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Marc Spitz's The Name of This Play is Talking Heads Opens March 3 at Under St. Marks

By: Feb. 14, 2005
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Producers Laura Wagner, Jonathan Lisecki and Kirsten Ames are proud to present the return of pop culture satirist Marc Spitz's new play The Name of This Play is Talking Heads directed by Andy Goldberg at Under St. Marks (located at 94 St. Marks Place btwn 1st and Ave. A). Performances begin March 3rd and end March 26th, running Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 10 PM. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased by calling Smarttix at 212.868.4444 or by going to www.smarttix.com.

The Name of This Play is Talking Heads skewers the vapidity of music punditry on networks like MTV, VH-1 and E!. Talking Heads takes place backstage at your garden variety music channel where an innocuous music journalist for a reputable industry magazine prepares to make his first appearance on a show of this nature. In this case it is the Top 100 Most Rockatrocious Moments in Rock History. When he witnesses how the obligatory comedian taping his segment is being force fed material and told what to say, he is shocked that these experts were not only amateurs, but they had no insight or integrity at all. When he decides to rail against the system the results may have fatal consequences!

Playwright Marc Spitz is an expert on the subject for he has been such a talking head on music cable channels countless times as a representative of SPIN Magazine. "I know I did like Sleaziest Moments in Rock for VH1 and many more that I have blocked out of my head for the pain, " says Spitz. "The title, like all my titles, is taken from a pop album or song. In this case, the Talking Heads live album. I actually saw David Byrne at a party the other night, told him I was using the title and what the play was about and he said 'You can do that. That sounds great.' and smiled."

Spitz is the author of seven plays. Among them, The Rise and Fall of The Farewell Drugs, Worry Baby, I Wanna Be Adored, Shyness is Nice, and Gravity Always Wins. He is a Senior Writer at SPIN magazine, the co-author of "We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of LA Punk" (with Brendan Mullen) Three Rivers Press/Crown/Random House 2001, and the author of "How Soon is Never" (Three Rivers Press/Crown/Random House 2003).

Director Andy Goldberg directed and developed the hit off-Broadway production of THE BOMB-ITTY OF ERRORS, a hip-hop adaptation of The Comedy of Errors that ran for over six months at 45 Bleecker and received Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations. Other directing credits include the world premiere of The Ramones' musical, Gabba Gabba Hey, as well as Six Available Men by Jocelyn Meinhardt (HB Studios), David Cale's Betwixt and Benjie Aerenson's Paradise Island (both for The New Group), Romeo & Juliet (American Stage Theater), Twelfth Night (La MaMa), and others.




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