With this year’s Rainbow Theater Festival the most successful to date, Bread & Water Theatre is proud to announce the addition of two encore performances of Nancy Agabian’s hit plays My Gay Family and The Crochet Penis. Both shows will be performed together as part of a double bill and feature the original BWT cast and creative team.

Each one-woman show is a unique take on what it is to be a bisexual woman in the modern world. My Gay Family tells the coming-of-age story of a shy, funny, Armenian-American bisexual girl who flees her small town of Walpole, Massachusetts to tell the stories of her family of one gay brother, one lesbian sister and two homophobic parents. The Crochet Penis is a much more biting play as it deals with Nancy’s life in the wake of her grandmother’s death, a woman of courage who survived the Armenian Genocide. In this emotional time she confronts her issues of sexuality, love and loss.

After graduating from Wellesley College with a degree in Studio Art in 1990, Nancy Agabian moved to Los Angeles, where she wrote and presented the poems and solo performance texts collected in Princess Freak. Her writing has also appeared in numerous anthologies. With Ann Perich she formed the folk-punk duo Guitar Boy, their CD Freaks Like Me was released in 2000. In that year she also received the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann fellowship to attend Columbia University’s writing program, from which she graduated in 2003. Her master’s thesis, Me as Her Again, is a memoir that explores the influence of her Armenian-American family on her coming-of-age and will be published by Aunt Lute Books in 2008. Since Dec. 2002, she has been coordinating Gartal, a literary reading series for Armenian-American writers at Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village. In 2007, Ms. Agabian traveled to the Yerevan State University in Armenia where she conducted researched and lectured on the topic “Writing Armenia: Personal Stories” on a Fulbright Scholarship. She currently teaches creative non-fiction writing at Queens College in NYC.

The cast includes: Gina Menzer-Kunz (Nancy Agabian in My Gay Family) and Tiffany L. Widrick (Nancy Agabian in The Crochet Penis). Ms. Menzer-Kunz is a founding member of the Rainbow Theater Festival and has previously appeared in Black Sheep Theatre Coalition’s The Water Engine by David Mamet, The Penfield Player’s Don’t Drink the Water by Woody Allen, Nazareth College Theatre Arts Department production of Burn This by Lanford Wilson. Ms. Widrick has previously appeared in BWT’s Rainbow Theater Festival production of Lambda Project: Every Step may be Fruitful and is an alumna of the American Music and Dramatics Academy (AMDA).

The creative team includes: Carl Girard (Director) and Sara Gallagher (Prop Design). Mr. Girard is a distinguished actor/director and a part of the Rainbow Theater Festival since its inception. At BWT, Mr. Girard has directed That Kiss by J.R. Teeter, Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake by Mario J. Savastano, and Safe Sex by Harvey Fierstein and has appeared in Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Madness of Lady Bright by Lanford Wilson, and The Witnesses of Kitty Genovese by J.R. Teeter. Mr. Girard is also Associate Director of Bread & Water Theatre. Ms. Gallagher is an experienced costume/prop designer specializing in historical and regimental costumes as well as custom corset making. Her work has previously appeared in BWT’s The Witnesses of Kitty Genovese and Lambda Project: Au Naturel.

Founded in 2000, Bread & Water Theatre is committed to making the arts accessible and affordable to a broad-based audience and acting as a positive agent of change in its community. Under the artistic direction of J.R. Teeter, BWT develops theatre that speaks to our living, evolving, and dramatically changing world through new and rare works of drama, and aspires to be a major force in American theatre, providing audiences with challenging contemporary drama and innovative community outreach programs.

The encore performances of The Crochet Penis and My Gay Family will be presented at 243 Rosedale St. (New Life Presbyterian Church) on July 18th and 19th, 2008 at 8:00pm. Single ticket prices range from $5-$10 and may be purchased in person or in advance at WWW.BREADANDWATERTHEATRE.ORG starting June 15th. For more information call (585) 271-5523.