For Immediate Release
July 14, 2009

MANASSAS –Vpstart Crow Announces its new Managing Director

After a highly successful 2008-2009 season, Ray Bracken has chosen to step down as Managing Director. Assuming his position will be Clemente Santiago III. Clemente has been with Vpstart Crow for all of the 2008-2009 season in several different positions. His selection as the new Managing Director ensures a smooth transition into our new season.

The Board of Vpstart Crow Productions thanks Ray for his service over the past season and looks forward to working with Clemente as the 2009-2010 season begins.

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.