CRAVE

Location: East Village Basement, 321 E 9th St, New York, NY 10003

OBIE-winning theater company Hoi Polloi announces its upcoming production of Sarah Kane’s CRAVE, running from October 9 - 24 at the East Village Basement. Duffy’s staging brings a sharp, visceral approach to Kane's poetic, polyphonic symphony of desire, trauma, and human connection. In CRAVE, Kane strips away traditional narrative structure, using four interlocking voices to navigate a haunting landscape of lost love and psychological survival. Duffy’s intimate, subterranean production immerses the audience into the raw, lyrical intensity of Kane's most formally-adventurous work.

CAST: Leah Del Rosario, Maggie Hoffman, Jonah O’Hara-David, Julian Rozzell, Jr.

Director and Co-Scenic Design: Alec Duffy

Composer and Co-Scenic Design: Steven Leffue

ACCESSIBILITY: The venue is not ADA-accessible -- there is a full staircase from the street level leading down to the space. There is also no bathroom for attendees.

Sarah Kane (1971-1999) wrote five plays and one screenplay which, despite initial hostility from professional theatre critics, are now regarded as modern classics, performed and studied around the world. Blasted, produced at the Royal Court in January 1995, employed an innovative dramatic structure and cast an unflinching eye on the links between the atrocities of war, rape, and abusive relationships. Phaedra's Love (directed by Kane at the Gate Theatre in May 1996), and Cleansed (in the Royal Court's temporary home, the Duke of York's, in May 1998) received unappreciative reviews at home but were highly acclaimed elsewhere. Her screenplay, Skin, was first televised in June 1997. Originally scheduled for early evening, it screened later over concerns about its depictions of racism and violence. Crave previewed at the Chelsea Centre Theatre in August 1998, before touring to the Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh), the Royal Court (London), Berlin, Dublin, and Copenhagen. Its poetry and experimental form were appreciated both at home and abroad. 4.48 Psychosis premiered posthumously at the Royal Court in June 2000. Its unique form, and the honesty and power with which it communicates the experience of suicidal despair, have made it one of her most performed works.

Alec Duffy (Director/Co-Scenic Design) is a playwright and director, and the founder of both Hoi Polloi and the Brooklyn performance venue JACK. With Hoi Polloi, he has helmed plays that include Family, Winning is Winning, White on White, Quiet, Comfort, Dysphoria, The Less We Talk, and All Hands, among others. In 2010, he shared an OBIE Award for Three Pianos, a paean to Schubert's Winterreise song cycle, co-written and performed with Dave Malloy and Rick Burkhardt in a production directed by Rachel Chavkin. In addition to his work with Hoi Polloi, he directed acclaimed productions of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral at The Cathedral of St. Joseph in Brooklyn, and the Engl