NY Premiere of NO MOVES BACK Begins Previews February 20

Jeff Britton will present the New York premiere of Martin Halpern's new play NO MOVES BACK, with previews beginning on Friday, February 20, 2009 at the Roy Arias Theatre (300 West 43rd St. 5th floor). The official opening will be on Friday, February 27, 2009. Samantha Megan Saltzman directs.

NO MOVES BACK details the happenings during a chess game between two aged classical musicians and lifelong friends - Morrie, who has sunken into a deep depression and Alan who makes every attempt to pull him out of it. Encounters with everyone from a repentant pick-pocket to a troubled young woman hell bent on performing a mercy killing on her cancer-ridden grandfather, ignite a struggle toward each man's new beginning.

Martin Halpern have been widely produced off and Off Off Broadway in New York and at regional theatres across the country, including the Arena Stage in Washington, the Philadelphia Festival Theater, the St. Louis Repertory Company, The Denver Center Theater, and the American Stage Company in New Jersey. He has been a playwright in residence at New York's Circle Repertory Company and at the Peterborough Players in New Hampshire, and from 1965 to 1994 he was professor of playwriting and dramatic literature at Brandeis University, where he chaired the Theater Arts department for seven years. Mr. Halpern is an accomplished composer having more than seventy performances of his chamber music and songs and eleven productions of his camber operas at various venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Samantha Saltzman's directing credits include: No More Waiting and Line, Kol Nidre, Bed and Breakfast, and Icee (Hangar Theatre); Bernard Goes to Surgery; The Music Man. Assistant directing credits include: Hair, Girl's School Gothic, Arkansaw Bear, The Ant and The Grasshopper (Hangar Theatre). Production credits: Rock of Ages (Off-Broadway); The Story (Playhouse on the Square); The 24-Hour Musical; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; Scenes from an Execution.

The cast features Michael Twaine, Peter Ludwig, Robert Underwood, Shirley Perkins, Michelle Concha, Rynel Johnson, Shykia Fields.

Set Design is by Blair Mielnik and Lighting Design is by Ethan Kaplan.

Performances of NO MOVES BACK are Friday - Tuesdays. Fridays Saturdays, Mondays and Tuesdays at 8PM, Matinees on Saturday at 2PM and Sundays at 3PM. There will also be performances on Wednesday 2/18 at 8PM and Thursday 2/19 at 8PM.

Tickets are $18 and available by calling SmartTix at 212.868.4444 or at the box office prior to each performance.