Just a Flea of a Theatre Tackles a Giant of a Play:
One Flea Spare
Opens the Balagula Theatre’s
2011-2012 Season
The Balagula Theatre Company opens the 2011-2012 Season Thursday, September 1, 2011 with One Flea Spare, by Naomi Wallace. One Flea Spare had its American Premiere at the 1996 Humana Festival of New Plays in Louisville, KY. Wallace, a native of Prospect, KY now residing in England, will attend Balagula Theatre Company’s production of One Flea Spare. Wallace is judging the Kentucky Women Writers Conference Playwriting Competition and Balagula Theatre Company will produce the winning play from the KWWC Playwriting Competition.
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| Natasha Williams, Artistic and Managing Co-Director of Balagula Theatre Company, is directing the play. |
“We see bringing the best of international theatre to Central Kentucky audiences as a part of our mission,”said Ryan Case, Artistic and Managing Co-Director for Balagula Theatre Company. “It is especially important for us to know and honor the contribution of our fellow Kentuckians to world theatre.” Case is also the producer of One Flea Spare.
Natasha Williams, Artistic and Managing Co-Director of Balagula Theatre Company, is directing the play.“This production is dedicated to the female playwrights,” said Williams. “We have been working with KWWC to bring more attention to the issue of gender discrimination in the theatre; where women playwrights are still treated as inferior to male writers. Ms. Wallace’s success is a great example of the significance and power of women’s voices on stage.”
Balagula Theatre Company continues their tradition of partnering with local non-profit organizations in an effort to raise awareness for both the theatre and the partnering organizations. These non-profits are chosen based on their mission and the impact they strive to achieve in the community. Balagula Theatre Company donates a portion of their ticket sales to the partners. For reservations call Natasha’s Bistro at 859-259-2754 or visit www.beetnik.com.
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| Producer Ryan Case |
THE FACTS
One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace
Directed by: Natasha Williams
September 1-4, 11-14
(Dinner seating 6:15-7:15 / Curtains at 8pm)
Ticket Price: Adults $15/Students $10
Reservations call 859-259-2754 or visit www.beetnik.com
About The Play
This award winning play set in plague ravaged 17th Century London opens with a wealthy couple preparing to flee when a mysterious sailor and a young girl sneak into their boarded up home. Now quarantined for 28 days, the only thing these strangers fear more than the plague is each other. Definitions of morality are up for grabs and survival takes many forms in this dark, fiercely intense and humorous play. One Flea Spare deals with the theme of humanity in the face of all equalizing disaster, a theme that echoes modern natural and man-made catastrophic events.
“One Flea Spare is built to provoke, not to distract, and it doesn't surrender its meanings easily. But the play's powerful sexual subtext and its beautiful poetic surface reveal an original theatrical imagination,” John Lahr, The New Yorker
About The Partners
ProgressLex (www.progresslex.org ) is a social welfare organization established to further the common good and general welfare of the people of Lexington by bringing about civic engagement and social improvements.
International Book Project ( www.intlbookproject.org ) promotes literacy and educational opportunities by providing more than 150,000 books to schools, libraries, churches and Peace Corps Volunteers throughout the developing world.
Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program (www.beyondtheviolence.org ) is the primary domestic service provider for prevention and intervention services in the Bluegrass Area Development District. BDVP also provides a safe, healing shelter program.
Kentucky Women Writers Conference( www.uky.edu/WWK ) is the longest running literary festival of women in the nation. This annual event launched by the University of Kentucky in 1979 has become a premier destination for the celebration of women’s arts and letters.
Thursday, September 1, 2011 – Opening Night with a reception following the show
Friday, September 2, 2011 – hosted by and benefiting
ProgressLex
Saturday, September 3, 2011 – hosted by and benefiting
International Book Project
Sunday, September 4, 2011 –
Pay What You Can Performance sponsored by Central Bank
Sunday, September 11, 2011 – hosted by and benefiting
Balagula Theatre Company (www.balagula.com)
Monday, September 12, 2011 – hosted by and benefiting
Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 – hosted by and benefiting
Kentucky Women Writers Conference
Wednesday, September 14, 2011 – hosted by and benefiting Balagula Theatre Company (www.balagula.com)
About the Sponsors
LexArts has provided funding support for
Balagula Theatre’s 2011-2012 Season through its Funds for the Arts.
The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency
provides operating support to The Balagula Theatre Company with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
WUKY is Season 2011-2012 Media Sponsor.
Production of One Flea Spare :is sponsored by
Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Pay What You Can Performance is co- sponsored by Central Bank and Trust Co. and Southern Tent and Awning Company.
Deliver the Arts Sponsors, providing theatre tickets to the underserved members of community: Worlds Apart and the Lexington Arts Academy
Throughout the run of One Flea Spare
art by Christine Kuhn,
inspired by the script of “One Flea Spare” will be on display.
About The Play
This award winning play set in plague ravaged 17th Century London opens with a wealthy couple preparing to flee when a mysterious sailor and a young girl sneak into their boarded up home. Now quarantined for 28 days, the only thing these strangers fear more than the plague is each other. Definitions of morality are up for grabs and survival takes many forms in this dark, fiercely intense and humorous play. One Flea Spare deals with the theme of humanity in the face of all equalizing disaster, a theme that echoes modern natural and man-made catastrophic events.
“One Flea Spare is built to provoke, not to distract, and it doesn't surrender its meanings easily. But the play's powerful sexual subtext and its beautiful poetic surface reveal an original theatrical imagination,” John Lahr, The New Yorker
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Naomi Wallace Broadway Play Publishing Inc Playwright of the Year 1997 |
About the Playwright
Naomi Wallace is a playwright, screenwriter and poet from Prospect, Kentucky, United States. Wallace obtained her Bachelor of Arts from Hampshire College and did graduate studies at the University of Iowa. Wallace divides her time between Kentucky and the Yorkshire Dales, UK, where she lives with her partner Bruce McLeod, with whom she has three children. She is a dedicated advocate for justice and human rights in the U.S. and abroad, and Palestinian rights in the Middle East. Wallace was detained after defying the ban on travel to Cuba. Her plays are published by Faber and Faber in London, and Theater Communications Group and Broadway Play Publishing Inc. in the U S. Wallace's work has been produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. Her work has received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (twice), the Joseph Kesselring Prize, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award and an Obie award. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. Her award-winning film Lawn Dogs, and The War Boys are both available on DVD. Wallace is writing new plays for the Public Theatre and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her new play, And I and Silence, premiered in London.
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