Cecilia's Last Tea Party

Written by Russell Davis
Directed by Will Pomerantz
Featuring Indika Senanayake, Nitya Vidyasagar, Amy Kim Waschke, Robert Wu

Passage Theatre concluded its spring Mainstage offerings with renowned playwright Russell Davis’s Cecilia’s Last Tea Party, a fantastical, funny, and darkly mysterious play incorporating puppets.  Scott Hitz, the film and stage puppeteer, serves as puppet consultant. Director Will Pomerantz has collaborated frequently with Mr. Davis and is known for his work in New York and across the country.

Cecilia’s Last Tea Party tells the story of Cecilia, a young girl who, amidst her mother’s disappearance and the commotion of an island upheaval, resists growing up by retreating into her fantasy world with the pelican Dodo and Dada, a rare Bengal tiger.  However, Cecilia’s world is fractured by the intrusion of her Aunt Tambora and Colonel Billy Krakatoa.  She escapes her troubling circumstances through extraordinary nocturnal adventures.

May 8 - June 1, 2008

The Devil's Music:

The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith

Written by Angelo Parra
Conceived and directed by Joe Brancato
With Miche Braden as Bessie Smith

It's fall 1937 in a Memphis “buffet flat” – a raucous, blacks-only after-hours joint that promised bad liquor and good loving. Bessie and her band sing and carouse on what will be the final stage of her life. The audience is asked to play the part of the late night crowd as they follow Bessie’s at times hilarious reminiscences on her tumultuous life and career and more than a dozen songs she made famous in the 1920’s – when she was the highest-paid black entertainer in the U.S.

Miche Braden, who “fills every molecule of the airspace with the mordant joy of the blues” (The New York Times ) stars in this musical drama. The New York Daily News named it “one of the top 10 off-Broadway experiences of 2001,” and The New York Post describes it as “a convincing picture of rip-roaring artist with an eye for the wild side, a heart of gold and a voice of sin.” A New York run of The Devil's Music was cut short in fall 2001, and Passage is bringing a long-overdue revival to Trenton to kick off its 2007-2008 season.

A bold and brassy, sweet and sassy look into the life of a woman who drank too much, loved too much and put her pain and pleasures into heart aching soul searching music. This is the Bessie Smith story.

November 1 - 25, 2007

The 2008 Solo Flights Festival

Cheat on Your TV,
Get Intimate with Live Theatre
10 unique solo acts. Just 4 weeks
Sixth Annual Festival

It Goes Without Saying
Bill Bowers

Compared to the work of David Sedaris, Claudia Shear, and Augusten Burroughs, Broadway veteran Bill Bowers' newest solo play, "It Goes Without Saying," relates his hilarious and heartbreaking escapades as both an actor and mime through storytelling, monologues, multimedia and mime performance.  Bowers' performances have been dubbed "acrobatic," "superb," and "magnetic" by critics across the country; you won't want to miss this event!

Thursday, March 6 at 8pm
Friday, March 14 at 8pm
Friday, March 21 at 8pm

Fuego: The Fire Within
Alborada Spanish Dance Theatre

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND! 

Travel with Eva Lucena and Alborada Spanish Dance Theatre into the South of Spain, where the traditional FLamenco dances of the gypsies are paired with modern re-imaginings.  Alborada's resident musicians and dancers fuse live music and the fiery passion of this beloved art into an unforgettable night.

Friday, March 7 at 8pm

A Womb with a View

From collecting donor samples in her living room, to having her partner (A Newark police officer) inject her with fertility drugs, to her day-to-day job as a fourth-grade theatre teacher in a Brooklyn private school, this primal rush to beat the biological clock is not your ordinary view of conception.  Debra Barsha's one-woman musical comedy about the trials and tribulations of a lesbian's face-off with alternative insemination is inventive and uproariously funny.  Frank Ventura, Executive Artistic Director of CAP21 (NYC's incubator for new musicals), directs.

