ERS Benefit Announces $30 Balcony Seats

Elevator Repair Service (ERS) is hosting their spring benefit on Monday, May 3rd, 2010. The company is currently finishing the third play in a trilogy of critically acclaimed plays based on great American novels by William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. This event will celebrate ERS's success with Frances McDormand (Burn after Reading, Fargo), Lili Taylor ("Six Feet Under"), Fred Armisen ("Saturday Night Live"), Frankie Faison ("The Wire"), and ERS company members in a one night only performance of loved, banned and mythologized American fiction. Authors include Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Edgar Allan Poe. Readings will be accompanied by ERS's unique Signature Sound design.

The program consists of:
Lili Taylor - O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Fred Armisen, April Matthis and Jim Fletcher - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Frances McDormand - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Frankie Faison - Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville
ERS's Vin Knight & Susie Sokol - The Angel of the Odd by Edgar Allan Poe

For tickets purchased at $125 or higher, the evening begins with a pre-performance reception with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. Tickets at $30 or higher gain entrance to the show, where stars perform an irreverent sampling of readings, curated by poet Paul Muldoon (2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry). The readings are brought to life by ERS sound designers and hosted by Oskar Eustis, the Artistic Director of The Public Theater, and winner of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director for Angels in America.

Sponsors include: A Mouse Bouche, Color Coded LLC, Le Tourment Vert Absinthe, Thomas Hooker Fresh Ales and Lagers, Saveur Caterers, Stoli, and Three Clicks Wines.
Elevator Repair Service, a theater ensemble, was founded by director John Collins and a group of actors in 1991. Since that time, ERS has built a body of highly acclaimed work and has appeared on stages around New York, the U.S. and Europe. New York Magazine called ERS "the best experimental theater group in town," while New York Newsday has said the group's work was "wacko enough to be truly inspired." The New York Times has called them "thrilling...and audacious."

The event will benefit the development of ERS' new piece, The Sun Also Rises, based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises will premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival in August, 2010, and play for an extended run in New York at New York Theatre Workshop in 2011. A co-production of Elevator Repair Service and New York Theatre Workshop, The Sun Also Rises has been commissioned by the Ringling International Arts Festival/Baryshnikov Arts Center, and the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival through funding from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative. Additional support for the development of this production granted from ArtsEmerson: the World on Stage, Boston, Massachusetts.

The benefit committee includes: Anne Bogart (Siti Company, Best Director Obie Awards 1988 and 1990), Linda Chapman (Associate Artistic Director of the New York Theater Workshop), Jill Dombrowski (Executive Producer, Montclair State University's Peak Performances), Boo Froebel (Producer of Lincoln Center Festival), Rinne Groff (playwright and winner of 2005 Whiting Writers Award), Oskar Eustis (Artistic Director of The Public Theater), Vin Scelsa (Sirius radio personality), ERS company members Laurena Allen and Annie McNamara, writers and performing artists Scott Adkins, Julie Bleha, Lola Pashalinski, Rachel Chavkin, Erin Courtney, Chris Lee, Greg Mehrten, Tanya Selvaratnam, and members of New York's professional and financial communities Peter Ackerman, Dave Bassett, David Becker, John Byck, Michaeline and Doug Curtis, Steve and Anne Dennin, Laurie Eustis, Ross and Margaret Fletcher, Elinor Fuchs, Nancy and Owen Hughes, Rachel Karpf, Robert Katz, Freddie Scelsa, Jay Scheib.

The ERS board of directors is: Steve Bodow (Head Writer and Supervising Producer for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"), John Collins, Elizabeth Derbes, Zoe E. Rotter, Nan Strauss, Anne Stringfield, Victoria Vazquez, Scott Watson, and Susan Wheeler.

The cast is as follows:

Readers: Frances McDormand
Lili Taylor
Frankie Faison
Fred Armisen
ERS company members April Matthis, Jim Fletcher, Susie Sokol and Vin Knight
Curator: Paul Muldoon
Host: Oskar Eustis
Sound Design: Matt Tierney
Ben Williams
Director John Collins
Producer: Ariana Smart Truman
Coordinator: Lindsay HockadayTickets range in price from $30 to $1000 and may be purchased onlinw at www.Theatermania.com or at www.elevator.org or by calling the box office at 718-783-1905. For $30 tickets, purchase a $50 ticket and enter the discount code THERMIE.

For more information, visit www.elevator.org.