Rising Phoenix Rep Announces named As 7th Play In Cino Nights Series 2/27

Rising Phoenix Repertory announces the seventh PLAY IN THE CINO NIGHTS SERIES named a new play by Lucy Thurber / directed by jenna worsham featuring Lila Dupree, Ronete Levenson, Katie Meister, and Sarah Tolan-Mee

FULLY produced on half a shoestring AND performed, warts and all, for ONE NIGHT ONLY - SUNDAY, February 27th at 7PM

Seventh Street Small Stage, 43 East Seventh Street

(6 to Astor Place, R/W to 8th Street, F to 2nd Ave)

THE Seventh IN a year-and-a-half-long series of TWENTY Fully STAGED, world-premiere plays commissioned by rising Phoenix rep to BE performed in the extremely intimate close quarters of the basement space of downtown restaurant Jimmy's No. 43

performances monthly from September 2010 - MARCH 2012

Admission is free; space is extremely limited reservations are strongly encouraged and can be made by calling 212-946-5198 for more information please visit www.risingphoenixrep.org

Following the sold out performances and overflow crowds at its first six Cino Nights presentations (of new plays by Gary Sunshine, Mando Alvarado, Courtney Baron, Florencia Lozano, Kristen Palmer, and Emily DeVoti) Rising Phoenix Rep continues the series on February 27th at 7 p.m. with Lucy Thurber's NAMED. In the play, "college student Cora wakes in the middle of the night to find her best friend Emily gone. When Emily returns it looks as though the night will go like any other, except that tonight the girls are not alone-something, or someone, has come to visit. In a life experienced through the twin lenses of our physical reality and the reality in our minds, we hide our desire, our shame, and our longing. But what happens when the world inside Cora's head comes to life and enters the room? Is she brave enough to admit what she sees, to give it a name?"

The production will be directed by Jenna Worsham and features Lila Dupree (Young/Ars Nova), Ronete Levenson (Our Town/Barrow Street), Katie Meister (The Clean House/NYU Grad Acting), and Sarah Tolan-Mee (Melancholy Play/Brown University).

Inspired by Joe Cino and his Caffe Cino-one of the original birthplaces of Off-Off-Broadway theatre and early home to such writers as Doric Wilson, Robert Patrick, John Guare, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, and William M. Hoffman-New York Innovative Theater Award winning company Rising Phoenix Rep has commissioned twenty playwrights to write new, full-length plays for the Seventh Street Small Stage, the intimate back room space at Jimmy's No. 43 in the East Village, where the company has produced critically acclaimed and award winning productions for the past five years.

Rising Phoenix Rep artistic director Daniel Talbott described the series as a place to tap into the raw, inspired, inventive, and pioneering work of the Caffe Cino, where the love of theatre and new work was joined with a scrappy, do-it-yourself work ethic. All shows will be rehearsed for a week and then fully mounted and produced, warts and all, for one night only with free admission.

Cino Nights are currently scheduled through March 2012 and will celebrate the spirit of indie theatre as a home for new plays and theatre artists as well as hopefully honor what has been said of the Caffe Cino: "the first studio of theater where playwrights can experiment as painters and poets have done for a century, free from the tyranny of audience, box-office, church, and criticism." The plays will be fully produced for one night only on a more or less monthly basis through March 2012. The remaining playwrights, in the order their plays will appear, are:

Lucy Thurber's Named will premiere on February 27, 2011; directed by Jenna Worsham and featuring Lila Dupree, Ronete Levenson, Katie Meister, and Sarah Tolan-Mee.

Jessica Dickey: May 22, 2011

Adam Szymkowicz: June 19, 2011

Laura Eason: July 17, 2011

Sheri Wilner: August 28, 2011

Daniel Reitz: September 18, 2011

Cusi Cram: October 2011

Crystal Skillman: October 23, 2011

Daniel Talbott: Fall 2011

Megan Mostyn-Brown: November 13, 2011

Charlotte Miller: December 11, 2011

Keith Reddin: January 2012

Dael Orlandersmith: February 2012

Jonathan Blitstein: March 2012

The previous productions in the series were:

Gary Sunshine's BEST SEX EVER premiered on October 3, 2010. It was directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel and featured Stephen Bel Davies, Cathy Curtin, Jimmy Davis, Mike Doyle and Jeffrey Nauman.

Mando Alvarado's (O)N THE 5:31 premiered on October 24, 2010, directed by Taibi Magar and featuring Jolly Abraham, Sarah Baskin, and Bernardo Cubria.

Courtney Baron's HERE I LIE premiered on November 7, 2010, directed by Daniel Talbott and featuring Denis Butkus and Samantha Soule.

