I Like to Be Here: Jackson Heights Revisited, Or, This is a Mango
at The New Ohio Theater
by Jenny Lyn Bader, J.Stephen Brantley, Ed Cardona Jr., Les Hunter, Tom Miller, Melisa Tien, and Joy Tomasko
Conceived and Directed by Ari Laura Kreith
Featuring Eric Aviles*, Cynthia Bastidas*, J.Stephen Brantley*, Brandi Bravo, Marcelino Feliciano, Todd Flaherty*, John P. Keller*, Azhar Khan, Michael Markham*, Jerreme Rodriguez, Mauricio Pita, Indika Senanayake*, Lipica Shah*, Imran Sheikh*, Lisann Valentin, Nela Wagman*, and
Jonathan C. Whitney
Sound Design by Emily Auciello, Set Design by Todd Flaherty, Costume Design by Kate R. Mincer, Lighting Design by Serena Wong. Fight Choreography by Dan Renkin.
Production Stage Manager: Abbey Bay. Assistant Stage Managers: Rachel Kaplan and Ally Naimisha. Wardrobe Supervisor: Diane Hunte.
Theatre 167's Jackson Heights Trilogy — collaboratively written by 18 playwrights — featured 37 actors in 93 roles speaking 14 languages ("an epic song of America's most diverse neighborhood"--Theatermania.) In I Like To Be Here, new faces encounter returning characters and re-imagined scenes from the Trilogy, all the span of one very late night . An Irish-American family grapples with gentrification. A cab driver from Calcutta working the night shift yearns for an Ecuadorian woman who rises at dawn to bake bread but does not speak her language. A closeted Long Island cop comes into town for a date, and a dosa chef inadvertently heals a customer's heart. Drag queens, car dispatchers, underslept parents, gamblers, insomniacs, and dreamers find one another on the streets of Jackson Heights.
We are proud to have been chosen by the New Ohio Theater to represent it in the 2nd Annual OBIE-winning Theater:Village Festival, E Pluribus, a celebration of America's cultural diversity presented by four leading West Village theatre companies. For more information, go to theatervillage.com
