JUST SHUT UP & SMILE! Comes to Looking Glass Theatre 3/16 - 4/3

I ATE WHAT? THEATRE, in conjunction with The Looking Glass Theatre Space Grant Program, is pleased to announce the return of Simona Berman’s acclaimed JUST SHUT UP & SMILE!, directed by Diana Basmajian. JUST SHUT UP & SMILE! will play a special limited engagement at The Looking Glass Theatre (422 West 57th Street, btw 9th/10th Ave). Performances begin Monday, March 16 and continue thru Friday, April 3.

Just Shut Up & Smile! reveals the secret world that fester inside a woman’s mind...amongst other areas. Utilizing both multi-media and song, explore the modern feminine psyche (no, not psycho) of several women and a few innocent bystanders caught in the crossfires; you know them, you are them, you’ve heard of them or you gosh darn, didn’t know they existed! Fighting their way through the swell of Societies schizophrenic sense of self and ultimately with themselves. (Insert evil laugh here.)

SHUT UP & SMILE! plays the following unique schedule through Friday, April 3:

Monday, March 16 @ 8pm
Friday, March 20 @ 8pm
Saturday, March 21 @ 5pm
Friday, March 27 @ 8pm
Saturday, March 28 @ 5pm
Monday, March 30 @ 8pm
Friday, April 3 @ 8:30

Tickets are $18 and are now available online at www.lookingglasstheatrenyc.com or by calling 212-352-3101. Tickets may also be purchased in-person at the Box Office, ½ hour prior to the performance.

75 Minutes

www.iatewhattheatre.com

*Performing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association. AEA approved showcase.

BIOGRAPHIES

SIMONA BERMAN (playwright/actress) is a graduate of NYU TISCH School of the Arts for Drama. Studied at The Lee Strasberg Institute, The Stella Adler Conservatory & The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Off Broadway: The Donkey Show (4 roles), dir. Diane Paulis; Hair as Jeannie dir. Tony Rust & James Rado (original writer). Premiered plays at The Ontological Hysteric Theatre, The York Theatre, American Theatre of Actors, The Kraine Theatre, The Greenwich Theatre, amongst others. Indy films: Full Service, Backstabbers, The Assembly and Chickenpox. Artistic Director/Founder of I Ate What? Theatre Company: Crashing (Cassidy), wrote/produced/acted at Chashama Theatre premiering in Spotlight On Theatre Festival, nominated for 6 awards. Produced/wrote/acted Fish Bowl (Monty) NY Magazine's Critic's Pick Jan. '06* at the Michael Weller Theatre. Outroverted, (co-produce) five one-person shows, including Just Shut up & Smile, sold out in the Midtown International Theatre Festival of ’07. Just Shut Up & Smile! has been reproduced again at The Michael Weller Theatre. Signed with Don Buchwald & Associates for Voiceover/Commercials she is one of the contracted voices of The Food Network Channel amongst many other voiceovers on radio and TV. She was also the Announcer for many years for Radio Playbill on Sirius Satellite Radio.

Diana Basmajian (director) is pleased to be back working with Simona Berman on Just Shut Up and Smile after its initial premiere at the Midtown Theatre Festival last year. A graduate of Northwestern University’s theater and musical theatre programs, she began directing in Chicago shortly after graduation when she took on the Artistic Direction of Apple Tree Theater’s young audiences program. Shortly after, she took on the artistic and executive leadership of HealthWorks Theatre, an educational touring theatre focusing on social issues, where she developed three new plays for HealthWorks as well as directed its full existing repertoire. This fall she was Assistant Director to Austin Pendleton for Fifty Words at MCC Theatre (with Elizabeth Marvel and Norbert Leo Butz) and for Uncle Vanya at Classic Stage Company (Starring Denis O’Hare, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Saarsgard). She directed Charles Mee's Limonade Tous Les Jours starring Austin Pendleton at 59 e. 59 St. Theaters (for which she designed and produced the video and projections). In 2007, she directed Edward Allen Baker’s Up, Down, Strange, Charmed, Beauty and Truth for the Fringe at the Cherry Lane Studio Theatre, a production that was hailed by Time Out (“****”) and NYTheatre.com (“Kudos to Diana Basmajian for her fine direction.”) Diana also directed three plays for the 2007 Samuel French Festival: Opening by Matthew Kelty (Winner), Happy Birthday/I’m Dead by Bekah Brunstetter (Finalist), and Tranquil by Andrew Rosendorf (Semi-Finalist). Other NY work includes: War Uncensored by Andrew Carroll based on his best-selling novel, Behind the Lines, at the Michael Weller Theatre; I Used to Write on Walls at the Gene Frankel Theatre and F**ck Plays: Marriage Play at the Ohio and Gallapagos Arts Space (Working Man’s Clothes) both by Bekah Brunstetter; Space (Rattlestick Playwright’s Theater Reading) also by Brunstetter; 24 is 10: Play with Faun by Jeff Whitty (2006 Fringe). She assistant directed in 2007 and 2008 for the 24 Hour plays on Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre, and prior to that at projects at the Goodman Theater, Victory Gardens Theater, and Apple Tree Theater’s main stage. In 2006, she directed The Pick Me Theory with longtime friend and collaborator Maia Madison, which ran in Chicago and Los Angeles and was later developed by Basmajian, Madison and writer Jamie Pachino into a television pilot. Diana recently received her MFA in directing from the New School for Drama (under the direction of Robert LuPone) she also worked with faculty on the development of the Summer Music Theatre Intensive (where she served as Program Associate and showcase director), Teaching Shakespeare Program (along with Paul Rudd and Elinor Renfield), and produced and developed its first full-length play festival, Nine in Seven (with faculty member Lou Jacob).

The Looking Glass Theatre’s mission is to explore and expand the feminine aesthetic, producing works by historic female playwrights, new works by women, and productions of the classics re-imagined by contemporary women directors. PLAN B is the first recipient of the new Looking Glass Space Grant Program, a new artistic and community initiative continuing the mission of The Looking Glass Theatre.