Mgmt Salon Series August 10th, 2008

Chris Van Strander's "Breuckelen"

Breuckelen is a darkly comic tale about the convergence of Brooklyn's gentrified present and its mostly forgotten past. Blogging hipsters, political witches, Dutch widows, Russian squatters, Sapphic socialites, Prohibition bootleggers, and public-access TV stars make up the checkered story of this broken land. During an eventful open mic night in a local Brooklyn haunt, their tales collide in an evening of poetry, performance, and supernatural apparitions.

Chris Van Strander is a playwright, screenwriter, and actor. His plays have been produced and developed with Battle Hill Press, Circle East Theater Company (formerly the Circle Repertory Lab), Collective:Unconscious Theater, CRUX Productions, Emerging Artists Theatre, Inversions Theatre, New York University, Riverside Theatre (Iowa City), The 92nd Street Y's Makor/Steinhardt Center, The American Theatre of Actors, The Asylum Theatre (Las Vegas), The Director's Company, The Neighborhood Playhouse, The Night and Day Playwrights' Series, The New York International Fringe Festival, The Producer's Club, Theater Catalyst (Philadelphia), Wild Child Productions, and Word of Mouth Productions, among others. Chris has been a finalist/semifinalist for The O'Neill Playwrights' Conference, The Playwrights Center's PlayLabs, Page 73's Playwrighting Fellowship, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon, among others. Site-specifically, Chris' pieces have been staged everywhere from boats to bars to the rooftop pool of a Holiday Inn. He's a member of the Dramatists Guild, Circle East Theater Company, the Neighborhood Playhouse Workshop, and is an associate artist with The Butane Group. He also helps run The Loop, a national magazine for playwrights. In addition, Chris is Head Writer for Emily Inc, an original Web sitcom, and his screenplay 25 was recently optioned by Hotswitch. Chris graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and studied with Irene Fornes and Mac Wellman in the Flea Theater's 'Pataphysics Workshops. As an actor Chris has appeared in film, TV, regionally, off-off-, and on Broadway.