Jennifer Tilly, Dylan Baker & More Set for Eric Bogosian's 100 MONOLOGUES at PS122

To benefit their 2016 return to their East Village home, Performance Space 122 (PS122) and Executive Producer Anson Mount bring together widely acclaimed playwright Eric Bogosian and director Jo Bonney, along with their close friends, for two-nights of hand-selected, intimate performances from Bogosian's 100 Monologues series.

Originally performed by Bogosian himself, many of these Off-Broadway solos were first seen on the stages at PS122 between 1980 - 2006. In 2013, Bogosian put together a cast of his influential friends to star in the filmed version of these monologues to be released online as a series. Being performed for the first time with this iteration of characters, these benefit performances feature screen and stage talent such as Dylan Baker (The Good Wife), David Cale, Michael Chernus (Orange is the New Black), Richard Kind (Spin City, Curb Your Enthusiasm), Anson Mount (Hell on Wheels), Jennifer Tilly (Bullets Over Broadway), along with Eric Bogosian himself. Additional performers will be announced at a later date.

"Performance Space 122 was, believe it or not, the very first theater in which I ushered," said - Anson Mount, Executive Producer, Performer and PS122 GPS Committee Member. "Growing up and going to college in the rural South, I had only read about the goings on at PS122 through the Yale Theater Journal and by watching the filmed performances of Spalding Gray. It seemed to me that everything cool was going on there and I wanted to be a part of it, even if it was in such a small way. Today I'm proud to be able to lend my support again, and hopefully in a continuing and mutually meaningful manner. PS122 means a lot to me and to the future of an extremely important and desperately underserved New York community: contemporary performance."

Two benefit performances of Eric Bogosian's 100 Monologues will take place November 16 and 17 at 8pm, with doors opening at 7:15pm, at The Players (16 Gramercy Park South, Manhattan). Tickets, priced at $122 and $222 for VIP Packages, can be purchase at ps122.org or by calling 212.352.3101.

These performances of 100 Monologues benefit PS122's Give Performance Space (GPS) campaign, a capacity campaign to launch PS122's growth as an organization with the goal of better serving the artists and audiences of New York City. Returning to their East Village home of over 35 years, in 2016, after a major City-led renovation, this moment provides PS122 with a unique opportunity. Unlike funds from a bricks and mortar campaign, the GPS campaign gives PS122 the flexibility to take risks, adapt and grow as a leader within the cultural ecology of New York City.

About the artists

Eric Bogosian (Writer and Performer)is best known as a playwright, novelist and actor. He wrote and starred in the play, Talk Radio (NYSF - 1987; on Broadway starring Liev Schreiber- 2007), for which he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and the Tony award. For his film adaptation of Talk Radio, Bogosian received the Berlin Film Festival "Silver Bear." His six solo performances Off-Broadway between 1980 and 2000, (including Drinking in America, and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee) received three Obie awards. In addition to Talk Radio, Bogosian has written a number of full-length plays including subUrbia (LCT, Second Stage, also adapted to film), Griller (Goodman), Red Angel (Williamstown Theater Festival), Humpty Dumpty (The McCarter) and 1+1 (New York Stage and Film). He is also the author of three novels, Mall, Wasted Beauty and Perforated Heart and a novella, Notes from Underground. In 2014, Theater Communications Group published the full collection of Bogosian's monologues, titled 100 (monologues).

As an actor, Bogosian has appeared in numerous films and television programs, starring in Robert Altman's The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Oliver Stone's Talk Radio, as Travis Dane in Under Siege II, as Eddie Nash in Wonderland and as Captain Danny Ross in 60 episodes of Law & Order: CI. In 2010, he starred on Broadway in Time Stands Still with Laura Linney, Brian Darcy James and Alicia Silverstone/Christina Ricci. Recent guest star appearances on television include The Good Wife and Elementary.

In April 2015, Little, Brown published Operation Nemesis Bogosian's non-fiction account of the conspiracy that targeted and assassinated Turkish leaders responsible for the Armenian genocide. Bogosian is a Guggenheim fellow. He lives in New York with his wife, director Jo Bonney.

