Leaving the Atocha Station

Adapted and directed
by Matt Slaybaugh
from the novel by Ben Lerner

June 12 – 28, 2014
@ Riffe Center Studio One
77 South High St.
Columbus, Ohio 43215

SPONSORED BY
Irene & Mannie Alvarez, Robert Fehr, Bridget & Rich Granger, Joe E. Heimlich & Jim Hodnett, Clayton Petry & Emily Rhodes, Will & Margy Saam, Anne & Bob Short, Ron & Melissa Weber

Running Time: Two hours, including one intermission.
Talkbacks: After Thursday and Friday performances.
A limited number of Pay What You Want tickets will be available at the door.

Production Manager: Dave Wallingford
Stage Manager: Adam Humphrey
Set Design: Brad Steinmetz
Costume Design: Acacia Duncan
Properties Design: Jaylene Henderson
Media/Film Director: Matt Hermes
Lighting Design: Carrie Cox

Featuring Rudy Frias, Eleni Papaleonardos, Amy Rittberger, Ian Short, David Tull

ABOUT THIS PLAY

"Ben Lerner's remarkable first novel is a bildungsroman and meditation and slacker tale fused by a precise, reflective, and darkly comic voice."

– Gary Sernovitz, NY Times Book Review

"Like Lerner's verse, it has a beguiling mixture of lightness and weight. There are wonderful sentences and jokes on almost every page."

– James Wood, The New Yorker

Matt Slaybaugh (adapter of Skyscrapers of the Midwest, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and others) brings another of his favorite books to the stage.

A young poet visits Spain on a foundation grant and lies to everyone he meets, spending his time reading Tolstoy, Ashbery, and Cervantes, going to parties, downing tranquilizers, smoking spliffs, and trying and largely failing to love and be loved by Spanish women.

Leaving the Atocha Station is a portrait of the artist as a young man in an age of Google searches, pharmaceuticals, and spectacle.