For Immediate Release
May 23, 2008

MANASSAS –Vpstart Crow Announces Stephanie Hanna Joining the Directing Team.

Ms Hanna will make her Vpstart Crow directorial debut with Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, the opening show of our 15th Season. Ms Hanna holds a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Bachelor of Art in Theatre from Longwood University.

Ms Hanna's directorial credits include Slop-Culture, The Zoo Story, and Into the Woods.

Ms Hanna will also be directing our Spring production, Shakespeare's Othello.

ABOUT VPSTART CROW PRODUCTIONS, INC.
Founded in 1994, Vpstart Crow Productions, Inc. (pronounced “upstart”) is a non-Equity and non-profit professional theatre company dedicated to performing the works of William Shakespeare and other theatre classics. Vpstart Crow’s mission is to produce live theatre as a vital, accessible and exciting part of community life. Employing a resident company of local professional actors and artists of the highest caliber, Vpstart Crow is dedicated to breaking down the barriers between audience and actors in a performance style that is thought-provoking and altogether vpstartling.

The term “vpstart crow” comes from one of Shakespeare’s rival English playwrights, Robert Greene. In his 1592 pamphlet, Groats-Worth Of Wit Bought With A Million Of Repentance, Greene criticizes Shakespeare: “… for there is an vpstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tigers hart wrapt in a players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum (“Johnny-do-it-all” or “Jack-of-all-trades”), is in his owne conceit the onely ‘Shake-scene’ in a countrey.” In fact, Vpstart Crow spells its name with a “v” rather than a “u” in reference to the way the English language was written in Shakespeare’s day.