Cast Set for THE WIND AND THE RAIN: A STORY ABOUT SUNNY'S BAR at the Waterfront Museum

En Garde Arts has revealed details for the world premiere of The Wind and the Rain: A story about Sunny's Bar, a site-specific, multimedia theatrical experience created by Obie Award winners, playwright Sarah Gancher and director Jared Mezzocchi. Commissioned by Vineyard Theatre and En Garde Arts, The Wind and the Rain: A story about Sunny's Bar carries forward En Garde Arts long history of site-specific work using the city as our stage”. It will run September 28 – October 27, 2024, at The Waterfront Museum (290 Conover Street, Brooklyn) with an opening set for Monday, October 7, 2024. 

At the end of Conover Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on the waterfront, there is a bar called Sunny’s. For over 100 years, it’s been run by one family, through booms and busts, prohibition and pandemics, blight and gentrification. It’s been home to dreamers and immigrants, artists, bootleggers, longshoremen, union bosses, corrupt police, numbers runners, bluegrass musicians, and hipsters. And when Hurricane Sandy hit, it was almost lost forever. But in that moment of incomprehensible damage and loss, one woman persevered. Tone Johansen fought to save Sunny’s - for all of us.

The Wind and the Rain: A story about Sunny's Bar rock-skips across the decades, reaching into the deep past and leaping into the future. Beginning at The Waterfront Museum and ending at Sunny's Bar, it invites audiences inside the lives of the real people who became the fabric of this community. The Wind and the Rain uses immersive design technology, to tell a quintessential New York Story about how the currents of time and nature shaped our lives.

The cast for The Wind and the Rain: A story about Sunny's Bar includes Jennifer Regan (Born Yesterday), Obie winner Pete Simpson (Is This A Room), Lortel nominee Paco Tolson (Vietgone, Knight of the Burning Pestle), Jen Tullock (Apple TV’s Severance, HBO’s Perry Mason), and musician Pete Lanctot.

The creative team includes Marcelo Martínez Garcia (scenic design), Mika Eubanks (costume design), Amith Chandrashaker (lighting design), Jane Shaw (sound design), Paul Deziel (projection/ video design), and Olivia Fletcher (production stage manager).

En Garde Arts’s Executive Artistic Director Anne Hamburger commented, “The Wind and the Rain is a dream project of mine as it harkens back in form to the early site-specific work on which En Garde Arts built its reputation. With its historic charm, Red Hook is an ideal neighborhood in which to mount this site-specific piece envisioned by two exceptionally creative minds. Sarah Gancher is not only an acclaimed playwright, but also a gifted fiddle player and longtime Sunny’s regular, while Jared is a talented multi-hyphenate artist and consummate storyteller. En Garde Arts is proud to shine a light on Sunny’s intrepid owner, Tone Johansen. Theatrical productions with brave and exceptional women at their center are all too rare.”

Twenty-two performances of The Wind and the Rain: A story about Sunny's Bar will take place September 28 – October, 27, 2024, at The Waterfront Museum, located at 290 Conover St in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. Critics are welcome as of Friday, October 4, for a press opening on Monday, October 7, 2024. Performances take place Wednesday–Friday at 8pm, Saturday and Sunday at 6pm with weekend performances moving to 5pm beginning on October 19. Tickets, starting at $20, are now on sale at www.engardearts.org.

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