GROUNDWORK RETURNS TO LA FOR HOLLYWOOD FRINGE FESTIVAL
Groundwork
May 3, 2016 / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Groundwork Returns to LA for Hollywood Fringe Festival
Contact: Mike Ostroski
276.492.1890
[email protected]
www.groundworktheplay.com
www.groundworktheplay.com/Hollywood_Fringe.html
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/165220281
Los Angeles, CA – “Grow a garden.” The idea hits Paul like a meteor hitting the planet and he’s off. He reads the books, sows the seeds, and before his first tomatoes ripen, departs on a crusade to save the planet one precious seedling at a time. Saving himself, however, will prove a much harder battle.
After sold-out performances in New York and Los Angeles, Groundwork, a one-man show written by Mike Ostroski and Derek Davidson, returns to LA for the Hollywood Fringe Festival this June. “I’d never thought about gardening before, but one day, out of the blue, I just had to get my hands in the dirt. It was this deep need that really piqued my curiosity,” says Ostroski, describing the impulse behind the play. While growing his first vegetables, he realized that his journey of cultivation had all the ingredients for a great solo show. “The context is backyard gardening, but the focus of the play is the struggle to find inner-sustainability within a world of melting ice caps and rising tides.”
Groundwork will be coming to Hollywood after an encore performance at NYC’s United Solo Theatre Festival, the world’s largest festival of its kind, where the play was a Bestseller in 2014. With its Manhattan backdrop, United Solo has been a fitting host for Groundwork. Ostroski and Davidson decided to co-write the play while working together on Davidson’s play, Bumbershoot, during the 2012 New York International Fringe Festival. Ostroski remembers, “We were walking in the Village after a performance and I mentioned my idea for Groundwork. We stopped and brainstormed the play for at least an hour right there on the sidewalk. It was one of those electric conversations where you know you’re on to something truly exciting.”
A few months later, Ostroski and Davidson had the first draft of the script and in the summer of 2013, one year after their Village walk, Ostroski performed a 90-minute Groundwork, with Davidson directing, for In/Visible Theatre in Boone, North Carolina. They remounted a trimmed down, hour-long version the summer of 2014 in preparation for the play’s first visit to United Solo. Since then, Ostroski has performed Groundwork across the country: three runs in Los Angeles, the Albuquerque Q Solo Fest, Bar Harbor, Maine, and back to NYC for United Solo 2015. Ostroski is especially thrilled to be returning to LA for The Hollywood Fringe: “Fringe festivals are such exciting platforms for new theatre. So much great work is being done by such passionate people. Everyone is rooting for their fellow artists. I’m honored for Groundwork to be a part of it.”
Groundwork
By Mike Ostroski & Derek Davidson
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/165220281
Saturdays: June 4, 11, 18, 25, 2016 at 8:30PM
Sundays: June 5, 12, 19, 2016 at 5:30PM
Running time: One hour
The Stephanie Feury Studio Theatre
5636 Melrose Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038
Tickets: $15 / http://hff16.org/3746
