Craig Wright's THE UNSEEN to Make NY Premiere at Cherry Lane March 5

By: Feb. 02, 2009
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The American Actor's Company (The Traveling Lady) is proud to present the Off-Broadway premiere of The Unseen by Craig Wright. Performances of this limited Off-Broadway engagement will be at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St) beginning previews March 5th, Opening March 8th and closing March 28th. Performances run Tuesdays - Sundays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 2 PM, Sundays at 3 PM. Tickets are $45 and can be purchased by calling Telecharge at 212-239-6200 or by going to www.telecharge.com. For more information please visit www.unseentheplay.com.

The Unseen is notable writer of stage and television Craig Wright's (TV's "Lost", "Dirty, Sexy Money", and the theatre's Recent Tragic Events and The Pavilion, et al) psychological potboiler about two prisoners trying to crack the code of their cryptic imprisonment by a brutal, totalitarian regime. Only familiar to each other by their voices, the two men keep each other mentally and emotionally going through the cell walls as they share stories of their interrogations and torture, putting the pieces together about who their captors are and what it would take to get out. The puzzle is further complicated with the introduction of a new prisoner placed near them who only
poses more questions than answers.

The production is being directed by Lisa Denman. The rest of the artistic team includes: DeAnna Toten Beard (Dramaturg), Sarah Brown (Set Designer), Travis Watson (Lighting Designer). Dustin Chaffin (Sound Designer) and Carl Booker (Costume Designer)

The cast includes Thomas Ward (Hamlet, King John, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Guys and Dolls, Disguises, Relative Values, Arms and the Man, Julius Caesar, and The Merry Wives of Windsor all with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.), Steven Pounders (Off-Broadway's The Coffee Trees), and STAN DENMAN (Off-Broadway's The Traveling Lady).

Director LISA DENMAN received her Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Directing from Baylor Univeristy and is now a theatre lecturer, director and teacher. Before the Out of the Loop production of Dr.
DeAnna Toten Beard's God and Mammon, Lisa directed the first staged reading of the play at the Actors Studio in New York. She has proudly served on the Board of Directors at Second Thought Theatre since its inception.

Playwright Craig Wright's recent and upcoming productions: Better Late co-authored with Larry Gelbart and starring John Mahoney at the Northlight Theater; The Unseen at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Stages Rep in Houston, which played in rep with his play Lady, which was commissioned by and received its world premiere from Northlight Theatre. Lady is currently running at Asolo Rep and in Los Angeles. Grace premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theatre,
where it was nominated for the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play. One of its subsequent productions at the Furious Theatre won three LA Drama Critic's Circle Awards, including Best Play. Recent Tragic Events also debuted at Woolly and was produced by Playwrights Horizons with Heather Graham in the lead. Melissa Arctic, a contemporary adaptation of The Winter's Tale, premiered at the Folger Theatre and won the 2005 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play.
His play Mistakes Were Made will be at the O'Neill Playwrights Center this summer and debut at the Magic Theater in the spring.

Other productions: Main Street was commissioned and premiered by the Great American History Theatre. Orange Flower Water has been produced around the country, including Steppenwolf in an extended engagement that led the Chicago Sun-Times to name it one of the Best of the Year.
It was seen in New York at the Edge Theatre under the direction of Carolyn Cantor. Molly's Delicious had its debut at the Arden Theatre where it received a Barrymore nomination for Best New Play and was produced last season by Arizona Theatre Company. The Pavilion has received dozens of productions around the country including an extended run at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in New York under the direction of Lucie Tiberghian where it received a Drama Desk
nomination for Outstanding New Play.

Mr. Wright received an Emmy nomination for his Six Feet Under episode "Twilight" and a WGA nomination for his episode "Falling Into Place." He has served as writer and producer for the JJ Abrams series Lost and the ABC series Brothers & Sisters. He is the author and Executive
Producer of his own series, Dirty Sexy Money, which airs on ABC starring Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland and Jill Clayburgh.

In 1938, a group of artists led by Mary Hunter and including such notables as Agnes DeMille, Jerome Robbins, and Horton Foote, created the American Actors Company to escape the commercialism of Broadway and promote artistry drawing on authentic American voices. Before disbanding in 1945, the American Actors Company had produced a number of Mr. Foote's first plays, playing a pivotal role in his career.

With Mr. Foote's blessing, the Baylor Department of Theatre Arts formed a new American Actors Company to continue the mission of the original. The new company produced the first professional production of the Horton Foote American Playwrights Festival, The Traveling Lady, leading to a complete restaging in New York, co-produced by the Ensemble Studio Theatre in the spring of 2006. The play received a Drama Desk nomination for Best Revival of a play. In the interim, the
American Actors Company produced two more works in Texas. Romulus Linney's Heathen Valley and God and Mammon, an original play by Dr. DeAnna Toten Beard.

 

 



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