Works by Halley Feiffer, Kate Gersten & More Set for F*It Club's THE SPRING FLING

F*It Club, the New York Innovative Award-winning film and theatre company, continues its annual series of short, commissioned world-premiere plays at the brand new Sheen Center in lower Manhattan with The Spring Fling: First Love, six new short plays by Halley Feiffer (How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them), Kate Gersten (Benefit of the Doubt), Jason Grote (Mad Men, Smash, Hannibal, 1001), Mark Sitko (Rocky Philly, Tube), Tommy Smith (White Hot, Pigeon), and Lauren Yee (The Hatmaker's Wife). Performances will be Thursday, May 1st through Sunday, May 11th with Wednesday through Saturday night performances at 8pm and Sunday matinees at 2p. Tickets are $18 and available at ovationtx.com and at the door.

Designed to showcase high-quality, brand-new ten-minute plays, The Spring Fling offers emerging and established playwrights the chance to develop their work with the support of professional directors and designers and a cast of exceptionally talented New York artists. This annual series presents simple, actor-centric productions that add to the canon of thematically rich, complex and original ten-minute plays. Previous Spring Fling playwrights have been Brooke Berman, Hilary Bettis, Lucy Boyle, Bekah Brunstetter, Ashlin Halfnight, Nick Jones, Greg Keller, Anna Kerrigan, Krista Knight, Victor Lesniewski, Caroline V. McGraw, Janine Nabers, Isaac Oliver, Heidi Schreck, Mark Schultz, Joe Tracz, and Anna Ziegler. The Spring Fling series has been nominated for a total of eight New York Innovative Theatre Awards and won two consecutive years.

"The writing here is insightful and often funny." - Catherine Rampell, The New York Times

Performances at the Sheen Center are Thursday, May 1 through Sunday, May 11th with Thursday through Saturday evening performances at 8p, with additional Sunday matinees at 2p. Tickets are $18 dollars and can be purchased at the door or online at ovationtix.com. The Sheen Center is located at 18 Bleecker Street in New York, NY. For more information, visit http://www.facebook.com/effitclub.

HALLEY FEIFFER is a New York-based playwright and actress. Her full-length plays include I'M GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD, SIDNEY & LAURA, A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE GYNECOLOGIC ONCOLOGY UNIT AT MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER, and HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND THEN KILL THEM, which recently opened at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, directed by Kip Fagan. Her plays have been produced or developed by Second Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, The New Group, The Orchard Project, Naked Angels, Cape Cod Theatre Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm, LAByrinth Theater Company and the Stella Adler Studio, where she is a current playwright-in-residence. Her work has been published by Vintage Books and Smith & Kraus. She is an alumna of terraNOVA's Groundbreakers Playwrights' Group, and a winner of the Young Playwright's Competition. She is currently working on commissions for Keen Company and Manhattan Theatre Club, and is a resident writer for Blue Man Group. As an actress, recent credits include Ethan Coen's "Women or Nothing" at the Atlantic, and the film HE'S WAY MORE FAMOUS THAN YOU, which she also co-wrote.

KATE GERSTEN is currently in her third year as a Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellow at The Juilliard School under the mentorship of Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang. Her thesis play, Benefit of the Doubt was produced last year at The Juilliard School, and was subsequently further developed at The Roundabout. Her other plays include Be Your Best Friend, (2012 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist, developed at The Roundabout, and currently in development as a half hour comedy for FOX), Father Figure, and Exposed! The Curious Case of Shiloh and Zahara, which was produced as part of the Midtown International Theater Festival in 2009 (Dir: Dan Fogler). That production received 12 nominations from the festival for which Gersten won Outstanding Playwriting of a New Script, and was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress. Kate is also a two time recipient of the Lincoln Center Le Comte de Nouy Prize. In addition to her work at Juilliard, Kate did her undergraduate studies at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

JASON GROTE's plays include 1001, Civilization (all you can eat), Maria/Stuart, Hamilton Township, Box Americana, and This Storm Is What We Call Progress. His work has been commissioned, produced, and developed by Soho Rep, PS122, Clubbed Thumb, Sundance, The O'Neill, HERE, The Denver Center, Theater @ Boston Court, Circle X, Salvage Vanguard, Redeye, The Contemporary American Theater Festival, ACT, Son of Semele, Portland Center Stage, Woolly Mammoth, Mass MoCA, The Lark, The Civilians, The Flea, The Glej Theater, The Bielefeld Festival, The Luminato Festival, The Watermill Center, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Playwrights' Foundation, Collaboraction, Sideshow, The Working Theater, Baltimore Centerstage, TheatreWorks, The York Theatre, The Prospect Theatre, The Orchard Project, and elsewhere. He wrote the text for David Levine's OBIE-winning HABIT, is a member of CTG's 2013-14 Writers' Group, and is currently adapting the text for Basetrack, a performance piece based on Teru Kuwayama's open-source journalism project about the First Battalion, Eighth Marines deployed in Southern Afghanistan. For television, he has written for "Mad Men," "Hannibal," and "Smash." He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and his plays are published by Playscripts and Samuel French.

