TV Writer Dennis Danziger Returns To The Stage With DOUBLE PLAY

Announcing well-known playwright Dennis Danziger (Taxi, Kate and Allie, My Sister Sam), after over three decades away from the stage, returns completing Act Two "Home Plate," along with his original one act play "Pennant Fever,"written 30 plus years earlier. The two-act play titled "DOUBLE PLAY"with a fascinating history is absolutely beautiful and hilarious. The show will premiere October 5 - 28, 2018, at The Stephanie Feury Theatre.

THE ORIGIN OF DOUBLE PLAY FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT

After college, I moved to NYC and attended Yankee games. 1978. Heat of the pennant race between the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. On an August night, I'm sitting in the bleachers watching the Yankees destroy the Tigers. During the seventh inning stretch instead of singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Yankee fans begin chanting, "Boston sucks! Boston sucks!" Moms, dads, and children chanted, "Boston sucks! Boston sucks!"

Wanting to explore that moment of fan hysteria lead me to write Pennant Fever which was produced in 1980 and which the LA Timescalled "touchingly comic" with "delicious dialogue" and which Variety called "wonderfully funny." Shortly thereafter, I found work writing TV comedy and I stopped writing plays. During the Bush Recession of 2007 - 2009, I watched as friends, a lawyer, a professor, a geologist, and a psychologist, lost their jobs and struggled to find work.

In 2013, thirty-three years after writing Pennant Fever, I began writing Act Two -Home Plate, which poses the question: What if a couple worked hard all their lives to attain the American Dream and then, through no fault of their own, lost almost everything? How do people move on after that?

Double Play received a staged reading at HRC Theatre's Showcase in Hudson, NY in 2016.

BIO 

Dennis Danziger  (Playwright).Plays include Almost Men(HB Playwrights with Daniel Stern, Drama-Logue Award), Pennant Fever(LAAT with Rhea Perlman), Shalom Vietnam(Stella Adler Theatre and 2018 William Inge Theater Festival’s New Play Lab), The Richard Nixon SexTapes(Stephanie Feury Studio Theatre).  Television (Taxi, Kate and Allie, My Sister Sam). Novel (A Short History of a Tall Jew). Memoir (Daddy, The Diary of an Expectant Father).  Essays (HuffPo, Good Men Project, Eephus). Teaching  (English and Sports Literature, LAUSD, 24 years) and Writing the 10-Minute Play(Skirball Cultural Center).

Along with his wife, the writer Amy Friedman, he co-founded POPS the Club (www.popstheclub.com), which transforms the lives of teenagers who have loved ones in prison. For this work he was named a Point of Light by President GHW Bush’s volunteer organization, and along with this students attended the Obama White House’s Convening on Criminal Justice. Graduate of the University of Texas – Austin.