Jo Bonney (Director) directing credits include Suzan-Lori Parks' Father Comes Home from the Wars at The Public Theater Lab; Michael Weller's Beast at New York Theatre Workshop; Naomi Wallace's Fever Chart at The Public Theater Lab and Hard Weather Boating Party at Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays; Alan Ball's All that I Will Ever Be at New York Theatre Workshop; Eric Bogosian's subUrbia, Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play and Lisa Loomer's Living Out at Second Stage Theatre; Will Power's The Seven at New York Theatre Workshop and La Jolla Playhouse (Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical); Neil LaBute's Fat Pig at MCC Theater and the Geffen Playhouse and Some Girl(s) at MCC Theater; Caryl Churchill's Top Girls at Williamstown Theatre Festival; Christopher Shinn's On the Mountain at Playwrights Horizons; Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics at Arena Stage; Universes' Slanguage at New York Theatre Workshop and Mark Taper Forum; Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July at Signature Theatre Company (Lucille Lortel Award for Best Revival); José Rivera's Adoration of the Old Woman at La Jolla Playhouse and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot at The Public Theater; Diana Son's Stop Kiss and Anna Deavere Smith's House Arrest at The Public Theater; Jessica Goldberg's Good Thing at The New Group; John Osborne's Look Back in Anger at Classic Stage Company; Danny Hoch's Some People and Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop in the United States and Britain; and numerous solos including Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead; Wake Up and Smell the Coffee and plays by Eric Bogosian in the United States and Britain.

Ms. Bonney is the recipient of a 1998 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Direction and the editor of Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century (TCG).

Anson Mount (Executive Producer, Performer, PS122 GPS Committee) is perhaps best known for starring as Cullen Bohannon in AMC's Hell on Wheels, which recently finished airing its fifth season. He has also appeared in the films Non-Stop opposite Liam Neeson, Safe opposite Jason Statham, City By the Sea opposite Robert DeNiro, Pool Hall Junkies with Christopher Walken, Tully, Hick, Cook County (for which he also served as Producer) and the upcoming Mr Right with Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick. Mount began his theater career when he began ushering for PS122 at the age of 20. He then went on to star in Terence McNally's controversial Corpus Christi for which he was honored by the Drama League. Other theater credits include Three Sisters at CSC, Cymbeline at NYSF, and Mourning Becomes Electra with The New Group. He lives in Brooklyn.

About The Players

The Players is a private social club in New York City founded in 1888 when Edwin Booth, the greatest American actor of his time, purchased a Gothic Revival-style mansion facing Gramercy Park and commissioned architect Stanford White to transform it into a certain club "for the promotion of social intercourse between the representative members of the dramatic profession and the kindred professions of literature, painting, sculpture and music, and the patrons of the arts."

www.theplayersnyc.org

About Performance Space 122 and the Give Performance Space Campaign

For over three decades, Performance Space 122 has been a hub for contemporary performance and an active member of the cultural community in NYC and across the globe. Under the curato­rial vision of Mark Russell (1985-2005) and Vallejo Gantner (2005-present), PS122 has developed a set of programs designed to sustain the creative process for artists throughout their career and provide extraordinary experiences for our audiences, in all their diversity. Our goal is to inspire critical thinking and connect performance with the larger cultural eco-system of both New York City and the world, and by doing so re-establish the value of live performance. Through partnering with peer organizations as well as contemporary institutions who share our belief in the cultural importance of live performance, PS122 currently commissions and presents artists in all disciplines in spaces all over the city during an annual fall & spring season and COIL festival in January.

Founded in 1980 by Charles Dennis, Tim Miller, Charles Moulton, and Peter Rose, in what was then an abandoned public school building, Performance Space 122 is proud to have brought forward not only artists, like John Leguizamo, Jonathan Ames, Eric Bogosian, the Blue Man Group and Annie Dorsen who have gone on to make waves in commercial arenas on Broadway or at HBO, but also artists who have triggered national debate about political and ethical issues, like the original "NEA four", Ethyl Eichelberger (HIV/AIDS activist) and Young Jean Lee, as well as artists who have radicalized aesthetic form like Meredith Monk, Spalding Gray, Richard Maxwell, Tina Satter, Andrew Schneider, Rabih Mroué (Lebanon), Cuqui Jerez (Spain), and Mariano Penscotti (Argentina).

In 2013, PS122's East Village home began a much-needed interior renovation supported by the City of New York, Department of Cultural Affairs and Department of Design and Construction. We are invigorated by the prospect of this multi-year journey and the re-opening of our custom designed theater spaces. These column-free, larger spaces raise the roof to feature a two story high ceiling allowing for more agency for artists and more expansive experiences for our audiences.

In preparation for our grand re-opening in the summer of 2016, PS122 has launched "Give Performance Space" (GPS): a major fundraising campaign to spur PS122's growth during one of the most exciting periods in our history. GPS will increase our capacity to better serve the artists and audiences of New York City during a four-year transition period that includes two years of planning and outfitting and our critical first two seasons in our new home. GPS will provide capacity-building funds to allow us to take full advantage of our beautiful new spaces and lay the groundwork for long-term sustainability. GPS is critical to our success artistically, financially and organizationally as a growing leader within the cultural ecology of New York City.

Photo by Walter McBride