Saturday, March 8 at 8pm
Thursday, March 13 at 8pm

A Sense of Wonder

OBIE Award-winning actress Kaiulani Lee brings her play "A Sense of Wonder," a powerful and poignant story of environmental pioneer Rachel Carson, author of "SIlent Spring," to Passage as art of an unprecedented environmental initiative.  Lee has toured her play for over 10 years, performing at places such as the Smithsonian Institute, the Albert Schweitzer Conference at the United Nations, the Sierra Club's  Centenial and the 2005 World Expo in Japan.

Thursday, March 20 at 8pm
Thursday, March 27 at 8pm
Friday, March 28 at 8pm

Nimbus Dance Works

Nimbus, best known for its innovative, multidisciplinary approach to dance, brings an evening of expressive, athletic and poignant performances to Passage Theatre.  Performed by some of New Jersey's finest concert dance performers, the evening will feature two works choreographied by Nimbus Artistic Director Samuel Pott as well as two world premieres from emerging choreographers Michelle deFremery and Jean paul.

Saturday, March 22 at 8pm

Blood Cherries

A woman sets off on a fantastical journey into memory and imagination in search of her dying father's errant spirit.  As she chases his spirit from the Dead Sea to the Kremlin - and places beyond time and space - she is forced to confront her own ghosts and fears of mortality.  Woven from text, Butoh dance, music and visual imagery, this solo piece written and performed by Dawn Akemi Saito has amassed critical praise for Saito's transportive performance and her stunning visuals.

Saturday, March 29 at 8pm

Tales from the Beatbox

Combining the hip-hop vocal percussion form "beatbox" with monologues, this tell-all tale follows renowned performer Yuri Lane from his early adventures as a child actor in San Francisco, to his political awakening in Jerusalem, to his acoustic adventures in the city of Chicago.  The son of hippies, Lane chronicles his life through the symphony of counterculture music that defined his family, telling the poignant story of his twin father and uncle, a painter and mime; his family's ambivalent Judaism; the loss of his best friend to gun violence; and the utopian vision that characterized his community.

Sunday, March 30 at 3pm

For Lost Words

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!

Composer Vince di Mura's spoken-word jazz opera, "For Lost Words," had its world premiere at Passage last season, inspired by the transcendent beauty of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa's Vietnam opus, "Dien Cai Dau," this symphonic exploration features di Mura on a multiplicity of keyboards, the vocal stylings of Annielee Moffett and jasper McGruder as "The Poet."

Sunday, March 9 at 3pm

Flat Black

Presented as a reading at last season's SOLO FLIGHTS,  "Flat Black" returns as a full-scale production.  Written and directed by Alysia Souder, this play is based on the autobiographical writings and poetry of Newark artist Jerry Gant.  Performed by Rodney Gilbert, "Flat Black" follows a "tagger" street artist celebrating his 40th birthday in jail.  This touching and powerful story weaves Gant's real and imagined journeys together, and infuses them with struggle and triumph, pleasure and pain.

Saturday, March 15 at 8pm

Metamorphoses

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND

A solor performance with harp conceived, written and composed by Todd Conner. This new translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" has seduced audiences across the nation.  With only his voice, body and a few props, Conner takes audiences back to the very well-springs of the Western storytelling tradition, exploring the poetic/rhapsodic rituals from which Ovid drew his inspiration - reminding us that it is the individual human being who must remain the essential medium of artistic expression.

Sunday, March 16 at 3pm

Greening: Natural Connections Growing Community is a unique initiative to raise awareness about the environment in the greater Trenton area through the collaboration of Passage Theatre and the environmental organizations D&R Greenway, Friends of the Marsh, Isles, New Jersey Audubon, New Jersey Conservation Foundation, Northeast Organic Farming Association and Story Brook-Millstone Watershed. These organizations have partnered to offer the community dynamic information about our environment in the form of theatre, art exhibits and outdoor activities that celebrate and encourage exploration and conservation of our natural world, including the natural resources in and around urban areas.