Take Two Begins June 12th

The idea began with the desire to get some momentum going for our company, Direct Arts. Too broke to put up a show, we figured what we could do was mount a regular reading and screening series. Thus, Take Two! was born.

From now until we're too pooped to party, every 2nd Tuesday of the month, Direct Arts will present a reading and a screening of a short- and a full-length theater and film piece at Bar on A, 170 Avenue A & 11th Street, from 6pm-8pm.

The format of the evening will be one short piece followed by a full-length piece. Networking will be encouraged during intermission and after the event. The goal is to 1) provide a forum where people in both the theater and film industries can connect, 2) showcase work that explores the intersection of different ethnic and social groups, while 3) providing a showcase for some really great fringe indie artists.

The inaugural Take Two will set a precedent for this (hopefully) catalytic monthly event, with a screening of Nanobah Becker's short film CONVERSION and a reading of my script OBSOLESCENCE, with a phenomenal cast including Wai Ching Ho (ROBOT STORIES), Kathy Shao-Lin Lee (RED DOORS) and Omar Koury (BROWNTOWN).

Navajo/German filmmaker Nanobah Becker graduated from the Directing MFA program at Columbia University in 2006. Her senior thesis project, CONVERSION, won prizes at a host of native American film festivals including Best Short Film at the Cherokee International Film Festival, before being selected for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. inspired by an actual 1950s incident, CONVERSION tells the story of a catastrophic meeting between Christian missionaries and a Navajo medicine man in Ojo Encino on the Navajo reservation. Becker is currently working on a feature screenplay called FULL in which she explores traditional Navajo thinking about gender and sexuality through the story of a young, queer Navajo man trying to make it as a DJ in NYC.

Victoria Linchong's screenplay OBSOLESCENCE was also inspired by an actual incident. She was in a traffic jam on the FDR Drive, when she was amazed to see an old Chinese woman walking down the yellow line on the highway, oblivious to traffic. The script came to be about urban displacement in its story of a used bookseller who attempts to redeem his failures by helping an old Chinese woman suffering from dementia find her family. Meanwhile, the old woman's daughter confronts the past she renounced as she searched for her missing mother. OBSOLESCENCE passed the first round of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, was a "top contender for the Berlin Film Festival Talent Campus and is now a finalist in the Boston International Film Festival, where the grand prize is up to $500,000 towards full production. This first reading of the script will feature a fabulous multi- ethnic ensemble cast: Lori Tan Chinn, Casandra Kate Escobar, Robert Fitzsimmons, Wai-Ching Ho, Omar Koury, Kathy Shao-Lin Lee, Rosanne Ma, Jackson NIng and Tana Sarntinoranant.

So come one, come all - Tuesday, June 12th 6-8PM at Bar on A, corner of 11th Street and Avenue A. FREE!