Woodshed Collective's 'Sipping On Schmaltz' 2009 Sping Gala Benefit Held 6/1

Woodshed Collective has announced that its 2009 spring gala benefit S. O. S. - Sipping on Schmaltz, will take place Monday, June 1, when The Ford Lobby at Playwrights Horizons 416 W. 42 Street will transform into a cruise ship-style cabaret show, and the schmaltz will flow aplenty! Cocktails begin 6pm; performance begins at 7pm; more sipping and schmoozing at 8pm.

Tony Award nominee Christian Borle (Legally Blonde, Spamalot), Tony Award nominee Celia Keenan-Bolger (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), Tony Award nominee John Ellison Conlee (The Full Monty), Jane Pfitsch (Company, Les Liaisons Dangereuses), Jordan Barbour (Stormy Weather), and Woodshed Collective's own Preston Martin and Grace Mclean (from last summer's Twelve Ophelias), will perform. Greg Hildreth (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Public Theater, "Kings," and Les Freres Corbusier's Hell House at St. Ann's Warehouse) will jollily host the evening as the venerable Dutch Cruise Captain Fjord Van Der Fjordson. Wayne Barker (Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance) serves as musical director.

The gala benefits Woodshed Collective's upcoming production of The Confidence Man aboard the historic 1933 Steamship, The Lilac.

For tickets please visit: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/67840.

Woodshed Collective is a theater company that creates fully realized Installation Theater. Woodshed Collective thus aims to create a tangible, immersive world for our audience to explore. This effort extends to The Audience themselves, allowing them to interact and influence the world of the performance itself. In the summer of 2008 our production of "Twelve Ophelias" was seen by over 3000 people and received enthusiastic reviews. The production was staged in McCarren Park Pool, a empty urban beach designed by Robert Moses in 1936 to accommodate over 6000 bathers. In the past we have staged Macbeth in a cramped basement full of dead leaves, Griselda Gambaro's Antigona Furiosa in a theater converted into a café serving hot coffee, and a Hedda Gabler that choked in an atmosphere saturated with cheap incense. Most recently, in staging Never the Sinner, John Logan's award winning play about the Leopold and Loeb trial, we converted the CSV Flamboyan into the courtroom world of 1920s Chicago. For more information about Woodshed Collective, please visit www.woodshedcollective.com.