Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage - playing this April in New York City

Flawed heroes, sympathetic monsters and haughty professors collide as this hefty poem is rescued from the grasp of 1,000 years of highbrow analysis and transformed into a defiantly raucous musical. Presented by San Francisco’s infamous Shotgun Players and New York's infectious Banana Bag & Bodice, this new SongPlay is an irreverent dissertation on art versus criticism in blood soaked Scandinavia! The award winning Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage is written by Jason Craig with music by 2009 Larson Award Winner Dave Malloy, and directed by Rod Hipskind.

The production will be presented at The Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street @ Pitt). Performances will begin Tuesday, March 31; Opening April 1 and runs through April 18, 2009. Tickets are $20 -$25 (March 31 is pay what you can) and can be purchased by calling OvationTix at 866-811-4111 or by visiting www.beowulfnyc.com.

Shotgun Players and Banana Bag & Bodice have gotten down to work inspecting this classic poem—adapting its powerful narrative to make a new play that is part homage and part parody. Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage combines Weillian cabaret, 40's jazz harmony, indie rock, electronica and Romantic lieder into a new musical voice, allowing the original epic poem and the language of modern musical theater a uniquely outrageous platform on which to unite.

Banana Bag & Bodice an ensemble theatre company that works to redefine the traditional notion of performance through original texts and music has brought its own brand of outlandish, creative and poetic style to the downtown theatre scene for the past 5 years, creating such critically acclaimed favorites as Panel.Animal, The Sewers and The Fall & Rise of The Rising Fallen, mixing music and text with provocation, satire and whim. Shotgun Players is a company that exists to create fearless, provocative, relevant theatre. Over the past 18 years Shotgun has made a significant contribution to the modern theatrical canon with its bold, innovative commissions from playwrights such as Adam Bock, Marcus Gardley, Eisa Davis and Liz Duffy Adams.