Boston's The Huntington will kick off the new year with immersive solo show Stand Up If You're Here Tonight. Written and directed by John Kolvenbach, it will play the Huntington Theatre's Maso Studio January 20-March 3, 2024.
Jim Ortlieb, winner of the LA Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Actor, will star as Man, who is desperate for connection, bent by isolation, and deeply in love with the audience itself. The work was written in the spring of 2021, at the tail end of the quarantine phase of COVID-19.
“The show is about a guy trying to do the impossible, or the nearly impossible: he wants to achieve a kind of union with the audience, a oneness, to blur the line between the play and the people who are there that night...We hope for communion," said writer Kolvenbach in a statement.
The work initially premiered at the Harbor Stage Company in Wellfleet, then went on to have sold-out runs in LA, Chicago, and Paris. Ortlieb reprises the role of Man from the LA run.
Stand Up If You're Here Tonight serves as the fifth show in Huntington Artistic Director Loretta Greco's inaugural season at the helm of the theatre company. Greco and Kolvenbach first worked together during her time as artistic director of San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, where she produced his plays Goldfish, Mrs. Whitney, Sister Play, and Reel to Reel.
“This incisive, vulnerable, funny, new play by my dear friend John Kolvenbach is the first half of this special intimate evening, and the second opens up to drinks and freeform conversation with the artists and your fellow audience members. This is unlike any experience you’ve had at The Huntington!" said Greco in a statement.
The creative team will feature Huntington staff members, including scenic design by Kristine Holmes and lighting design by M Berry. Adele Nadine Traub serves as production stage manager.
