Public Theater Extends Elevator Repair Service's ARGUENDO Through 10/13

The Public Theater (Artistic Director, Oskar Eustis; Executive Director, Patrick Willingham) announced a one week extension today for the world premiere of Elevator Repair Service's ARGUENDO, directed by John Collins. ARGUENDO began performances on Tuesday, September 10, and was originally scheduled to close on Sunday, October 6. It will now run an additional week through Sunday, October 13 with an official press opening on Tuesday, September 24.

The complete cast of ARGUENDO features Maggie Hoffman, Mike Iveson, Vin Knight, Susie Sokol, and Ben Williams.

Single tickets, starting at $66.50, can be purchased by calling (212) 967-7555, www.publictheater.org, or in person at the Taub Box Office at The Public Theater at Astor Place at 425 Lafayette Street. The Library at The Public is open nightly for food and drink, beginning at 5:30 p.m., andJoe's Pub continues to offer some of the best music in the city.

Last year, The Public Theater co-produced, to great acclaim, Gatz (a unique word-for-word staging of The Great Gatsby) created and performed by Elevator Repair Service (ERS), one of America's most acclaimed theater ensembles. This season, The Public reunites with ERS for a co-production of ARGUENDO, a playful riff on the 1991 Supreme Court case Barnes v. Glen Theatre. In this provocative case, a group of exotic dancers, citing the First Amendment, challenged a ban on public nudity. ERS stages the oral argument of the case verbatim with their signature theatricality, wit and physical precision. The production design features a breathtaking swirl of animated text projections by celebrated visual artist, Ben Rubin who designed The Public's Shakespeare Machine.

ARGUENDO is designed to be a thought-provoking piece of theater. Every performance on Wednesdays and Sundays will be followed by talkbacks with ERS Artistic Director John Collins, and constitutional law scholars and journalists who write about the Court. These talkbacks, which began on Wednesday, September 11, will not only give audiences a chance to learn more about the history of the case, they will give them a chance to participate themselves, in the discussion that the Court itself has begun.

ARGUENDO features set design by David Zinn; lighting design by Mark Barton; costume design by Jacob A. Climer; sound design by Matt Tierney; and projection design by Ben Rubin.

ARGUENDO was co-commissioned by The Public Theater; Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; ArtsEmerson: The World on Stage; and Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. Development support provided by the Vineyard Arts Project. Elevator Repair Service (elevator.org) creates original works, with a consistent ensemble, that explore and challenge the fundamentals of live performance.

John Collins (Director) founded Elevator Repair Service in 1991. Since then, he has directed or co-directed all of the company's productions. Collins is the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art and a 2011 United States Artists Donnelley Fellowship. In 2010, Collins received the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Director and the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director for ERS's production of Gatz. Recent ERS projects include The Select (The Sun Also Rises) at New York Theatre Workshop and Fondly, Collette Richlandpreview performances at the Walker Art Center. His writing about theater and sound design can be found in the recently published Theatre Noise: The Sound of Performance (Cambridge Scholars, 2011) and the upcoming Encountering Ensemble (Methuen Drama, 2013). He holds a combined degree in English Literature and Theater Studies from Yale.

Maggie Hoffman (Performer). In 1998, Hoffman co-founded the avant-punk performance ensemble Radiohole. She has performed in all eleven of Radiohole's original productions, which have toured nationally and internationally, and she co-manages Radiohole's performance venue, The Collapsable Hole, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her other performance credits include The Appeal (Young Jean Lee's Theater Company) and Major Bang (The Foundry Theatre). She also designs graphics for ERS and Clubbed Thumb, among others.

Mike Iveson (Performer). With ERS, Iveson's credits include Fondly; Collette Richland; The Select (The Sun Also Rises); Shuffle; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928); and Gatz. His select stage credits include Crime or Emergency, Dot, and So Much to Go Crazy. He tours with Sarah Michelson, NYC Players, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Dancenoise, and many others. He is the recipient of PS122's 2013 Ethyl Eichelberger Award.

Vin Knight (Performer). With ERS, Knight's credits include Fondly; Collette Richland; The Select (The Sun Also Rises); Shuffle; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928); No Great Society; and Gatz. His other credits include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Marie Antoinette at A.R.T. and Yale Rep; The Temperamentals; U.S. Drag; and over two dozen productions with adobe theater company. His film and television credits includeLouie, Robot Stories, Love God, and Dumped!

Susie Sokol (Performer) is a second-grade teacher at St. Ann's School in Brooklyn where she has taught since 1996. Susie began performing with ERS in 1992. Since then, she has appeared in all ERS productions. She has also worked with theater artists Katherine Profeta, Sibyl Kempson and Tina Satter.

Ben Williams (Performer) has worked for ERS as an actor and sound designer since 2004. His credits with ERS include Fondly; Collette Richland; The Select (The Sun Also Rises); Shuffle; The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928); No Great Society; and Gatz; His additional recent credits include Grimly Handsome, Ich, Kurbisgeist, and When a Priest Marries a Witch. His other collaborations include The Wooster Group, New York City Players, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Diller Scofidio + Renfro. His awards for Sound Design include the 2012 Obie, 2012 Lucille Lortel, and 2013 LADCC. He is the Editor of Performance Texts for BODY, an online literary journal.

Elevator Repair Service is a New York City-based company that creates original works for live theater with an ongoing ensemble. Since its founding in 1991 by John Collins and a group of actors, ERS has built a body of work that has earned it a loyal following and made it one of New York's most highly-acclaimed experimental theater companies. Their work has been seen across America, Europe, Australia and Asia, and they have been the recipient of many awards including a 2012 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence; The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Theater Grant; the Theatre Communications Group's Peter Zeisler Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement; and (for Gatz) Elliot Norton Awards for Outstanding Director and Outstanding Visiting Production and Lucille Lortel Awards for Alternative Theatrical Experience and Best Director. ERS ensemble members have received OBIEs for Sustained Excellence in Performance, Lighting Design, and Sound Design.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus