Stories on Stage to Present BIG BAD WOLFE, 9/21

Tony Award-winning actor René Auberjonois' one-man performance is a celebration of the writings of Tom Wolfe, the most iconoclastic and uproarious chronicler of the American scene since Mark Twain. Wolfe's comic dazzle comes alive through the sheer virtuosity and skill of Mr. Auberjonois. The montage will include works from "The Right Stuff", "Bonfires of the Vanity", "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and "Radical Chic", among others.

Presented by Stories on Stage, "Big Bad Wolfe" plays Saturday, September 21 at 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center, 721 Santa Fe Drive, Denver. Tickets are available online at www.storiesonstage.org or by calling 303-494-0523. Single tickets are $28 / $15 Student; tickets for groups of 10 or more are $23 per person and LoDough (scholarship) tickets are also available.

René Auberjonois attended Carnegie-Mellon University's theatre program and after graduating performed with a number of theatre companies such as San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. In 1969, he made his Broadway debut alongside Katherine Hepburn in the musical Coco. He was nominated for and won a Tony for his work. Additionally, René earned Tony nominations for his work in The Good Doctor, Big River andCity of Angels and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Sly Fox.

René went on to perform in a number of stage productions, but it was his role as Father Francis Mulcahy in the Robert Altman anti-war film, M*A*S*H, that earned him a degree of international recognition. With his newfound celebrity status, René began getting offers to do episode television. It wasn't long before he landed the role of Clayton Endicott III on Benson. Playing the role of Chief of Staff to a bumbling President of the United States, René endeared himself to American audiences with his haughty, holier-than-thou portrayal of Clayton.

When Benson ended its run in 1986, René went on to do a host of television appearances in shows like L.A. Law, Doogie Howser M.D., and Matlock. He has also done a considerable amount of voice work, lending his voice to animated shows like Darkwing Duck, Batman and The Pirates of Dark Water. In 1993 he secured the role of Security Chief Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the newest installment of the Star Trek Universe. He was fascinated by the fact that his character was written as the only one of his species and has no knowledge of where he came from. It offered him a role with unlimited potential for self discovery and evolution.

After Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ended its run René signed on to play Paul Lewiston on the Emmy Award winning drama Boston Legal alongside Star Trek legend, William Shatner. It was for performing this character that he won a Prism Award for "Performance in a Drama Series, Multi-Episode Storyline". He had also been nominated along with the rest of the Boston Legal cast for a Screen Actors Guild Award for "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series."

René spends a great deal of his free time teaching master classes at various performing arts schools and indulging his personal hobbies of photography and wire sculpture. He is also a very active supporter of several charities such as "Doctors without Borders", "Amnesty International" and the "American Arthritis Foundation". He helps raise funds for all of these organizations through his fan club, Oracle.

In the 1960's Tom Wolfe established himself as a leading figure in the literary experiments in nonfiction that became known as New Journalism. In 1968 he published two bestsellers on the same day: The Pump House Gang, made up of articles about life in the sixties, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a nonfiction story of the hippie era. Even more controversial was Wolfe's 1975 book on the American art world, The Painted Word. In 1979 The Right Stuff became a bestseller and won the American Book Award for nonfiction. In 1984 and 1985 Wolfe wrote his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, in serial form against a deadline of every two weeks for Rolling Stone magazine. It came out in book form in 1987 and was number one of the New York Times bestseller list for two months and remained on the list for more than a year. The novel, A Man in Full, was published in November 1998 and headed the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks. His latest novel, Back to Blood, was published in 2012.

"Big Bad Wolfe" is sponsored in part by the Citizens of the Scientific and Cultural District (SCFD), The Denver Foundation and the Ralph and Florence Burgess Trust.