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The Long Christmas Ride Home

November 9, 2009

Azuka Theatre, in residency at Drexel during its 10th Anniversary Season, has premiered Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel's play The Long Christmas Ride Home as part of the Mandell Professionals in Residence Project (MPiRP). The play explores the fragile and frayed relationship of one family on a difficult ride home from their family's Christmas gathering. It tells its story in a brilliantly staged production that incorporates Bunraku, an ancient form of Japanese puppetry, and the production features Drexel students working alongside the Azuka company on stage and behind the scenes. The New York Times said the play is, '...somewhat like gazing at stars: We feel its inspiration, as well as its sad distance from earth. [The Long Christmas Ride Home] collapses time and space into moments of disarming, and affecting, beauty.' The Long Christmas Ride Home is as fine as any theater to be seen on Philadelphia stages and will be running at the Mandell Theater through November 15th.