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Jersey Playwright To Perform One-Man Play At United Solo Festival

originally published: 11/01/2015

Central Jersey will be represented on an international level when playwright David Lee White performs his one-man play Panther Hollow as part of United Solo Festival, the world's largest solo theatre festival. The piece will be performed on Wednesday, November 11 at 3:30pm in the Studio Theatre on Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd Street, New York City.

Part stand-up comedy confessional, part examination of the cultural taboo of mental illness, Panther Hollow details White’s struggle with clinical depression while living in a century-old house under a bridge in the eerie Panther Hollow neighborhood in Pittsburgh – a neighborhood where committing suicide has been a favorite pastime for decades.

“Back in 1995, I had just finished grad school and was still living in this run down house in the middle of Pittsburgh. One morning, I found a dead body hanging from a tree down the street from my house. I spent the next year cruising therapists, popping meds and trying to piece my broken life back together. When I turned forty-five, I stumbled across my twenty-year old journal and starting piecing the story back together. This show is the result."

White began working on the show in Passage Theatre's Play Lab and began reading it out loud on college campuses throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The piece attracted the attention of director John Augustine and the pair entered the piece in the United Solo Festival.

Award-winning solo theatre artist Lauren Weedman call the piece, "Unique, compelling and honest. I laughed forty-four times and cried twice, which is the perfect solo show ratio. Panther Hollow is a personal story of imperfect humanity, perfectly told.”

Nancy Giles of CBS Sunday Morning, raves, "David White is an engaging storyteller who's expressive and fun to watch."

White, a resident of Bordentown, is the Associate Artistic Director and Resident Playwright at Trenton's Passage Theatre.   

Tickets may be purchased on-line at http://unitedsolo.org/us/pantherhollow-2015; or by calling 800-447-7400.

About David Lee White

David Lee White is a New Jersey based playwright and educator that has worked with Passage Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Dreamcatcher Rep, PlayPenn, Rider University and Drexel. He was recently commissioned by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and Passage Theatre to create the play Sanism, which will premiere in 2017. His play Blood: A Comedy was been produced at Passage Theatre (2009) and Dreamcatcher Rep (2012). His play Slippery As Sin also received its world premiere at Passage in 2011. The one-act play White Baby was originally produced at Passage Theatre, then at Emerging Artists Theatre in New York. His newest play Real True Crime received a reading in the Hive Exposed series in New York in March of 2015. David Lee White is the Associate Artistic Director and Resident Playwright at Passage Theatre in Trenton. He also runs the Passage Play Lab which has aided in the development of plays by New Jersey-based playwrights. He is currently working on the play The Festival Quartet and the musical Live Stream with singer/songwriter Sarah Donner and director/co-creator Adam Immerwahr.

 

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