A Dog's Tale (or The Thing About Getting), a new play by playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo, will be featured in the Kennedy Center's Page-to- Stage festival this September.
The presentation, sponsored by Washington DC's Didactic Theater Company, will be on Monday September 6, 2010 at 7:30 pm at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage South. The cast, directed by
Brittany O'Neill (of
Naked Angels), a TONY nominated producer for Next Fall, includes
Eric Clem (Naked Radio performer),
Daiva Deupree (
Ars Nova's Two Girls For Five Bucks),
Patrick Heusinger (Next Fall, Gossip Girl, Royal Pains),
Phoebe Strole (Spring Awakening, The Metal Children), and
Wesley Taylor (Rock of Ages, The Addams Family).
Admission to the reading is free. For more information on the Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage festival, visit
www.kennedy-center.org.
A gripping tale of a young professional at a critical moment in his life, A Dog's Tale (or The Thing About Getting) explores the overwhelming human drive for success and the disaster of achieving it. Through sharp witted dialogue and a series of flashbacks, five characters are forced to face their relationship with the ever-impending tomorrow.
BIOGRAPHIES
Paul Downs Colaizzo (playwright) received his BFA in Drama from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and was selected to study under the guidance of Academy and Tony Award Nominee
Kathleen Turner, by Ms. Turner herself, studying at
Playwrights Horizons, the Experimental Theater Wing, and the International Conservatory in Amsterdam. While at Tisch, he wrote and composed the sold out run of the off-off-Broadway production of Suicycle: An Attempted Theatrical Rock Experiment, in which he also appeared, and collaborated with Tony-nominee Liz Swados on the book for The Dybbuk. Paul collaborated with Tony-nominee
Douglas Carter Beane and served as the Associate Producer and Creative Consultant for the record-breaking Broadway web series
Cubby Bernstein (featuring Tony winners
Cynthia Nixon,
Nathan Lane,
Patti LuPone and many others), in which he also played the role of Dyllun von Ritter. The first two plays in Paul's Want, Give, Get trilogy, Really Really and Little Gives, both received readings at the Kennedy Center in September 2009. Prior to the Kennedy Center, Little Gives received a workshop at American University and Really Really at NYU - and will receive a reading at the Signature Theater. A Dog's Tale (or The Thing About Getting) is the final play in the trilogy. He has collaborated with members of New York Theatre Workshop,
Naked Angels,
Mabou Mines, and many other companies in New York, and was commissioned by Broadway Across America to write the book for the new musical Finding Robert Hutchens, with music and lyrics by
Nick Blaemire. As an actor, he portrayed Van on As The World Turns and was most recently in the cast of Veritas at the
HERE Arts Center (2010 Fringe Festival Overall Excellence Award for Best Ensemble). Paul is currently writing two new plays, Pride in the Falls of Autrey Mill and For Tomorrow, Please Prepare, as well as the pilot episode of his original television series, Guys Do This.
Brittany O'Neill (director) is a director and producer, having most recently served as the resident Producer at
Naked Angels, where she produced the sold out run of This Wide Night starring
Edie Falco and
Alison Pill. Recent directing credits include Something More Pleasant (World Premiere, Fringe NYC) and
Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell (assistant director,
Naked Angels). Other recent producing credits include the world premiere of
Geoffrey Nauffts' Next Fall, which became nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play as
Naked Angels' first Broadway transfer in the company's 25-year history. O'Neill served 2 years as Managing Director of
Naked Angels, and currently runs a premiere podcast, blog, and video program, Naked Radio. She is an NYU Tisch alum for directing and design and a Columbia MFA candidate for producing and management.
The Network Theatre Project (co-producer) - a subsidiary of Didactic Theatre company- is co-produced by Caroline Angell and Josh Sticklin. The mission of the project is to foster the development of original theatrical material, and connect artists to opportunity.
