Heather Ehlers' SPIN Plays United Solo Festival, 11/9 & 12

Heather Ehlers, long-time stage actress, will return to New York City with her solo work, SPIN, for two Encore performances at the 2012 United Solo Theatre Festival. SPIN played to sold out houses last year in Los Angeles and New York City. Performances are November 9 & 12 at 9:00pm.

SPIN is a hilarious, brutally honest play of transcendence via sex, love and spirituality. Ms. Ehlers catches herself every fifteen years in very distinct phases of womanhood, as she spins in and out of stories from ages fifteen to forty-five. She struggles with issues of identity and first love as a foreign exchange student. She is completely transformed through pregnancy and natural childbirth labor. And, she has a passionate affair that destroys her marriage, breaks her heart, and ultimately brings her back to herself with a new connection to spirit.

Throughout this tour-de-force of feminine ferocity, Ms. Ehlers unabashedly shares her personal experiences as she rediscovers forgiveness and faith. Heather Ehlers has worked as a professional actress for over twenty-five years, appearing on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in theaters across the country, as well as in TV and film. She is currently on the Theater faculty at California Institute of the Arts.

United Solo Theatre Festival is a highly acclaimed international festival for solo performances held annually in New York City. It is the largest solo theatre festival in the world. One hundred productions will be held October 11 through November 18, 2012 at Theatre ROW on 42nd Street. Tickets may be purchased at Telecharge.com. SPIN will perform for two nights only: Friday, November 9 and Monday, November 12, 2012 at 9:00pm.

For more information visit www.spintheplay.moonfruit.com.

BIOGRAPHIES

Heather Ehlers (Writer, Performer)
Ms. Ehlers has been a professional actress for over 25 years. She appeared on Broadway in Born Yesterday, and starred off-Broadway in Paradise for the Worried, Educating Rita, and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. Other theatre credits include: The Clean House (Theater Works, CA), King Lear (The Center for New Theater at CalArts, L.A.), The Manson Family (Lincoln Center, NY), The Body of Bourne (Mark Taper Forum, L.A.), The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Dimly Perceived Threats to the System, Freedomland (South Coast Rep, CA), The Memory of Water (Steppenwolf, Chicago), Angels In America (Intiman, Seattle), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Hartford Stage, CT), Ourselves Alone, Crime and Punishment, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, The Philadelphia Story, The Taming of the Shrew (Arena Stage, D.C.), as well as several movement based performance pieces in New York City (PS122, MTG, HOME, Folk Arts Center, The Kitchen). Over the past several years she has developed and performed segments of her one-woman piece, Spin, as part of NYU’s Fallfest at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, CA. The completed version of SPIN premiered in Los Angles last fall and played to sold out houses at the Electric Lodge in Venice, CA and at The 2011 United Solo Theatre Festival in NYC. Her international theater credits include: the role of Edmund in King Lear (France), Sonia in They're Playing Our Song (India), and Abigail in The Crucible (Israel). Ms. Ehlers has guest starred on a number of TV shows including Numb3rs, Frasier, Murphy Brown, JAG and The Tracey Ullman Show, among others. Film credits include Red Letters, I'll Remember April, and Broadcast News. She starred in award winning short films: Hope Street, and A-litter-a-tion (awarded for writing as well as best actress). She also performed with the late, great Michael Jackson in his film/video Ghosts.

Ms. Ehlers has an MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program. She was a company member at Arena Stage (Washington, D.C.) for two years where she performed in ten plays and taught summer acting workshops at Colorado College. Ms. Ehlers also worked at Hunter College (CUNY) for three years where she taught Acting, Voice and Movement. She is currently teaching full-time at California Institute of the Arts in the Theater School, where she has been teaching Movement for Actors for over 10 years. In the summers of 2005 and 2006, she co-led an artistic workshop with Erik Ehn in Kigali, Rwanda, where she accompanied a group of students and professionals during an International Arts Exchange Program, to study the 1994 genocide and explore a means of creatively responding to it. Afterwards, she created a short film documenting the experience that was shown at a gallery exhibit at CalArts. Ms. Ehlers has been practicing and teaching yoga for over 20 years. She is a certified yoga instructor and teaches classes in Integral Hatha, Vinyasa Flow, Kundalini, and Yoga Works style yoga. She also studies various forms of dance. She has studied the Life/Art Process with Anna Halprin, SoulMotion with Vinn Marti, and Butoh Dance at Body Weather Lab with Roxanne Steinberg and Oguri. She performed a solo dance piece, Calluna Vulgaris, in Flower of the Season 2009 at Electric Lodge (Venice, CA). Over the past few years she has been studying the 5Rhythms with Gabrielle Roth, and in April 2011, Ms. Ehlers was certified as a 5Rhythms teacher.

Gary Dean Ruebsamen (Director)
In Los Angeles, Gary Dean is and active director/actor and co-director of theCollective, NYU’s Graduate Acting Program Alumni group which produces FALLFEST, a springboard for original film and theatre works including SPIN. Credits include: Writer/Director 92 Days (the Larry Brown Project) and Dykstra’s Forsaking All Others at The Powerhouse Theatre both LA Weekly “picks of the week.” Theatre credits: New York Shakespeare Festival, The Second Stage, Circle Repertory Theatre, The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Highways: A Table For a King with Martin Sherman. TV: WGA writer for several Game shows like Hollywood Squares. Currently lives in Los Angeles and runs a real estate business with his lovely wife Traci.

Dave Mickey (Video/Lighting/Sound Design)
Mr. Mickey has designed sound, video, interactive, and lighting for over 150 theatre shows from regional theatre to 99 seat equity waver, and theme park show control programming at Universal Studios Hollywood. Some projects include MicePaceMaze at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the publication of eight iOS apps, and recently he lead a workshop on Interactive Theatre for the Scenofest at the PQ11 in Prague. Mr. Mickey teaches Sound Design at CSU Fullerton and Integrated Media at CalArts. He was the 2007 winner of the Robert E. Cohen Sound Achievement Award, a national award in sound design sponsored by USITT and holds an MFA in sound design from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).