Foster and Masur to Star in DUST at Westside Theatre Starting 11/18

Dust, a new thriller starring Emmy Award nominee Richard Masur (Democracy, “All My Children”) and Tony Award nominee Hunter Foster (Urinetown, Little Shop of Horrors), begins performances at The Westside Theatre (downstairs) on November 18th.  Written by Billy Goda and directed by Scott Zigler, Dust also features Laura E. Campbell, Curtis McClarin and John Schiappa.  Opening night is Thursday, December 4th at 7:00PM.

Dust is a power play.  One man is an executive with money and a paunch.  The other is an ex-con with street smarts and a minimum-wage position.  One man says “jump.”  The other won’t say “how high,” but defiantly asks “why?”.  What starts off as a battle of wills over who will do the dusting escalates into a war for respect, the upper hand and survival. Who will be standing when the dust settles?

Presented by Roger Alan Gindi and Cassidy Productions, Dust features a scenic design by Caleb Wertenbaker, costume design by Theresa Squire, and lighting design by Charles Foster.

Dust, a new thriller, begins performances at The Westside Theatre (407 West 43rd Street, between 9th & 10th Aves.). Via subway, take the 1/2/3/7/A/C/E/N/R/Q/W/S trains to 42nd Street/Times Square. Opening night is Thursday, December 4th at 7:00PM. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8:00PM and Sunday at 7:00PM with matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 3:00PM. Tickets are $65. Call Telecharge.com at 212-239-6200.
 
Richard Masur (Martin). Broadway and off-Broadway credits include Michael Frayne’s Democracy; David Storey’s The Changing Room; The New Group's 2000 Years by Mike Leigh; Playwrights Horizons a feminine ending by Sarah Treem;  The Public Theater’s The Ruby Sunrise and Rinne Groff; MTC’s Sarah, Sarah by Daniel Goldfarb; and The Culture Project’s The Exonerated.  He has starred in more than 50 films including Risky Business, My Girl, Heaven’s Gate, Heartburn and Under Fire; over 45 television movies, including:  Adam, Fallen Angel and When The Bough Breaks, HBO’s And The Band Played On, Showtime’s Hiroshima, HBO’s 61* and The Burning Bed (Emmy nomination).  Television credits include “Picket Fences,” “Rhoda” and “One Day At A Time.” Masur’s directing credits include Torn Between Two Fathers (DGA Nomination); Lovestruck (Academy Award Nominated Short); for episodic TV – “The Wonder Years” and “Picket Fences”;  and for LA Theaterworks, The Play’s The Thing and many other productions.

Hunter Foster (Zeke) has appeared on Broadway  as Bobby Strong in Urinetown (Outer Critic nomination), Leo Bloom in The Producers, Seymour in Little Shop Of Horrors (Tony nomination), Les Miserables, Grease, Footloose and King David. Off-Broadway credits include Modern Orthodox, Frankenstein and Urinetown. Regional: The Government Inspector and Martin Guerre (Guthrie), Mister Roberts (Kennedy Center), Kiss Of The Spider Woman (Signature), Lend Me A Tenor (Cape Playhouse) and Children Of Eden (Papermill). He has toured nationally in Cats (Rum Tum Tugger) and wrote the book to the off-Broadway musicals, Summer Of '42 and Bonnie And Clyde: A Folktale, and the upcoming Sleepy Hollow. Foster is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

Billy Goda (Playwright). A life long New Yorker, Billy’s plays have been seen at such venues as The SoHo Playhouse, New World Stages, and The Actors Studio.  Billy has received writer’s grants for his plays Final Appeal and Dust, as well as being honored with awards from screenwriting contests for his scripts The Cretan Bull and Two Arm Bandit.  His short play No Crime was published in The Best American Short Plays series and in the college textbook Literature:  Reading, Writing, Reacting, 6th Edition.  Billy received his MFA in playwrighting from Columbia University.

Scott Zigler (Director) directed David Mamet’s The Old Neighborhood on Broadway, after directing the world premiere production at the American Repertory Theatre. Other plays by David Mamet that he has directed include The Cryptogram (Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Alley Theatre), Oleanna (National Tour, Actors Theatre of Louisville), The Woods (Atlantic Theater Company), Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Common Ground Stage and Film) and numerous shorter pieces. Most recently he directed Jon Robin Baitz's play, A Fair Country at Steppenwolf. Mr. Zigler is a founding member and past Artistic Director of the Atlantic Theater Company where he also directed Suburban News by William Wrubel, Sure Thing by David Ives, As You Like It by William Shakespeare, and Happy Endings by Shel Silverstein. Currently he is Associate Director and Head of Actor Training at the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University, and Artistic Coordinator of A.R.T. New Stages.  Zigler  is co-author of the widely used text, A Practical Handbook for the Actor.

Photo Credit Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.