Coin & Ghost Presents Mama Mama Can’t You See (March 20 – April 18, 2020) @ Green Galactic PR

For Immediate Release:

Coin & Ghost Presents The World Premiere of

Mama Mama Can’t You See

An Existential War Story

Directed by Zachary Reeve Davidson

At New American Theatre

March 20 through April 18, 2020

LOS ANGELES, CA – February 14, 2020 – Coin & Ghost, LA’s theatrical home for remixed mythologies, will present its latest world premiere, Mama Mama Can’t You See, by Cecilia Fairchild and Stan Mayer. Opening on Friday, March 20, and running through Saturday, April 18, 2020, the new play explores a particularly harrowing moment of Mayer’s life as a U.S. Marine, and the implications of that moment across the boundaries of death, sex and love. Directed by Coin & Ghost’s Artistic Director,Zachary Reeve Davidson, the play is a metaphysical journey in which the experience of modern war becomes a shared identity among four Marines in Iraq and four sex workers from the American Civil War, who find themselves crossing paths in the space between life and death. The show will run for five weekends at New American Theatre in Hollywood. For information and tickets please visithttps://coinandghost.org/mama.

Stan Mayer is a U.S. Marine and Intelligence Officer, who served five deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mayer lost many close friends during his first tour of duty. The play emerged in response to these losses, centered on a moment in May 2005 when four members of his platoon were killed by a suicide bomber and the ensuing firefight. These deaths have saturated every fiber of Mayer’s life and work. He reflects, “Mama Mama Can’t You See is a meditation on that moment. A moment that resonates into eternity. A moment when the post-Norman Rockwell America turned into a dirty unnamed street alongside the Euphrates River where the bodies of young men lay slain.”

The play marks the first official script collaboration from Mayer and Fairchild. The story takes place inside an explosion, or as one of the characters says, “in the cacophony of time that gets crammed into the last moment of your life.” Mama Mama Can’t You Seeis an exaltation of trauma unbound by the constraints of time and space. It is a uniquely original, existential war story, marrying physicality and surrealism to give an emotional context to the landscape of war.

All photos are of Abe Martell and Cecilia Fairchild, shot by Kendall Johnson.

WHEN • WHERE • HOW MUCH:

Coin & Ghost (C&G) will mount 14 performances of Mama Mama Can’t You See over the five-weekend run, every Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8:00pm. There will be one preview performance on Thursday, March 19^th. Tickets cost $25 for general admission and a Philanthropic Ticket is $35. The extra $10 allows C&G to offer tickets at reduced prices to community members who would not otherwise be able to attend the show. As always, C&G will offer a healthy mix of Pay-What-You-Can (PWYC) tickets throughout the run. Every seat during the second and third weekends will be PWYC. New American Theatre is located at 1312 N. Wilton Pl., Los Angeles, CA 90028. Suggested age limit is 16-years or older due to adult themes and conversations.

The cast of Mama Mama Can’t You See is comprised of Matthew David King (Stan), Jess Reed(Anita), Cecilia Fairchild (Ellis), Abe Martell (Lance), Julián Juaquín (Jeff), Hannah Trujillo (Wanda), Kathleen Leary (Clem) and Alex Demers (Doc). Lighting design is byJoey Guthman, sound design is by Joseph “Sloe” Slawinski (who also serves as the project’s composer) and costume design is by Athena Lawton. The ambitious team is made complete with Coin & Ghost’s inner circle that includes its Managing Director Marguerite French (Producer), Associate Artistic Director/Music Director Elisa Rosin(Scenic Designer/Producer), Associate Artistic Director Kendall Johnson (Producer), Production Manager Niki Armato (Assistant Director/Stage Manager), Director of Community Engagement Joseph Baca (Producer) and Davidson as a producer as well.

Three of the cast and crew are United States military veterans, including Mayer (Marines), Joseph “Sloe” Slawinski (Navy) and Matt David King (Army).

• Playwrights: Stan Mayer and Cecilia Fairchild

• Director: Zach Davidson

• Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Niki Armato

• Lighting Designer: Joey Guthman

• Sound Designer/Composer: Joseph “Sloe” Slawinski

• Scenic Designer: Elisa Rosin

• Costume Designer: Athena Lawton

• Producers: Joseph Baca, Marguerite French, Kendall Johnson, Niki Armato, Zach Davidson, and Elisa Rosin

ABOUT:

Cecilia Fairchild –

Cecilia Fairchild was conceived on a moving train in a thunderstorm outside Marfa, Texas. She is a Los Angeles native, a 7^th generation Californian, and she holds her MFA in acting from USC. Her play Fortunate Son, an adaptation of Goethe’s Faust set in post-Vietnam New Orleans, premiered with Coin & Ghost as its inaugural production. Her short plays, Best of My Love and Family Tradition, premiered at the Los Angeles LGBT Center in 2017. Recent performances in LA include Sam Shepard and Patti Smith’s Cowboy Mouth at Thymele Arts and Shepard’s Back Bog Beast Baitat The YARD Theater. She co-directed the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s 2016 production of Fool For Love. In 2015, she worked closely with Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, writing with and performing alongside him in his short film Salt Wound for Slamdance Film Festival. Last fall, she choreographed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Copland’s America at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Her focus is on the collaborative possibilities of theater and film. She dances at Jumbo’s Clown Room.

