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"A first-rate drama... Like Ali Baba's famous passwords, 'Open sesame,' Grote's fertile imagination rolls back the stone guarding a treasure-trove of exotic language and romantic subject matter and spreads a cornucopia of glittering ideas and magical effects... Thirty-one economical scenes punctuated by stunning craft work lend a quick-cutting, cinematic texture."
-- Variety

"Grote's Orientalist fantasia... conjures a storybook world that dissolves, at a moment's notice, into an apocalyptic, 21st-century landscape. Seductive.”
--Washington Post

PAGE 73 PRODUCTIONS
PRESENTS THE NEW YORK PREMIERE OF
1001
WRITTEN BY JASON GROTE
DIRECTED BY ETHAN McSWEENY
BEGINNING PERFORMANCES
MONDAY, OCTOBER 22
AT THE NAGELBERG THEATRE
AT BARUCH PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

COMPANY PRESENTED LAST SEASON’S PULITZER NOMINEE
ELLIOT, A SOLDIER’S FUGUE
BY QUIARA ALEGRíA HUDES

FIRST 101 TICKETS ON SALE FOR $10.01

Page 73 Productions has announced that the New York premiere of 1001, written by Jason Grote and directed by Ethan McSweeny, will begin performances Monday, October 22 at the Nagelberg Theatre at Baruch Performing Arts Center (BPAC), 55 Lexington Avenue, entrance on East 25 Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues. The opening is scheduled for Wednesday, October 31, at 8pm. 1001 is Mr. Grote’s first New York City production.

Page 73 produced last year’s Pulitzer Prize nominee Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue by Quiara Alegría Hudes, the librettist of In the Heights.

Mixing the labyrinthine wordplay of Jorge Louis Borges with the ideas of Edward Said and the slapstick comedy of Monty Python, 1001 hyperlinks Scheherazade's tales to contemporary Manhattan. Time blurs and reality is fractured and reconstructed in a world inhabited by characters whose identity shifts unpredictably and deliriously.  With rollicking storytelling, a touch of magic realism, and even a little trip-hop music, 1001 simultaneously defaces and energizes A Thousand and One Arabian Nights to guide us through a tour of the dizzyingly precarious world of the 21st century.

The first 101 tickets sold for the engagement of 1001 will sell for the special price of $10.01.

The cast of 1001 includes Mia Barron (The Coast of Utopia), Drew Cortese (NYSF’s As You Like It), Roxanna Hope (Frost/Nixon), Jonathan Hova (Sixteen Wounded; The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife), Matt Rauch (Roundabout’s Prelude to a Kiss), and John Livingstone Rolle (The Unmentionables at Woolly Mammoth).

The scenic design for 1001 is by Rachel Hauck; the costume design is by Murell Horton; the lighting design is by Tyler Micoleau; the sound design is by Lindsay Jones. The entire play will be underscored by New York-based DJ Arisa’s fusion of pulsating lyrical electronica and Middle Eastern music.

Jason Grote’s play 1001, which marries global conflicts to modern-day relationships and explores the Israel- Palestine conflict, the politics of cultural identity, and the West’s influence on contemporary notions of Arab culture, received its world premiere at Denver Center Theatre. His other plays include This Storm is What We Call Progress, HamiltonTownship, Maria/Stuart or Platzangst, Box Americana . His work has been developed at Baltimore Center Stage, The Brick, CalArts, chashama, Circle X, Clubbed Thumb, Contemporary American Theater Festival, Eugene O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, The Flea, HERE, The Lark, Lincoln Center Directors' Lab, NY Fringe, New York Theatre Workshop, Orchard Project, Page 73, The Playwrights' Foundation, Portland Center Stage, Rorschach Theater, Salvage Vanguard, Soho Rep, Theater J, Theatre of NOTE, The Williamstown Theater Festival workshop, and The Working Theater, and published in various anthologies. Honors include an NEA Grant via Soho Rep; a Sloan Commission from Ensemble Studio Theatre; the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship; and Best New Play (for 1001) from Denver's alternative weekly, Westword.  Current and upcoming projects include a commission from Denver Center and a collaboration with the performance group Radiohole.  He teaches at Rutgers University, is a member of PEN and New Dramatists, and a contributor to Comedy Central's "Indecision 2008" blog.

Ethan McSweeny’s New York credits includes the current world premiere of 100 Saints You Should Know at Playwrights Horizons, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (Tony Award nomination, Outer Critics and Drama Desk Awards for Best Revival), John Logan’s Never the Sinner (Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play), and Aeschylus’s The Persians in a translation by Ellen McLaughlin for the National Actors Theatre. Mr. McSweeny’s recent credits include the world premiere of 1001 at the Denver Center Theatre, the west coast premiere of Lee Blessing’s A Body of Water at the Old Globe and its world premiere at the Guthrie Theatre, The Persians for the Shakespeare Theatre Company, the new musical Chasing Nicolette for the Prince Music Theatre (Barrymore Award nominations for Best Director and Best Musical), the world premiere of Noah Haidle’s Mr. Marmalade at South Coast Re, Romeo and Juliet and Six Degrees of Separation for the Guthrie, the east coast premiere of Anthony Clarvoe’s Ctrl+Alt+Delete (Star-Ledger ‘Best of’ Award), and the regional premiere of Wit for the Pittsburgh Public Theatre. He is Artistic Director of Chautauqua Theatre Company. In addition to his directing, he has served as Associate Artistic Director of the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey, Resident Director at New Dramatists, and Associate Director of the Shakespeare Theater Company. Upcoming work includes a revival of Major Barbara for the Shakespeare Theatre Company.

Page 73 Productions develops and produces exclusively the work of early-career playwrights who have yet to receive wide public acknowledgement or substantial production opportunities in New York City, and ushers these playwrights’ new work from first draft to full-scale production. Page 73 has developed and/or produced works by Peter Ackerman, Janet Allard, Michael Friedman, Kirsten Greenidge, Karen Hartman, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Julia Jordan, Krista Knight, Dan LeFranc, Kenneth Lin, Heather Lynn MacDonald, Peter Morris, Dan O’Brien, Gary Sunshine, Victoria Stewart, C. Denby Swanson, Lauren Weedman and Ken Weitzman, among others. Works developed and/or produced by Page 73 have received subsequent productions at Primary Stages, New York ’s Women’s Project & Productions, Baltimore ’s Centerstage, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta , Steppenwolf Garage and San Francisco ’s Magic Theater. Page 73 received the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation award for its work on The Unknown by Janet Allard, Shane Rettig and Jean Randich. Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue by Quiara Alegría Hudes, which Page 73 developed in 2005 and premiered in 2006, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama.

1001 plays Monday through Friday at 8pm and Saturday at 3pm and 8pm through November 17 at the Nagelberg Theater at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue , entrance on 25th Street , between Lexington and Third Avenues. Tickets go on sale Monday, September 17 and are $25 (for general admission) and $35 (for reserved seating). Tickets may be purchased online at www.1001nyc.com, by phoning 212 352 3101, or at the Baruch Performing Arts Center box office between 10am and 6pm, Monday - Friday and two hours before show time. The first 101 tickets sold for the engagement will sell for the special price of $10.01; buyers should use the discount code EB1001 to purchase tickets at this price ; offer is limited to two tickets per buyer . For more information, visit www.p73.org.