Transport Group Hosts Gimme A Break! Benefit to Honor A. R. Gurney and Liz Smith

Transport Group, the winner of a special 2007 Drama Desk Award and a 2007 Obie Award, has announced that its 2010 Gimme A Break! benefit will honor playwright A. R. Gurney and columnist Liz Smith on Monday, December 6 at 6:30pm, at the Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue at 70th Street.

Gimme A Break! begins with a cocktail reception followed by a performance featuring Broadway stars sharing their ‘big break' experiences through stories and songs. Mr. Gurney and Ms. Smith will receive the Transporting American Theatre Award for their outstanding contributions to American theatre.

Julie Halston (The Divine Sister, Hairspray, Gypsy) will serve as the evening's host-and the evening's performers include Charles Busch (Tony Award nominee for Best Play - The Tale of the Allergist's Wife; The Divine Sister, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom); Emily Skinner (Tony Award nominee - Side Show; Billy Elliot, The Full Monty); Bobby Steggert (Tony Award nominee - Ragtime; The Grand Manner); and Mary Testa (two-time Tony Award nominee - On the Town, 42nd Street; Xanadu, Guys and Dolls)

A. R. Gurney is one of the most prolific and most produced playwrights in America. His Broadway and off-Broadway works include Scenes from American Life, The Dining Room, The Cocktail Hour, Love Letters, Sylvia, and The Grand Manner, among many others. He is a member of the Theatre Hall of Fame and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the recipient of numerous awards including Drama Desk Awards, the Lucille Lortel Award, and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Liz Smith is the legendary New York gossip columnist, well known for her bylined columns that have run for 35 years in the Daily News, Newsday, and the New York Post, and syndicated in 70 papers. Ms. Smith is a longtime supporter and advocate of the theatre, and often features productions and theatre artists in her column. She has hosted the Theater Hall of Fame awards and continues to write about and promote the theatre on wowOwow.com, the website she founded for women to talk culture, politics, and gossip. She appears weekly as an entertainment commentator on Fox News' "Lips and Ears." Her daily column can now be read on wowOwow.com, in Daily Variety, and in syndication.

Founded in 2001, Transport Group, under the leadership of Jack Cummings III, Artistic Director, and Lori Fineman, Executive Director, is a not-for-profit theatre company that develops and produces work by American Playwrights and composers with the aim of exploring the American consciousness in the 20th and 21st centuries. Transport Group presented its premiere production in 2002: Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which featured actors in their sixties in the roles of Emily and George and a twelve-year-old girl as the Stage Manager. Its second production, Requiem for William, an evening of seven seldom produced plays by William Inge, that featured a cast of 26 as well as original songs, premiered in 2003. In 2004 the company presented the first New York revival of Michael John LaChiusa's First Lady Suite, which received rave reviews, played to sold-out houses, and earned two Drama Desk Award nominations including outstanding revival of a musical. Recent productions include the world premiere of the musical The Audience, which featured a cast of 46 actors and earned three Drama Desk Award nominations, including outstanding musical; Normal, a new musical about a mother's battle to save her daughter from anorexia; cul-de-sac, a new play by Tony Award nominee John Cariani; the first New York revival of Tad Mosel's Pulitzer Prize play, All the Way Home; the 50th anniversary, Obie-winning production of William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, the world premiere musicals Crossing Brooklyn, Marcy in the Galaxy, and Being Audrey; the first New York revival of Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead (which received a Drama Desk nomination); and Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band, which received five Drama Desk nominations. Transport Group most recently produced the New York premiere of the musical See Rock City, which was subsequently published by Samuel French. Both First Lady Suite and Bury the Dead were filmed for the New York Performing Arts Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Archive. Transport Group is the winner of a special 2007 Drama Desk Award for its "breadth of vision and its presentation of challenging productions."

For tickets (which are $250 - $500) and more information, please phone the Transport Group office at (212) 564-0333 or visit www.transportgroup.org.

Photo Credit: Genevieve Rafter-Keddy

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