Sheila Callaghan's Dead City Presented Off-Bway, 5/26-6/24

New Georges, the OBIE-winning downtown theater company founded in 1992, will present the world premiere production of Sheila Callaghan's Dead City, directed by Daniella Topol. The show will be presented in a brand-new Lower Manhattan space entitled 3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich Street (just below Rector Street). The production begins previews on Friday, May 26, and will officially open on Thursday, June 1 at 7:00 p.m. It runs through June 24th.

"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) will lead the seven-member cast as Samantha. Joining her are Russ Anderson (Heartbreak House at The Pearl; All My Sons at the Old Globe); 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 will be 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 will be 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.

All tickets will be $19.00. TDF vouchers are accepted. Mondays, June 12 and 19 are pay-what-you-will (at the door only). Tickets for all performances will be available through Smarttix 212-868-4444 (or online at www.smarttix.com). Visit www.newgeorges.org for more information.