Transport Presents Mary Testa On 4/5 & Emily Skinner On 4/19

Transport Group, the winner of a special 2007 Drama Desk Award and a 2007 Obie Award, will present Mary Testa and Emily Skinner in special one-night-only events, at 220 East 4 Street, between Avenues A & B.

On Sunday, April 5 at 7pm two-time Tony Award nominee Mary Testa will perform her new one-woman show, Sleepless Variations, which tells a tale of one woman's sleepless night of fears, fantasies, and dreams, expressed through a cycle of songs by composers as varied as Jimi Hendrix, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Björk. Testa will be backed by Drama Desk and Tony Award-winning orchestrator/musical director Michael Starobin on piano.

On Broadway Mary Testa has been seen in Xanadu, Chicago, Barnum, Marilyn, The Rink, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, On the Town, Marie Christine and 42nd Street, earning Tony Award nominations for her work in On the Town and 42nd Street. Her other theatre credits include Transport Group's critically-acclaimed revival of First Lady Suite (Drama Desk nomination),See What I Wanna See (Drama Desk nomination), String of Pearls (Drama Desk nomination), The Vagina Monologues, The Wax, From Above (Obie Award), Lucky Stiff, In Trousers, Tartuffe, and On the Town (Obie Award).

On Sunday, April 19 at 7pm Town Award nominee Emily Skinner will perform Broadway, Her Way, an unforgettable evening filled with music by landmark composers-Rodgers, Sondheim, Gershwin, Kern, Berlin-as well as the theater's hottest up-and-comers. By lovingly honoring the past and present, while looking toward the future, Skinner takes the audience on a musical journey through the best of the Great White Way.

Emily Skinner is best known for her Tony-nominated performance as Daisy Hilton in Sideshow, co-starring with Alice Ripley. Skinner's other Broadway include Dinner at Eight, The Full Monty, James Joyce's The Dead, and Jekyll & Hyde. She can be heard on the recordings of many original cast albums, Duets and Unsuspecting Hearts with Alice Ripley, The Stephen Schwartz Album, The Stephen Sondheim Album, her solo CD Emily Skinner, and 20th Century Fox's animated feature, Anastasia.

There will be a reception with the artists following both shows.

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 older actors 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 and Marcy in the Galaxy, and the first New York revival of Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead. 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."

Tickets are $19.00 and may be purchased by visiting www.transportgroup.org or by phoning (212) 352-3101. For more information visit www.transportgroup.org.

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