Playwrights Horizons To Present STORIES ON 5 STORIES Benefit Series

Acclaimed theater company Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) has announced it will present the return of its popular benefit evening STORIES ON 5 STORIES on Monday, November 9.

The event will feature new works by seven of the theater's alumni writers: Adam Bock (The Drunken City at PH; The Receptionist, The Thugs), composer Randy Courts (Jack's Holiday at PH; Magic Tree House: The Musical, The Gifts of the Magi), Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie Award winner Adam Rapp (Essential Self- Defense and Kindness at PH; Red Light Winter), Jonathan Reynolds (Geniuses at PH; Dinner with Demons, Stonewall Jackson's House), Evan Smith (The Savannah Disputation, Psych and The Uneasy Chair at PH; Serviceman), Kathleen Tolan (A Girl's Life; Kate's Diary, The Wax and Memory House all at PH) and Sarah Treem (A Feminine Ending at PH, "In Treatment"). The event will take place at Playwrights' home at 416 West 42nd Street, and will benefit the company's annual programs and productions.

This year's theme for STORIES ON 5 STORIES is The Elephant in the Room. Promotional materials state: "In an image hungry culture, we love the theater because it's about language. But so often it's not about what's said but also what's not said. For this year's STORIES ON 5 STORIES the writers will take on the theme Elephant in the Room; writing and staging seven-minute plays about this theme in unique, far-flung locations throughout our five-story building. Guests tour the building in groups to see all of the works and then gather together for a concluding reception."

Participating performers will be announced in the coming weeks. Patrons Co-Chairs are Carolyn and Stephen McCandless. Generation PH Event Chair is Dana Seshens. Generation PH is a new group of young supporters aged 40 and under.

"STORIES ON 5 STORIES has been a favorite event of the Staff and Board of Playwrights Horizons ever since its inception six years ago," said Artistic Director Tim Sanford. "The event inspires creativity and builds community, and the evening always delights, whether we're sitting in the costume shop listening to a song or fitting 25 people into our conference room for a play. I'm pleased to welcome back these remarkable writers, some who have spent a great deal of time in our beautiful six year-old building and others who were around long before the building was a twinkle in our eye, all of whom will write pieces celebrating this space, this theater and this not-to-be-missed evening."

The schedule for STORIES ON 5 STORIES will be as follows:

6:00 PM - Pre-show dinner (optional) at Chez Josephine (414 West 42 Street), attended by Playwrights Horizons staff and Board members, as well as some of the evening's playwrights.

8:00 PM - Event and performances begin.

9:00 PM - Post-show dessert reception with participating artists.

Tickets are priced at $150 ("Talk is Cheap" ticket - a single ticket to the shows and post-show dessert reception) and $325 ("Too Big to be Ignored" ticket - a single ticket for the pre-event dinner, shows and post-show reception). Tickets will go on sale to the General Public on Tuesday, September 29 following a one-week priority booking period for members of Playwrights Horizons' Patron and Generation PH programs. Tickets for STORIES ON 5 STORIES can be reserved beginning September 29th by visiting the Playwrights Horizons website www.playwrightshorizons.org or by calling Michelle Kiefel at (212) 564-1235, extension 3143.

The event is strictly limited to 200 people. All net proceeds from the event will benefit the theater's 2009-2010 programs and productions.

Playwrights Horizons gratefully acknowledges Brooklyn Brewery, Ruby et Violette and Amish Market and for making generous product donations to this event.

Playwrights Horizons, under the leadership of Artistic Director Tim Sanford and Managing Director Leslie Marcus, is a writer's theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American Playwrights, composers and lyricists, and to the production of their new work. In its 39 years, Playwrights Horizons has presented the work of more than 375 writers and has received numerous awards and honors, most recently being honored with a special 2008 Drama Desk Award for "ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work." Notable productions include four Pulitzer Prize winners: Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife (2004 Tony Award, Best Play), Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles (1989 Tony Award, Best Play), Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George, as well as Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie's Grey Gardens (three 2007 Tony Awards), Craig Lucas's Prayer For My Enemy and Small Tragedy (2004 Obie Award, Best American Play), Adam Rapp's Kindness, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins, Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone, Bruce Norris's The Pain and the Itch, Lynn Nottage's Fabulation (2005 Obie Award for Playwriting), Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero, David Greenspan's She Stoops to Comedy (2003 Obie Award), Kirsten Childs's The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000 Obie Award), Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey's James Joyce's The Dead, William Finn's March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, Christopher Durang's Betty's Summer Vacation and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Richard Nelson's Goodnight Children Everywhere and Franny's Way, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's Once on This Island, Jon Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire, Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room, A.R. Gurney's Later Life, Adam Guettel and Tina Landau's Floyd Collins and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley's Violet.