MARK SITKO is a Brooklyn-based playwright and director. His play Tipoldemoder is being featured in the Brave New World reading series in December and will be directed by Shannon Sindelar. Mark is also the Artistic Director of Van Cougar, a Brooklyn-based theater company that devises plays using recordings of the general public. Van Cougar's productions Rocky Philly, Gonna See a Movie Called Gunga Din, and Tube have been featured at the Bushwick Starr and the Incubator Arts Project. Mark received his MFA in playwrighting from Brooklyn College where he studied under Mac Wellman, and Erin Courtney. He has served as the Associate Artistic Director for the OBIE award-winning Bushwick Starr theater during its initial three years of operation and continues to curate their reading series along with Mallery Avidon and William Burke. Mark is also a professor at Brooklyn College.

TOMMY SMITH's plays include ZERO, (Ensemble Studio Theatre; d. Billy Carden), PTSD (E.S.T.; d. Billy Carden), WHITE HOT (Here Arts Center; d. May Adrales & West Of Lenin, d. Braden Abraham), PIGEON (E.S.T.; d. Billy Carden), THE WIFE (Access Gallery; d. May Adrales), SEXTET (Washington Ensemble Theatre; d. Roger Benington), CARAVAN MAN (Williamstown Theatre Festival, music & lyrics by Gabriel Kahane, d. Kip Fagan), DEMON DREAMS (Magic Futurebox, music by DJ Spooky, d. Kevin Laibson), A DAY IN DIG NATION (PS 122, co-written and d. Michael McQuilken), AIR CONDITIONING (Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference; d. Steve Cosson), among others. In addition, his award-winning theatrical collaborations with Reggie Watts played at The Public Theatre, Lamama, The Warhol Museum, MCA Chicago, ICA Boston, On The Boards and PICA: TBA, among others. As a director/writer, Tommy recently created the environmental sound performances, NECTARINE EP (for Flea Theater), LOTUS EATERS EP (for IRT Theater, with voices of Neil Gaiman, Marin Ireland & Reed Birney) and FORTH (for MFB, d. Meiyin Wang). Tommy is the recipient of the PONY fellow at The Lark, a two-time winner of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize, a recipient of the E.S.T. Sloan Grant, a winner of the Page73 Productions Playwriting Fellowship, a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer's Group at Primary Stages, a recipient of the Creative Capital award, and a two-time winner of the MAP Fund. His feature film FIGMENT was optioned by Ridley Scott's production company ScottFree. He is a graduate of the playwriting program at The Juilliard School.

LAUREN YEE's work explores the line between humor and heartbreak to create wildly theatrical plays. Credits include Ching Chong Chinaman (Pan Asian Rep, Mu Performing Arts, SIS Productions), Crevice (Impact Theatre), The Hatmaker's Wife (Playwrights Realm, The Hub, Moxie Theatre, AlterTheater, PlayPenn), Hookman (Company One workshop), in a word (Hangar and Williamstown workshops), Samsara (O'Neill Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Victory Gardens' IGNITION Festival), and The Tiger Among Us (MAP Fund grant, Mu Performing Arts). Lauren's plays have been also developed at Lincoln Center Theatre/LCT3, The Magic Theatre, The Public Theater, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Aurora Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theatre, and Orlando Shakespeare Festival. She has been a Dramatists Guild fellow, a MacDowell fellow, and Public Theater EWG member. She was a finalist for the Jerome, the PONY, the Princess Grace, and the Wasserstein Prize. Current fellowships: Women's Project Lab, Ma-YI Writers Lab, Second Stage playwright-in-residence, Playwrights Realm Page One resident playwright, and Playwrights' Center Core Writer. Current commissions: Goodman Theatre, Lincoln Center/LCT3, Mixed Blood, and Encore Theatre (supported by the Gerbode Foundation). BA: Yale. MFA: UCSD. www.laurenyee.com

F*It Club (Allyson Morgan, Executive Director) is an award-winning New York based company of film and theatre artists. F*It Club is committed to providing equal opportunity for all of its members. We hope to build both a home and a community for artists to share, grow, and create. Our company was founded with the goal to provide access and opportunity. We say "f* it" to waiting for opportunity to knock. We are seizing opportunity and making it ours. We want to make work and we want to make it NOW.

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