about the show
THE MAR VISTA is a comical and heartbreaking new play with music and dance created by award-winning Brooklyn-based playwright/choreographer Yehuda Hyman. At the center of the story is the bond between Hyman and his mother, Sara, a strong-willed, very funny, and deeply romantic Russian-Jewish woman with a colorful and mysterious past. A cast of 6 actors travels 90 years and several continents in this surprising family saga – the mysteries of Istanbul, a forbidden WWII wartime romance, a gay boy growing up in the 1960s in a family of immigrants in West L.A., Romani dances, Greta Garbo’s face, dancing till dawn in Hollywood, and above all, the enduring power of lost love.
Come to the show!
We’re excited to announce that the new production of THE MAR VISTA: In Search of My Mother’s Love Life will run at the Ford Foundation Studio Theatre, Pershing Square Signature Center on West 42nd Street in Manhattan from Tuesday, March 5th through Saturday, March 23rd.
Yehuda Hyman
Playwright/Choreographer
YEHUDA HYMAN was born in Los Angeles to parents who emigrated from Poland and Russia. He is a playwright, choreographer, actor and Artistic Director of Mystical Feet Company, a theater ensemble creating new work. In addition to The Mar Vista, his plays include The Mad Dancers, Center of the Star, Swan Lake Calhoun, I Ask You, Ladies and Gentleman (from Leon Surmelian’s memoir), David in Shadow and Light (co-writer Daniel Hoffman), The Mad 7 and Max, Rapunzel & the Night. His work has been produced at McCarter Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, San Diego Repertory Theater, Theater J, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville (ATL) and The Marsh. Honors include the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, the NEA/TCG Playwright-in Residence Grant, Jerome Fellowship, Heideman Award and grants from Center for Jewish Culture. His essays and poems have been published in The Forward, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Northern California Jewish Bulletin, and in Seeing Jewish and Israeli Dance (Edited by Judith Brin Ingber). He has translated the works of German poet, Eva-Maria Berg. As an actor, Mr. Hyman has performed in NYC with Target Margin Theater and The Civilians. He was an Artist Fellow at the LABA House of Study/14th St Y. He received his M.F.A. in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College (2014) and has taught there as well as in NYC public schools with Dancing Classrooms. He recently choreographed Paula Vogel’s play, Indecent at the Guthrie Theater, acted in Alex Borinsky’s Ding Dong It’s the Ocean (a Rady & Bloom production) and choreographed for Dances for a Variable Population.His essay, “Three Hasidic Dances” will be published (October, 2018) in Dance in America, A Reader’s Anthology (Edited by Mindy Aloff, Foreword by Robert Gottlieb), Library of America. Yehuda Hyman lives in Brooklyn.
Second row L. to R.: Yehuda Hyman, Jacob Perkins, Ezra Bloom.
THE TALENT
These artists bring The Mar Vista to life: Amanda Schussel plays Yehuda’s mother, Sara from age 5 to age 92. Ron Kagan plays his father, Charlie. Ryan Daniel Pater inhabits the role of Sara’s secret lover. Jacob Perkins plays many eccentric characters including the 8-year old Yehuda. The Design Team includes: Costume Designer Amy Page; Lighting Designer Zach Blane; and Set Design Consultant Lewis Folden. Adin Walker is Associate Director of The Mar Vista.
Allison Bressi
Creative Producer
ALLISON BRESSI (Creative Producer) is a New York-based creative producer and the 2018 Recipient of the T Fellowship founded by Harold Prince and Columbia University. Her world premiere production of Songbird by Michael Kimmel and Lauren Pritchard, starring Tony Award Nominee Kate Baldwin ran Off-Broadway and was a New York Times Critics’ Pick and just completed a reimagined production at Two River Theater, directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch. Upcoming: Broadway Bounty Hunter by Joe Iconis, Lance Rubin, Jason Williams (Off Broadway), The Preacher’s Wife by Titus Burgess (workshop), The Mar Vista by Yehuda Hyman. Selected credits: This is Reading, a site-specific, multimedia performance installation conceived by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, Tony Gerber, and Kate Whoriskey;. Indigo Theatre Project’s reading of Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter to benefit She Should Run, directed by Christine Lahti; The Strangest by Betty Shamieh, directed by May Adrales; and the Off-Broadway revival of One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace. Works in early development include an untitled clown-jazz collaboration between Bill Irwin and Sammy Miller and the Congregation and Chant Bank, a social action movement created by Lisa Kron. Allison is the co-founder of Plan Bee Collective with Nicole Martorana and the Creative Producer for Theatre for One under Scenic Designer & Artistic Director Christine Jones. Allison works at Signature Theatre and is from Hudson, Ohio.
Madeleine Goldsmith
Creative Producer
Madeleine Goldsmith (PRODUCER) is a New York-based producer determined to make art that matters in our current world. In the last year and a half, since moving to New York from San Francisco, she has produced works at Abrons Arts Center, HERE Arts Center, and Target Margin Theater. In the fall she had productions at NYTW, The Bushwick Starr, SoHo Rep and Access Theater and in the winter she will have shows at HERE with Colt Coeur Theater Company and at The Ford Theater at The Signature. MadeleineDaraGoldsmith.com
Barbara Nagel
Executive Producer
A theater and dance lover and dancer from an early age, when Barbara saw The Mar Vista in 2016 she knew she wanted to help it realize the larger theatrical life she felt it deserved. In contacting creator Yehuda Hyman she initiated the current push that is culminating in a March showcase at the Pershing Square Signature Center.
Rosanne Deluca Braun
Executive Producer
In her work as a documentary filmmaker, Rosanne created and produced Beyond Wiseguys: Italian Americans & the Movies, executive produced by John Turturro, which aired on American and international public television stations. Her second film, Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History, was based on Helene Stapinski’s best-selling memoir about her family’s immigrant saga, and also aired on PBS. Prior to producing films, Rosanne was Director of Marketing and Fundraising at the Cinema Arts Centre, a leading New York and national film showcase.
partners
We are very grateful for the following partners and support
THE MAR VISTA was nurtured and developed by LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture and The 14th Street Y. A workshop production of THE MAR VISTA was presented at the 14th Street Y in December, 2016.
Learn more at jewishplaysproject.org
press
“Nothing in the press release prepared me for the power and beauty of THE MAR VISTA. THE MAR VISTA is storytelling and off-off Broadway at its finest.”
– Broadway World
“Laced with music and dancing, the two-hour piece transports you across continents and a century to a deep, lyrical understanding of the making of an artist.”
– The Village Voice
Support
Become a supporter of the 2019 production
of THE MAR VISTA
Your tax-deductible contribution to the 2019 production of THE MAR VISTA will be through Octopus Theatricals, a Creative, Producing and Consulting Organization. Octopus Theatricals is a fiscally sponsored member of New York Live Arts, Inc., a non-profit tax-exempt organization.
To make your donation to THE MAR VISTA, please click the button below.
(1) Make sure the check is made payable to “NEW YORK LIVE ARTS.” It cannot be processed if it is made out to anyone else.
(2) Then, on the memo line below (lower left hand corner) write: “Octopus Theatricals/The Mar Vista.”
(3) Please mail the check to:
Allison Bressi
480 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036