NEW YORK - Diverse City Theater Company announces its inaugural production, Linda Faigao Hall's The Female Heart. The play is scheduled to open on February 24, 2005, at Theatre Row's Harold Clurman Theatre (410 West 42nd Street) for a limited three week run until March 13, 2005. The Female Heart is being produced in association with Ensemble Studio Theatre ("EST"), a company known for its artistic leadership in pioneering new plays and nurturing theater artists for over thirty years. Noted Off-Broadway director Jamie Richards will direct the piece. Diverse City Theater is an independent organization which promotes diversity in the theater by developing and producing original works that explore and examine diversity issues in our national culture.

The Female Heart, formerly entitled A Woman's Heart, takes place in the late 1980's and tells the story of two siblings - Anghel and Adelfa - living in "Smokey Mountain," the infamous mountain of garbage outside Manila. When Anghel, the elder sibling, succumbs to a life-threatening disease, Adelfa, his sister, decides to become a mail-order bride to a man from Brooklyn who is willing - at a price - to support her family and pay for Anghel's medical expenses. It is here, in America, where she discovers how poverty corrupts and absolute poverty corrupts absolutely.

National Endowment for the Arts award recipient playwright Linda Faigao-Hall examines the legacy of the Marcos administration, whose decades of plunder and inequality deprived hundreds of men and women like Anghel and Adelfa of
the chance to leave the garbage dump.

"This play illustrates family issues that are shared by everyone - the universal quest for a better life and the sacrifices that need to be made. But I'm also profoundly aware of the complex ambiguities of the American dream. That's why although this play examines those universal issues, it does so through a very specific and unique lens," said Faigao-Hall.

The Female Heart was play-in-residence at EST's Summer Conference Series this year where it was directed by Richards and featured Obie Award winner Ching Valdes Aran, Brian Armstrong, Victor Lirio and Olga Natividad.

Curt Dempster, Founder and Artistic Director of Ensemble Studio Theatre commented: "We are very proud to be associated with this play. As a company, EST is comprised of over 500 artists and has produced over 3,000 pan-ethnic productions since 1972. We strongly support Diverse City Theater and its mission to promote diversity in the theater."

He added: "We are also excited that one of our major EST directors, Jamie Richards, will be directing The Female Heart. Ms. Faigao Hall is a strong playwright and an emerging voice whose unique and compelling stories deserve wide exposure."

Faigao-Hall has been praised for her work in Salad Days, God Sex and Blue Water, and Woman from the Other Side of the World. Her most recent work commissioned by The Working Theater, Iron Men, earned a National Endowment for the Arts award as well as the Department of Labor and Department of Cultural Affairs grants. Her work has been published and produced throughout the country by theater companies including East West Players, The Lark Theater, Ma-Yi Theatre and the Pan Asian Repertory Theater. The Female Heart was originally commissioned and produced by Starfish Theater Works. The play has been revised and expanded for Diverse City Theater during the past year.

As previously stated, Jamie Richards directed the play during its workshop presentation at EST's Summer Conference. Among her critically acclaimed directorial works include Light Years at Playwrights Horizons, Stonewall Jackson's House at the American Place Theatre, The Secret Order, District of Columbia, Flight and Hell's Kitchen Sink at EST and several plays for EST's Marathon including Of Two Minds, Reunions, Brown, Night Rules, Light Years, All About Al, The I Word: Interns, Real Real Gone, The Seventeenth of June, Rain, and Ring of Men. In addition, she has developed plays for Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York Stage & Film, Primary Stages, The New Group, New Dramatists, among others.

Tickets for The Female Heart can be purchased through Ticket Central by calling (212) 719-4200 or online at www.ticketcentral.com beginning January 1, 2005.

ABOUT DIVERSE CITY THEATER CO.:

Diverse City Theater Co. Inc., is an independent not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization that focuses on promoting diversity in the theater arts. Its mission is to commission, develop and produce original plays that portray social, cultural, lifestyle and demographic diversity, thereby creating multiculturally fluent theater audiences as well as advocate the non- traditional casting of actors.

Formed in 2003, Diverse City Theater Co., Inc. is based in New York City. For more information, visit the organization's website at www.diversecitytheater.org.

Contact:
Liz Casasola
212-309-9018
liz@diversecitytheater.org