Stan Mayer –

Stan Mayer is from Cleveland, Ohio, raised by a blue-collar engineer and a Catholic school teacher. A former U.S. Marine and Intelligence Officer, Mayer served five deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mayer has been putting up theater in Los Angeles since 2016, shortly after he got out of the military. His recent projects include Sam Shepard’s Back Bog Beast Bait at The YARD Theater, Geraldine Inoa’s Scraps at The Matrix Theatre, and a reading of his play Odysseus in Temecula at The MET Theater in Los Angeles.

Zachary Reeve Davidson –

Zachary Reeve Davidson is a director, actor, writer, and teacher. He is the Founding Artistic Director of Coin & Ghost, with whom he remixes mythology and pursues eccentricity. These remixes have included Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, Italian romance, Mexican folklore, German legend, French opera and American history, andLA Weekly recently called the company’s work “uniquely entertaining” and “innovative in a few different ways.” As an arts administrator and creative consultant, Davidson has worked with non-profits throughout Los Angeles and around the country, including A Noise Within, Not Man Apart, Heidi Duckler Dance, Shakespeare Santa Monica, Conga Kids, The West Hollywood Dance Festival, Southern Colorado Repertory Theatre, Invertigo Dance Theatre, AdlerImprov and more. Davidson produced over 125 projects as a curator for the CalArts New Works Festival, was a Young Playwright’s National Finalist for his play Amsterdam; or Loving George, and served as Shakespeare Santa Monica’s youngest-ever Associate Artistic Director. He was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, and is a graduate of the CalArts BFA Acting program.

New American Theatre –

New American Theatre (NAT) is a creative, artist-helmed theatre company. NAT seeks to inspire, educate and nurture artists and the community towards a thoughtful and humane world view through the art of story-telling. NAT helps young theatre artists find their voices, cultivate social consciousness and prepare for a lasting career. It supports new and established playwrights and incubates new plays. The company seeks to make a lasting, life-long impression in the community – inspiring audiences to continue provocative conversations long after the curtain closes |https://www.newamericantheatre.com.

Coin & Ghost –

Coin & Ghost is a Los Angeles-based theatre company known for its creative reimagining of known mythologies, taking everything from Shakespeare to American history to Greek and Roman classics, and turning these well-known stories inside out. Each show starts on the well-worn road of these established stories before branching off on its own unique, mischievous path.

The company explains, “We chose the name Coin & Ghost because our work juxtaposes the permanent (what is accepted, expected, established, conventional and ritual) with the unstable (what is ridiculous, surprising, experimental, bizarre and eccentric).” For C&G’s mission and more about the etymology of its name, please visithttps://coinandghost.org/about-us.

***

SEASON TWO: MYTH-REMEMBERED:

Mama Mama Can’t You See is the second of three world premiere productions in C&G’s second season. The second season—dubbed “Myth-Remembered”—focuses on the theme of memory’s elasticity. “Though we like to think of remembering as straightforward and objective, it’s actually a very fluid process,” says Davidson. “Each time we access a memory, we’re likely to change it, to add or omit certain details as we attempt to recall and/or recreate it. Each of the three, incredible projects we’ve chosen for season two are well-worn stories, so vivid, so etched into our collective memory, that they can’t possibly be true. This season—constructed entirely of Coin & Ghost originals—is all about exploring the space between our memory of events and the objective reality of them.”

Breakfast in Moscow, an absurdist reimagined adventure of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, closes out the season. It is a bold, stylized production, conceived and directed by Alex Demers. This original Coin & Ghost adventure reinterprets the classic Chekhov play as a rock opera, using music from the 1979 Supertramp album, Breakfast in America.

“In mis-remembering things, we get to reinvent them,” says Davidson. “We invite you to join us this season on our miraculous, impossible, journey around the world, from Denmark to Iraq to Moscow, reinventing everything as we go in a way that is inherently true to Los Angeles.”

Remixed mythologies. Dangerously imaginative. Learn more at coinandghost.org or on social media @coinandghost.

LINKS:

• Mama, Mama, Can’t You See info & tickets – https://coinandghost.org/mama

• Mama, Mama, Can’t You See FB Event Page –https://www.facebook.com/events/188215708939788

• Coin & Ghost – https://coinandghost.org

• C&G Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/coinandghost

• C&G Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/coinandghost

• C&G Twitter – https://twitter.com/CoinAndGhost

• Photos – bit.ly/MamaPress

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For more information, photos, to schedule an interview or request press passes, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada at 213-840-1201 orlynn@greengalactic.com.

Posted on February 14th, 2020 lynn-hasty No comments

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