N  E  W  S

UPCOMING EVENTS

*EXCURSUS

April 7, 2012: Anemone Dance Theatre and Legacy Butoh present a new environmental butoh piece as part of {Re}Happening, a celebration of Black Mountain College. Choreographed by Sara Baird and Julie Becton Gillum, and incorporating a "mythical vehicle" constructed by Christopher Perryman, original soundscapes by Kimathi Moore, costume design by Amanda-ray Danko, and vidoegraphy by Lei Han, Excursus features butoh dancers Jenni Cockrell, John Crutchfield, Valeria Watson-Doost, Monika Gross, Kathleen Hahn, Melissa McKee, Rachel Thomas-Levy, Dash Lewis and Rachel Whitlock. For more information, or to order tickets, click here.

*LANDSCAPE WITH MISSING PERSON

August, 2012: The Magnetic Theatre will present the world premier of John Crutchfield's "existential rom-com" about a pair of misfits on a journey across America in search of true love...or something. Directed by Steve Samuels and starring Lisa Smith, Kathryn Temple, and the playwright. Details forthcoming.

OTHER NEWS

*SOLSTICE: A Volatile Black Comedy For The Darkest Night Of The Year

John Crutchfield's explosive chamber-theatre piece, SOLSTICE, which premiered this January, was a cult hit for Asheville's Magnetic Theatre, and garnered rave reviews from the local press. Directed by the playwright, starring Asheville favorites Scott Fisher, Glenn Reed, and Lisa Smith, and featuring an original musical score by Mary Castellaneta, set design by Annette Griffin, and lighting design by Ryan Madden, the play enjoyed a near-sold-out run.

Mountain XPress reviewer David Hopes called the play "simply masterful" and "absolutely convincing and compelling down to the syllable."

To read the full review, click here: XPess review

*THE SOUTHERN POETRY ANTHOLOGY, vol. III: Contemporary Appalachia

Now available from Texas Review Press

Among the many celebrated and emerging Appalachian poets featured in the new volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology, John Crutchfield lays claim to a page or two with his poems "Ox Creek Road," Wild Leeks," "Trout Lake," and "Meteor Shower," all taken from the unpublished manuscript Blackberry Winter.

For more information, click here: Southern Poetry Anthology

*THE BARS OF ATLANTIS: Selected Essays of Durs Grünbein

Now available from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Translated from the German by John Crutchfield, Michael Hofmann, and Andrew Shields

Edited by Michael Eskin, who praises Crutchfield's translations for having "beautifully caught the original's stylistic visage...with great fidelity and elegance, while...retaining its mild-to-medium-strong undercurrent of wryness and irony," and for having "managed to follow the original on its many stylistic and intellectual explorations without sacrifiing sense and logical consistency."

For more information, click here: The Bars of Atlantis

*LOCAL BOY GOES TO BIG CITY, MAKES GOOD

THE SONGS OF ROBERT wins "Outstanding Solo Show" at FringeNYC 2009

In August, 2009, John Crutchfield took his quirkily poetic one-man show, The Songs of Robert, to the New York International Fringe Festival. The show ran for five performances at the Milagro Theatre on Suffolk Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side, garnered two very positive reviews, and won the Festival's Overall Excellence Award for "Outstanding Solo Show." For the New York production, Crutchfield worked closely with director Steve Samuels (Artistic Director of The Magnetic Theatre in Asheville) and producer Chall Gray.

To read what the critics had to say, click on the links below:

Time Out New York       NYTheatre

The official playscript is now avalable in the anthology, Plays and Playwrights 2010, edited by Martin Denton. For more information, click here:   Plays and Playwrights 2010

To read the full script online, click here:  Indie Theatre Now

To read Martin Denton's "cyber interview" with John Crutchfield, click here:   Crutchfield interview