Nancy Manocherian’s the cell present

STOOPDREAMER
A New Play by PAT FENTON

Featuring

JACK O’CONNELL, BILL CWIKOWSKI, and ROBIN LESLIE BROWN

Directed by KIRA SIMRING
Production Designer: GERTJAN JOUBEN
Sound Design and Original Music: M. FLORIAN STAAB
Costume Designer: SIENA ZOE ALLEN
Production Stage Manager: LOUISA POUGH
Assistant Stage Manager: JAME MARIE DAVIS
Assistant Director: BRIAN REAGER
Associate Production Designer: CHRIS STECKEL
Dramaturg: SAMANTHA KEOGH
Production Assistant: JACK GOLDSZTEJN
Master Carpenter: JOHN LAVIGNE
Marketing Director: MARIANNE DRISCOLL
Press Representative: RON LASKO/SPIN CYCLE

the cell
338 West 23rd Street (between Eighth & Ninth Avenues)
www.thecelltheatre.org
September 4th – 27th

I’m not particularly a bar person, but I’m very glad that I stopped by Farreils’s Bar & Grill. This is the setting for Pat Fenton’s STOOPDREAMER. It’s a place full of anecdotes, history, folktales, memories, dreams, and disappointments. As the Bartender (Jack O’Connell) will tell you “something special happened here once.” What he’s forgotten the Man (Bill Cwikowski) and Woman (Robin Leslie Brown) will remember. And they will tell it with passion and a fondness and respect for the past.

STOOPDREAMER is a story of gentrification and its effect on those “gentrified.” When Robert Moses introduced his massive roads project in 1945, it was the beginning of the displacement of 1,252 families, mostly Irish and living in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. Seventy years later these three survivors tell of a neighborhood that used to be. Amidst 1940’s music and fantastic period projections, this is an impressive reminder that gentrification comes with a price. An emotional and well-executed tribute to times gone by and lasting memories that create the foundation for our futures.

- Laurie Lawson -