HartBeat Ensemble is proud to present FLIPSIDE as part of the 16th annual New York International Fringe Festival – FringeNYC. FLIPSIDE will be performed at HERE Mainstage Theater, 145 Sixth Ave., NY, NY. (Click here for directions to venue)

Based on interviews with two real people, FLIPSIDE tells the story of a friendship between an urban teen who thinks he can beat the system and a narc who thinks he can change the world. Spoken word and an original hip-hop score punctuate this story of the personal side of the drug war.

August 2012 NYFringe Performance Dates:

SUN 8/12 @ 7:00pm BUY TICKETS

TUE 8/14 @ 7:00pm BUY TICKETS

THU 8/16 @ 2:00pm, (Talk Back) 8/16 @ 3:25pm BUY TICKETS

FRI 8/24 @ 2:30pm BUY TICKETS

SAT 8/25 @ 10:30pm BUY TICKETS

HartBeat worked with Rabbit Ears Media to produce a weekly web video series documenting the “making of” Flipside. All videos can be watched on HartBeat’s YouTube channel.

Hartford Courant theater critic Frank Rizzo writes:

Julia B. Rosenblatt creates a solid piece of theater that transcends the limits of theater-by-committee. It feels like it was written by a single voice. The characters are well-drawn with good specificity, the dialogue is far from cliché and there’s plenty of nuanced shadings in the performances.

…the script is fairly subtle, well-crafted and zeros in on real and complex people, especially in the relationship between the narc who’s hooked on saving the world and the intelligent urban youth who goes down the wrong path despite his better judgment.

…Also enlivening the work was the free-feeling yet solidly designed structure that jumps in time and place, with scenes woven nicely together with poetry by Cindy Martinez and music by Martin Carillo.

Read the full review on Courant.com!

FLIPSIDE was directed by Co-Founding Artistic Director, Gregory R. Tate. Tate, as he was known to most in Hartford, passed away on June 3rd from lung cancer. As HartBeat and Tate’s friends and family mourn this recent loss, we are glad to be able to honor his legacy by remounting the work he was most proud of. Tate said of FLIPSIDE, “We found that no matter what a person believes about drug use and selling, they tend to be very passionate about their feelings on the matter. Of course that makes for great theater. It can be tricky, but very fun stuff.”

HartBeat Ensemble premiered Flipside on April 28, 2011 at The Hollander Building, 410 Asylum St, Hartford. It was brought back by popular demand for an encore run in October 2011. Creating FLIPSIDE involved two years worth of personal interviews, public forums and interactive theater events.

Flipside was made possible through a grant from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving as part of HartBeat Ensemble’s New Play Institute; which places community involvement at the heart of the theater’s play creation process and will bring more theater to non-traditional audiences.

Flipside is also supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Greater Hartford Arts Council United Arts campaign, the City of Hartford Arts & Heritage Jobs Grant Program, the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, the NewAlliance Foundation, and the Knox Foundation. Generous in-kind consideration provided by Common Ground.