recently, in the upcoming 2005 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen.

Tickets for alteractive are on sale by calling the Playhouse box office at 513/421-3888 or toll-free in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, 800/582-3208. Parking is free. Happy Hour drink prices are available. Karlo's Bistro at the Playhouse will offer Casual Fare selections, including sandwiches, soups, salads and desserts. To find more information about alteractive or to purchase tickets, visit www.cincyplay.com.

Artists fly to and from Cincinnati on Delta Connection Comair, the Playhouse’s official airline.

The Playhouse is supported, in part, by the generosity of the tens of thousands of individuals and businesses that give to the Fine Arts Fund.

The Ohio Arts Council helps fund the Playhouse with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.

The Playhouse also receives funding from the City of Cincinnati.

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