Florencia Lozano's BUSTED premiered December 12, 2010, directed by Portia Krieger and featuring Maggie Bofill, Audrey Esparza, Nate Miller, Puy Navarro, Ana Reeder, and Jeanine Serralles.

Kristen Palmer's THE STRAY DOG premiered on January 23, 2011, directed by Julie Kline and featuring Stephen Brown, Chad Goodridge, Brian Miskell, Laura Ramadei, Jelena Stupljanin, and Haynes Thigpen.

Emily DeVoti's THE UPSTART premiered on February 13, 2011; directed by Taibi Magar and featuring Edward Carnevale, Julie Kline, and Anne O'Sullivan.

Reservations will be available one week before the performance each month. Seating is extremely limited. For reservations please call 212-946-5198; for more information please visit www.RisingPhoenixRep.org.

Playwright Lucy Thurber is the author of ten plays: Where We're Born, Ashville, Scarcity, Killers and Other Family, Stay, Bottom of The World, Monstrosity, Dillingham City, The Locus and The Insurgents. Bottom of The World just opened the 2010/11 season at The Atlantic Theater. In 2009 Rattlestick Playwrights Theater presented a reworking of Killers and Other Family directed by Caitriona McLaughlin. Lucy wrote the text for QUIXOTE, conceived and directed by Lear deBessonet, a site-specific performance with the Psalters made for and with The Broad Street Community, and also with Lear deBessonet and produced by 13P, Monstrosity. The Atlantic Theater Company opened its 2007/08 season with Scarcity. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater has produced three of her plays, Where We're Born, Killers and Other Family and Stay. Monstrosity was workshopped at Encore Theatre Company (San Francisco). She was the recipient of the 2000-01 Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship. She was a guest artist at Alaska's Perseverance Theatre twice, where she helped to adapt both Desire Under the Elms and Moby Dick. She has had readings and workshops at Steam Boat Springs, Manhattan Theatre Club, The New Group, Primary Stages, MCC Theater, Encore Theatre Company, PlayPenn, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The O'Neill with WET, New River Dramatists and Soho Rep. She was one of three playwrights in residence at The Orchard Project, summer 2007. Scarcity was published in the December 2007 issue of American Theatre. She is published by Dramatists Play Service. Thurber is a member of New Dramatists, 13P, MCC Playwrights Coalition and Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages. She has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons. She is currently writing a new play under a commission from The Contemporary American Theatre Festival and Yale Rep. She is the recipient of the 1st Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwrighting 2008 and a proud recipient of a LILLY AWARD. Lucy currently teaches at NYU and Sarah Lawrence College.

Director Jenna Worsham recently directed The Nebraska Dispatches (Christopher Cartmill) at the Jerry H. Labowitz Theater at The Gallatin School, NYU. This past fall she assisted on Lucy Thurber's Bottom of the World at the Atlantic Theater Company, and directed The Game, by Julissa Contreras, at the Rattlestick Theater as part of Theatrejam 2010. Jenna also served as a director last summer for MCC Theatre's Freshplay Festival (Perpetual Escape). A recent graduate of Washington & Lee University, last spring she directed The Fantasticks at Lime Kiln Theater in Lexington, Virginia. She is currently a member of Intar Theatre's Young Artist Lab, in which she is directing the upcoming production of Contreras' Daniel this spring, as part of the 2011 Hispanic Playwrights in Residency Lab.

Founded in 1999 by Artistic Director Daniel Talbott, Rising Phoenix Repertory began by producing an ongoing reading series of new plays and has continued to add workshops, festivals, and highly praised productions of new plays. Recent productions include the acclaimed, sold-out Off-Broadway runs of Slipping, produced with Piece by Piece Productions and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and Too Much Memory (also with Piece by Piece Productions) which transferred to the New York Theatre Workshop's Fourth Street Theatre after winning the FringeNYC award for Outstanding Play in 2008. Other recent productions include Ceremony, Afterclap, Birthday and Don't Pet the Zookeeper (Seventh Street Small Stage); 365 Days/365 Plays (Jimmy's No. 43 and The Public Theater); What Happened When (HERE Arts Center); Fall Forward (part of the Sitelines/River to River festival produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council); The Telling Trilogy (including The Ride, 2006 NYIT Award Nominee - Outstanding Original Short Script- Crystal Skillman), Rules of the Universe (Winner, 2007 NYIT Awards for Outstanding Original Short Script - Daniel Reitz and Director - Daniel Talbott), and Three Sisters (both at the Seventh Street Small Stage); Gift by Mark Schultz and Ponies by Mike Batistick (FringeNYC).