New
Georges, the OBIE-winning downtown theater company founded in 1992, has announced an extension of its world premiere production of Sheila Callaghan's Dead City,
directed by Daniella Topol. The show, which is presented in a brand-new
Lower Manhattan space entitled 3LD Art & Technology Center, 80
Greenwich Street (just below Rector Street), will now run through Friday, June 30th; it was originally to have closed on June 24th. The show began previews on Saturday, May 27th and opened on Thursday, June
1st."Dead City is Sheila Callaghan's loose adaptation, more of a 'riff,' on Joyce's Ulysses,"
according to press notes. "Samantha is a woman in her 40s who wakes up
one June morning shadowed by regret. She wanders out of her Upper East
Side apartment and begins a day's journey through the city, a day
punctuated by a series of chance encounters with a mysterious
near-stranger: Jewel, the poet-prodigy daughter of the guy who did her
kitchen. By the time Samantha heads home in the middle of the night,
the events of one long serendipitous New York City day have transformed
her relationship to the everyday elements of her life."
Dead City was commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, and was included in the Public Theater's New Work Now series last spring. Elizabeth Norment (Plenty on Broadway, A Picasso at MTC) leads the seven-member cast as Samantha. Joining her are Peter Rini (Proposals, A View from the Bridge on Broadway); Shannon Burkett (B'way: The Ride Down Mt. Morgan; also Cavedweller at New York Theatre Workshop); Rebecca Hart (A Girl's Life at Trinity Rep); Dan Illian (last seen with New Georges in Carson Kreitzer's Self Defense at HERE); April Matthis (title character in Anna Bella Eema with New Georges); and Alfredo Narciso (the OBIE-winning Benten Kozo at The Flea and Good Thing with the New Group). The
set design is by Cameron Anderson, the costume design by Jenny
Mannis, the lighting design by Josh Epstein, and the sound design by
Robert Kaplowitz. The video designer is William Cusick.
Callaghan's
plays have been produced and developed with Actors Theatre of
Louisville (Humana Festival), Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, The
Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project, New Georges, LABrynth, South Coast
Repertory, The Lark, Clubbed Thumb, Annex Theatre, and Moving Arts,
among others. Her
full-length plays include Scab, The Hunger Waltz, Crawl Fade to White,
Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), We Are Not These Hands,
Lascivious Something, Kate Crackernuts, and her opera Elemental with
music by Sophocles Papavasilopoulos.Tickets through June 24 will be $19.00. Tickets for the extension week (June 26 through 30) will be $35.00. Tickets for all performances are available through Smarttix 212-868-4444 (or online at www.smarttix.com). Visit www.newgeorges.org for more information.
