IDEAL Premieres At 59E59 Theaters 6/17-7/3

59E59 Theaters (Elysabeth Kleinhans, Artistic Director; Peter Tear, Executive Producer) closes AMERICAS OFF BROADWAY with the NY premiere production of Ayn Rand's IDEAL, directed by Jenny Beth Snyder. Produced by Karina Martins and Drew Vanderburg in association with FGP NYC, INC. IDEAL begins previews on Thursday, June 17 for a limited engagement through Saturday, July 3. Press Opening is Wednesday, June 23 at 7:30 PM. The performance schedule is Tuesday - Saturday at 7:30 PM; and Sunday at 3:30 PM. There is an added matinee performance on Saturday, June 19 at 2:30 PM. The ticket price is $15 ($10.50 for 59E59 Members). Tickets are available by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or online at www.ticketcentral.com. For more information visit www.59E59.org. 59E59 Theaters is located at 59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues.

The world's most famous actress is accused of murder. Six devoted fans are challenged to stand by their idol in her time of greatest need. How much will they sacrifice to protect the ideal they profess to love?

IDEAL was written in 1934, during a time of great professional turmoil in Rand's life. At the time, her novel We the Living was rejected by a succession of publishers for being "too intellectual" and too opposed to Soviet Russia; her play Night of January 16th had not yet found a producer; and Miss Rand's meager savings were running out. IDEAL was written originally as a novelette and then extensively revised and turned into a stage play.

The cast of IDEAL includes Liz Aldefer, Jessie Barr, Ted Caine, Bill Griffin, Sean Ireland, Lee Kasper, Emily Marrow, Cara Massey, Dan Pfau, Kim Rosen, Ariana Seigel, Carly Walsh and Andrew Young.

Jenny Beth Snyder (director) is a director, choreographer, and co-founder of FGP NYC. She is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, holding a BFA from the Playwrights Horizons Theater School. She has directed over ten full-length plays, including The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Witness and Wednesdays.

Ayn Rand (playwright) is best known for her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905, she immigrated to the United States in 1926, landing in Chicago for six months before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a screenwriting career. She obtained work with Cecil B. DeMille, first as an extra on his movie The King of Kings, and then as a script reader. In 1932, after struggling several years at various jobs, she sold her first screenplay, Red Pawn, to Universal. Also that year, her first stage play Night of January 16th was produced in Hollywood and then on Broadway. She completed her first novel, We the Living, which based on her personal experiences under the Soviet regime, in 1934. It was published by Macmillan in 1936. She began writing The Fountainhead in 1935, which was published in 1943 by Bobbs-Merrill Company after being rejected by twelve publishers. In 1946, she began working on her last work of fiction, Atlas Shrugged, which was published in 1957. In this novel she dramatized her unique philosophy in an intellectual mystery story that integrated ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex. Thereafter, Ayn Rand wrote and lectured on her philosophy Objectivism. Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982, in her New York City apartment. Every book by Ayn Rand published in her lifetime is still in print, and hundreds of thousands of copies are sold each year, so far totaling more than 25 million. Several new volumes have been published posthumously. (Adapted biography from The Ayn Rand Institute).