Photo Flash: First Look at West Coast Premiere of GHOST-WRITER at International City Theatre

ICT artistic director caryn desai directs Leland Crooke, Cheryl David and Paige Lindsey White in the West Coast premiere of The Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award-winning Ghost-Writer, an intimate spine-tingler from playwright Michael Hollinger (Opus). Performances take place now through September 16 at International City Theatre in the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. Get a first look at the cast onstage in the photos below!

??Something mysterious is happening: acclaimed novelist Franklin Woolsey has died, but his devoted secretary remains poised at her typewriter—waiting to channel the words that will complete his masterpiece. This ghost story of literary proportions questions where we draw the line between fact and fiction, between this life and beyond. It’s up to the audience to decide what to believe...

??Ghost-Writer was inspired by an anecdote Hollinger came across about the secretary to early 20th-century novelist Henry James. She typed as he dictated his novels and stories, and after his death claimed to continue receiving dictation from her late employer.??

??Michael Hollinger's other plays include Opus, An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf, Red Herring, Tiny Island, Tooth and Claw and Incorruptible. He has written seven touring plays for young audiences, as well as numerous short works. For PBS, he has scripted three short films and co-authored the feature-length Philadelphia Diary. His awards include a Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Citation from the American Theatre Critics Association, the Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center's Fund for New American Plays, the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Theatre Artist, a Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award, the Frederick Loewe Award for Musical Theatre, a commission from the EST/Sloan Science and Technology Project, and fellowships from the Independence Foundation, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Hollinger is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University.??

caryn desai is the producing artistic director for International City Theatre, where she most recently directed the critically acclaimed 2012 season opener, God of Carnage. Other ICT directing credits include The Old Settler, Loving Repeating...A Musical of Gertrude Stein, The Clean House, Bright Ideas, Backwards in High Heels, Once on This Island (six NAACP nominations including direction), Raisin (LADCC Best Production), and Dinah Was (multiple Ovation nominations). She has served on grant panels for L.A. County and the City of Long Beach and as a speaker/panelist for the SRO Theatre Conference at USC on Best Practices, the Technical Theatre Conference about the role of a director, and more. She was named “Enterprising Woman in the Arts” in Long Beach, and most recently received the Rosie The Riveter Foundation’s “We Can Do It” Award for Arts and Culture.

??International City Theatre is Long Beach’s Resident Professional Theater at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center and the recipient of the Margaret Harford Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle for “Sustained Excellence in Theater.”

For more information about Ghost-Writer, go to www.InternationalCityTheatre.org.

Photo credit: Suzanne Mapes

Paige Lindsey White and Leland Crooke

Cheryl David and Paige Lindsey White

Leland Crooke and Paige Lindsey White

Cheryl David, Leland Crooke and Paige Lindsey White

Paige Lindsey White