World Theatre Premiere of Ain Gordon’s “These Don’t Easily Scatter”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 10, 2022
CONTACT: Brad Luna | LUNA+EISENLA media
brad@lunaeisenlamedia.com | 202-812-8140 mobile
World Theatre Premiere of Ain Gordon’s
“These Don’t Easily Scatter”
Produced by the William Way LGBT Community Center
in collaboration with the Pick Up Performance Co.
by Obie Winning writer & director Ain Gordon
New Play Launches Remembrance: An Alternative Memorial to Philadelphians & the HIV/AIDS Crisis
PREMIERE with Limited Run May 20-22, 2022
PHILADELPHIA, PA – Philadelphia’s William Way LGBT Community Center’s John J. Wilcox, Jr Archives today announced the world premiere of These Don’t Easily Scatter by three-time Obie award-winning writer and director Ain Gordon. Gordon’s new play will open as part of Remembrance: an alternative memorial dedicated to Philadelphians and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Remembrance is a memorial experience with civic and theatrical performances, oral histories, all designed in partnership with artists, activists, and community leaders to honor those we have lost to AIDS.
The work premieres as part of the recently announced Remembrance: an alternative memorial to Philadelphians and the HIV/AIDS crisis, supported by funding from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Partnering with local artists, activists, and community leaders, Remembrance is a two-year long public memorial experience, including the collection of oral histories, permanent digital histories, the world premiere of These Don’t Easily Scatter, and a culmination during Pride Month on June 25, 2022 in a stunning and profound “going home” ceremony titled Gone and Forever, that will include a memorial ceremony and procession through the streets of Philadelphia with urns developed in dedication to those Philadelphians who died of AIDS and are at risk of being forgotten.
Ain Gordon’s These Don’t Easily Scatter is inspired by Remembrance’s oral history project and more than twenty interviews Gordon personally conducted chronicling stories of Philadelphia-area community members who have passed unnoticed, with or without the love and support of families throughout the HIV/AIDS crisis.
The work follows three imagined figures navigating the early years of the AIDS crisis in Philadelphia: a nurse starting her career one year before the city’s first officially diagnosed case; an inexperienced man tiptoeing toward his sexuality while everything changes; and a middle-aged chorister joining a church that must reimagine itself for a community in need.
“…artist Ain Gordon haunts the margins of history. Main events featuring famous people, the kind recorded with unblinking authority in encyclopedia entries, have never been his primary interest…Mr. Gordon conjures the sort of distant lives that don’t make it into textbooks, processed into oblivion by what he calls history’s “ruthless editing machine.”
- The New York Times
Production credits:
These Don’t Easily Scatter
Written and directed by Ain Gordon
Cast: Kathleen Chalfant, Bill Kux, and Cherene Snow
Stage Manager: Ed Fitzgerald
Lighting Designer: Kelly Martin
Producer: Alyce Dissette
These Don’t Easily Scatter is commissioned by The William Way LGBT Community Center and produced in collaboration with Pick Up Performance Co.
Performance schedule:
May 20: 7:30PM (opening); May 21: 3PM, 7:30PM; May 22: 3PM
William Way LGBT Community Center
1315 Spruce Street, Philadelphia PA 19107
**Special press invitation is May 20th - Opening Night**
Tickets are available to the public beginning on May 13 via Eventbrite.
PRESS RSVP: There is limited press availability. All press interested in attending the production should RSVP in advance to Brad Luna at Brad@lunaeisenlamedia.com
AIN GORDON is a three-time Obie Award-winning writer/director/actor, two-time NYFA recipient and Guggenheim Fellow in Playwriting. Gordon’s work often focuses on marginalized or forgotten histories and the obscured figures inhabiting that space. Upcoming projects include Relics And Their Humans: framing a real-life couple from Dover, OH, developed at Krannert Center (IL) and Wexner Center (OH). Recent projects include Radicals In Miniature: collected requiems to personal icons, premiering in 2017 at Baryshnikov Arts Center (NY) and touring in 2018/19 to Arts & Ideas, Quick Center, Connecticut College (all CT), Williams College and The Yard (both MA); 217 Boxes Of Dr. Henry Anonymous: culminating a Pew Center for Arts & Heritage supported 2-year residency at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania focused on Dr. John Fryer who, in 1972, disguised as Dr. Anonymous opposed the American Psychiatric Association’s classification of homosexuality as a disease, premiering in 2016 at the Painted Bride (PA), plus 2018 performances at Baryshnikov Arts Center (NY) and 2019 performances at Transylvania University (KY) and Center For The Art of Performance/UCLA; and Not What Happened: a contrapuntal duet for a historical re-enactor and the woman she portrays – premiering in 2013 at BAM Next Wave (NY), plus Krannert (IL), and Flynn Center (VT). Director of Pick Up Performance Co since 1992.
