Jan 12
The Huntington Brings Unique, Interactive Play to New Performance Space
READ TIME: 2 MIN.
The Huntington announces the cast and creative team of its new production of "Stand Up If You're Here Tonight," the thoroughly unique and interactive play written and directed by John Kolvenbach. The production kicks off 2024, running from Saturday, January 20 – Sunday, March 3, 2024 at the Huntington Theatre in the Maso Studio (264 Huntington Avenue).
"Stand Up If You're Here Tonight "is a new play by Olivier Award-nominated playwright John Kolvenbach. Winner of the LA Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Actor, Jim Ortlieb delivers a tour-de-force performance as a man desperate for connection, bent by isolation, and deeply in love with the audience itself. Unlike anything you've seen at The Huntington before, this underground experience in the renovated, 150-seat Maso Studio blurs the line between audience and performer, and will have audiences connecting, laughing, thinking, and up on their feet.
Kolvenbach wrote "Stand Up If You're Here" Tonight in the spring of 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic. It premiered at the Harbor Stage Company in Wellfleet, then went on to have sold-out runs in LA, Chicago, and Paris. It has been praised as a "stunningly original existential exercise" by WTTW (PBS) Chicago, and as "uproarious, downright brilliant, and full of joyful surprises!" by the Provincetown Independent.
Kolvenbach explains, "The show is about a guy trying to do the impossible, or the nearly impossible: he wants to achieve a kind of union with the audience, a oneness, to blur the line between the play and the people who are there that night. That's the ambition of the man in the play, but it's also the ambition (harebrained, maybe) of the play itself. We hope for communion."
Huntington Artistic Director Loretta Greco and Kolvenbach first worked together and forged their friendship during her time as artistic director of San Francisco's Magic Theatre where she produced his plays "Goldfish," "Mrs. Whitney," "Sister Play," and "Reel to Reel."
"You are in for a treat!" says Greco. "This incisive, vulnerable, funny, new play by my dear friend John Kolvenbach is the first half of this special intimate evening, and the second opens up to drinks and freeform conversation with the artists and your fellow audience members. This is unlike any experience you've had at The Huntington! In Paris and LA, people stayed for hours, and we hope you'll want to stay and connect as well."
The Huntington's production of "Stand Up If You're Here Tonight" features actor Jim Ortlieb as Man, a performer seeking an audience. His credits include "The Farnsworth Invention" and "Of Mice and Men" on Broadway. The creative team features Huntington staff members, including scenic design by Kristine Holmes ("Mala" at ArtsEmerson and The Huntington) and lighting design by M Berry ("The Ding Dongs" at Gloucester Stage Company). The production stage manager is Adele Nadine Traub.
The performance runs for approximately 65 minutes and is followed by a social hour where audiences can interact with members of the cast and creative team and with each other. A beverage during the social hour is included in the price of the ticket.
