Rising Phoenix Repertory Announces AFTERCLAP 2/8-22/2010

After the critical success and sold out runs of its first two Off-Broadway productions, with Piece by Piece Productions-of Slipping at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and Too Much Memory at the New York Theatre Workshop's Fourth Street Theatre-Caffe Cino Fellowship winning company Rising Phoenix Rep returns to the backroom pub space at the Seventh Street Small Stage to present the world premiere of Afterclap, award-winning playwright and screenwriter Daniel Reitz's new site-specific play. Directed by RPR Artistic Director Daniel Talbott, the production will feature Haskell King.

Commissioned and written specifically for the moody and extremely intimate close quarters in the basement space of downtown restaurant Jimmy's No. 43, in Reitz's play a man wakes up naked on the floor in the backroom of a bar at 4 am, not immediately clear how he got there, both trying and dreading to remember. He dresses, he drinks, he self-medicates and he recounts, in a quest for self-exoneration. Grappling with the gnawing feelings of his culpability, poring over the physical evidence of his guilt, he obsesses over the nature and extent of his accountability in the afterclap-the unexpected damage that follows the end of an affair.

Afterclap runs for thirteen performances only from February 8th - 22nd at the Seventh Street Small Stage, 43 East Seventh Street (6 to Astor Place, R/W to 8th Street, F train to 2nd Ave). Performances at 6PM Sundays through Fridays with no shows on Saturdays, and a special time of 9PM on Sunday, February 21st (no 6PM performance that day). Running time approximately 40 minutes. Tickets: $10, cash only at the door. For reservations please call 646-510-2235; for more information please visit www.risingphoenixrep.org.

Daniel Reitz is a playwright and screenwriter. Recent productions include Studies for a Portrait (London: White Bear Theatre and Oval House Theatre). Recent New York productions of his plays include Self-Portrait in a Blue Room, which was part of the Ensemble Studio Theatre's 2007 Marathon; Fall Forward, commissioned by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and produced in the LMCC Sitelines/River-to-River Festival with Rising Phoenix Repertory; and Rules of the Universe, which received the 2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Short Play. Other plays include his adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters, Urban Folk Tales, Lowlife, The Pleasure Principle, Everything I Do I Do for You, Chat, and Perfect Evening. His work has been developed and/or produced at theatres including the Mark Taper Forum's New Work Festival, Coast Playhouse (Los Angeles), Ensemble Studio Theatre, Manhattan Class Company, Naked Angels, New Dramatists, New York Stage and Film, Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages and the Joseph Papp Public Theater. He has received a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Drama-Logue Award, and residency fellowships from the Edward Albee Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, The Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Scotland, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Yaddo Corporation. His plays have been published by Smith and Kraus, New York Theatre Experience, United Stages and Playscripts, Inc. His screenwriting work includes Urbania, his feature film adaptation of his play Urban Folk Tales, which was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, was an official selection of the Seattle and Toronto film festivals, and was voted "Best Film" at festivals in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Provincetown prior to its release by Lionsgate Films in 2000. He has also written and directed several short films, including, most recently, Room Service, which have been screened in festivals in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia. He is a member of New Dramatists and Rising Phoenix Repertory.

Daniel Talbott (Director) has most recently worked as an actor on The Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis), Master Builder (Irish Rep), Rocket City (Alabama Shakespeare Festival), Tartuffe (McCarter Theatre/Yale Rep), Marat/Sade (Classical Theatre of Harlem) and the feature film Pretty Bird. Recent directing work includes Birthday and Nobody, both by Crystal Skillman (Rising Phoenix Rep at the Seventh Street Small Stage at Jimmy's No. 43), The Umbrella Plays (the teacup company/FringeNYC - Overall Excellence Award: Outstanding Play), Fall Forward (Sitelines/River to River Festival produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council), and The Reaching (Rising Phoenix Rep). His play Slipping was produced at Rattlestick this past summer, by The Side Project in Chicago in 2008, was also part of the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and will be published in 2010 by Dramatists Play Service. His play What Happened When was produced at HERE Arts Center and The Side Project and was published as part of the Plays and Playwrights 2008 anthology. He received a 2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award for directing, a Drama-Logue Award and two Dean Goodman Choice Awards for acting, and was also named one of the 15 People of the Year 2006 by nytheatre.com. He is a graduate of Juilliard and of Solano College Theatre's ATP, and is a literary manager of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and the artistic director of Rising Phoenix Rep (recipient of the 2007 NYIT Caffe Cino Fellowship Award).

Actor Haskell King's theatre credits include The Great Pretenders, Bitter Taste, Heaven Knows, and PTSD (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Brother (Paradise Factory); Take Me Out (Caldwell Theatre); Moons of Jupiter and Tales from the Schminke Tub (One Solo Arts Festival); Sweet Eros (Mary's Space, dir. Austin Pendleton); Elvis and Juliet (Abingdon Theatre with Fred Willard and David Rasche), Mother (The Wild Project with Buck Henry and Holland Taylor); The Ball of Roses (The Sanford Meisner Theatre); Film credits include Brother; Pagans; In Praise of Shadows (dir. Jay Anania); Jimmy Crane; Cannonball Luke. Television: Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Directing: Truth-O-Matic (Winner, Best Commercial, GSFF), Anti-Rockefeller Drug Law Ad Campaign. Producer: Getting Through To The President (Sundance Channel; Official Selection 2004 Full Frame Fest, Silver Docs). Haskell is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Founded in 1999 by Artistic Director Daniel Talbott, Rising Phoenix Repertory began by producing an ongoing reading series of new plays and has continued to add workshops, festivals, and highly praised productions of new plays. Recent productions include the acclaimed, sold-out Off-Broadway runs of Slipping, produced with Piece by Piece Productions and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and Too Much Memory (also with Piece by Piece Productions) which transferred to the New York Theatre Workshop's Fourth Street Theatre after winning the FringeNYC award for Outstanding Play in 2008. Other recent productions include Birthday and Don't Pet the Zookeeper (Seventh Street Small Stage); 365 Days/365 Plays (Jimmy's No. 43 and The Public Theater); What Happened When (HERE Arts Center); Fall Forward (part of the Sitelines/River to River festival produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council); The Telling Trilogy (including The Ride, 2006 NYIT Award Nominee - Outstanding Original Short Script- Crystal Skillman), Rules of the Universe (Winner, 2007 NYIT Awards for Outstanding Original Short Script - Daniel Reitz and Director - Daniel Talbott), and Three Sisters (Seventh Street Small Stage at Jimmy's No. 43); and Gift by Mark Schultz and Ponies by Mike Batistick (FringeNYC).