Adam Bock's plays include The Drunken City (Playwrights Horizons), The Receptionist (Manhattan Theater Club), The Thugs (Soho Repertory, Obie Award), Swimming in the Shallows(Second Stage), The Shaker Chair (Humana Festival), and Five Flights (Rattlestick). The Typographer's Dream will be at The Vineyard this season. Bock also helped Jack Cummings III develop The Audience. He is the resident playwright at Encore Theater, a Shotgun Players Artistic Associate, and a member of New Dramatists. Adam's plays are published by Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts Inc. and are featured in The Best Plays of 2005.

Randy Courts most recently collaborated with Will Osborne on Magic Tree House: The Musical, (currently on national tour; CD on PS Classics). Other works include The Gifts of the Magi (ten consecutive seasons at the Lambs Theater; over three hundred productions world wide) with Mark St. Germain; Johnny Pye and the Foolkiller (Lambs Theater; AT&T New Plays Award) Joseph and Mary, Jack's Holiday (Playwrights Horizons; nominated for three Outer Critics Circle Awards, including best musical); The Gingerbread House, The Book of the Dun Dun Cow (Prospect Theater Company) and Doctor Doolittle (Theatreworks USA). With novelist/librettist Walter Wangerin Jr., Randy wrote the Christmas oratorio Angels and All Children, and the opera Elisabeth and the Water Troll.

Adam Rapp's plays at Playwrights Horizons include Kindness in 2008 and Essential Self-Defense in 2007 (Drama Desk Nomination for Best Original Music). Other plays include Red Light Winter (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Obie Award), Bingo with the Indians, American Sligo, Blackbird (two Drama Desk nominations), Stone Cold Dead Serious, Nocturne, Ghosts in the Cottonwoods, Animals and Plants, Finer Noble Gases, Faster, Trueblinka, Dreams of the Salthorse and Gompers. His plays have been collected in Stone Cold Dead Serious and Other Plays and he has published eight novels, most recently Punkzilla (Candlewick Press) and the graphic novel, Ball-peen Hammer (First Second Books). Film: Winter Passing starring Ed Harris, Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel. Select Honors: 2006 Princess Grace Statue; a 2007 Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship; and the 2008 Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Jonathan Reynolds. All nine of Jonathan Reynolds's plays have been produced in New York, most recently Dinner With Demons, an autobiographical one-man show. Other plays include Stonewall Jackson's House; Geniuses (Playwrights Horizons and a commercial run off-Broadway); and the first plays he wrote, Yanks 3 Detroit O Top of the 7th and Rubbers. Although five of his screenplays have also been produced, most notably Micki and Maude and My Stepmother is an Alien, his most memorable experiences in filmmaking have been with Apocalypse Now and Leonard Part 6, both of which could have gone either way. He is the recipient of Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundation grants as well as The Dramatists Guild Flora Roberts Award for Sustained Achievement. For five years, he was Treasurer of The Dramatists Guild of America, and for six years wrote a bi-weekly food column for The New York Times Sunday Magazine. His memoir, Wrestling With Gravy: A Life, With Food, was recently published by Random House, and his next play 3 Abortions will be produced at The Flea Theatre in January 2010.

Evan Smith's most recent play, The Savannah Disputation, premiered at the Writers' Theatre and subsequently premiered in New York at Playwrights Horizons. Other plays include Servicemen (New Group, New York Stage and Film), The Uneasy Chair and Psych (Playwrights Horizons) and Daughters of Genius (1812 Productions). His TV pilot Debs was produced onstage in Los Angeles by NAKED TV, a joint venture of Fox TV and Naked Angels. His plays have been published by the Grove Press, the Dramatists Play Service, Smith & Kraus, Dell Books, TCG, and Playscripts.com. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and was resident at the William Inge Center.

Kathleen Tolan's plays include A Weekend Near Madison; Kate's Diary (The Public Theatre and Playwrights Horizons); Approximating Mother; A Girl's Life; and The Wax (Playwrights Horizons). Memory House was produced by Humana Festival at Actors' Theatre of Louisville and Playwrights Horizons in spring '05. It has been produced by many other theatres, including Victory Gardens in Chicago, the Seattle Rep and at Trinity Repertory Theatre where it was originally commissioned. Tolan teaches playwriting in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at Purchase College where she is Chair of the Dramatic Writing Program. She received an MFA from Brooklyn College, studying with Mac Wellman. Tolan has received numerous commissions and awards including the Thornton Wilder Fellowship (2002); the McKnight National Residency and Commission (2005) given to one nationally recognized playwright each year by the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis; a NYFA Fellowship; several MacDowell residencies; and the Sundance Playwrights Winter Residency (2006).

Sarah Treem's plays include Empty Sky, Against the Wall, Mirror, Mirror; A Feminine Ending (Playwrights Horizons), Human Voices and Vienna's Amazing. Treem's plays have been produced at Playwrights Horizons, South Coast Repertory, and Portland Center Stage. She has been in residence at The Sundance Institute and The Ojai Playwrighting Conference. Treem is a current Fellow at the Lark Playwrights' Workshop, a writer/producer on the HBO series "In Treatment" and the upcoming HBO series "How To Make It in America."

 

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