Kathleen Chalfant (Her) BROADWAY: Angels in America (Tony and Drama Desk nom.), Racing Demon, Dance With Me. OFF-BROADWAY: Four Quartets, A Woman of the World, Wit (Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, Connecticut Critics Circle, Obie Awards), For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, A Walk in the Woods (Drama Desk nom.), Tales from Red Vienna, Miss Ovington & Dr. Dubois, Talking Heads (Obie Award), Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Nine Armenians (Drama Desk nomination), Henry V (Callaway Award). OTHER NY CREDITS: The Vagina Monologues, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Endgame, Sister Mary Ignatius..., The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador. FILM: Old, Isn’t it Delicious?, R.I.P.D., The Bath, In Bed With Ulysses, Lillian, Duplicity, The People Speak, Lackawanna Blues, Perfect Stranger, Dark Water, Kinsey, Laramie Project, Random Hearts, A Price Below Rubies, Murder and Murder. SELECT TELEVISION Recurring on “The Affair,” “The Strain,” “The Americans,” “House of Cards,” “Rescue Me,” “The Book of Daniel,” “The Guardian,” “Law and Order” “One Life to Live”; “Madam Secretary,” “High Maintenance,” “Elementary,” “Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight” (HBO), “Georgia O’Keeffe” (Lifetime), “Voices from the White House” (PBS). AWARDS: 1996 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence, 2004 Lortel Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance, 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the League of Professional Women. 2018 OBIE Award for Lifetime Achievement. She has received the Drama League and Sidney Kingsley Awards for her body of work and hold an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Cooper Union.
Bill Kux (Man) has been an actor for a good long while. Highlights include Broadway (Gore Vidal’s The Best Man), Off Broadway (Summer of ’42, The Musical), National tours (David Gordon’s The Mysteries, or What’s So Funny? and Death of a Salesman with Hal Holbrook) scores of regional shows from Seattle to Miami including the Barrymore winning Love! Valor! Compassion! He was a volunteer intake clinician at Gay Mens Health Crisis for 7 years. He is a graduate of the former Yale School of Drama.
Cherene Snow (Nurse)is a multi-award-winning veteran actor, singer-songwriter and playwright from Chicago. Her theatre credits include Broadway: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Scarlett Johansson. Off Broadway and Regional: For All the Women… (Soho Rep), Walking Down Broadway (Mint Theatre) and The Last of the Thorntons (Signature Theatre). Her regional credits include, King Lear (Northern Stage), Familiar (Old Globe Theatre), Skeleton Crew (Theatre Squared), Small Mouth Sounds (National Tour), Welcome to Fear City (C.A.T.F), Having Our Say (Philadelphia Theatre Co), Little Foxes (Goodman Theatre), brownsville song (b-side for tray) (Humana Festival), Black Pearl Sings (Triad Stage), Doubt (Hartford Stage and Cleveland Playhouse). Cherene’s film/television credits: Jules, Arthur, Perhaps Tomorrow, My Sassy Girl, The Code, Almost Family, Law & Order, Law & Order SVU: Sugar, Third Watch and Chappelle's Show. Cherene has written her first one-act play, “Hiding Inside Him,” and her first full length play,“Monday Wednesday Friday.”
About the Remembrance Memorial
Remembrance: an experiential, alternative memorial to Philadelphians and the HIV/AIDS crisis is made possible through funding by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. While many HIV/AIDS memorials across the country are largely physical in structure and designed as monuments and places one can visit, Remembrance is a memorial experience with its civic and theatrical performances, oral histories, designed in partnership with artists, activists, and community leaders. To learn more, visit: https://www.waygay.org/remembrance.
# # #
About The William Way LGBT Center
The William Way LGBT Community Center (the Center) is a nonprofit organization located in Center City Philadelphia. Founded in 1974 as the hub of LGBT community in the Delaware Valley, the Center proudly serves the LGBTQIA+ population. The Center seeks to engage and support the diverse LGBTQIA+ communities in the greater Philadelphia area through arts & culture, empowerment, and community connections. William Way LGBT Community Center wants all LGBTQIA+ people to feel safe, connected, and empowered. The Center strives to be a community center whose staff, management, and board reflect the vibrant and richly diverse communities we serve. To learn more, visit www.waygay.org.
About Pick Up Performance Co.
Incorporated in 1978, Pick Up Performance Co. (PUPC) is a producing and presenting organization. Originally founded by choreographer/director David Gordon, PUPC expanded in 1992 to support the work of writer/director Ain Gordon. Now in the 30th anniversary of its expansion, the Co. continues to support innovative performance work presented on a national scale via multi-year development & production models in partnership with leading performance venues, community organizations, and universities. To learn more, visit: pickupperformance.org
About The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage (the Center) is a multidisciplinary grantmaker and hub for knowledge-sharing, dedicated to fostering a vibrant and diverse cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative, and catalytic work that showcases the region’s cultural vitality and enhances public life, and we engage in an ongoing exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders. To learn more, visit: https://www.pewcenterarts.org/.