Ngozi Anyanwu, Kelly AuCoin & More Set For ESPA*DRILLS READINGS

Primary Stages Marvin and Anne Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA) has announced casting for its inaugural ESPA*Drills Readings, a new play development program enabling four ESPA playwrights the opportunity to workshop their plays at Primary Stages and present full readings at 59E59 Theaters.

Casts include Ngozi Anyanwu, Kelly AuCoin, Akeem Baisden-Folkes, Natalie Venetia Belcon, Kina Bermudez, Jeanette Bonner, Leah Dietrich, Maria Dizzia, Corinne Edgerly, Einar Gunn, Walker Hare, Talaura Harms, William Jackson Harper, Jessica Hecht, Autumn Horne, Becca Lustgarten, Katelyn Manfre, Quentin Maré, Nick Pauling, Morgan Reis, Maduka Steady, Jason Watkins and Rick Younger.

The program is as follows:
August 22nd at 12pm - The Green by Kate Tarker, directed by Glynis Rigsby and featuring Ngozi Anyanwu, Akeem Baisden-Folkes, Kina Bermudez, Corinne Edgerly, Nick Pauling and Maduka Steady.

Leeann is an American veterinarian who just got her dream job: managing a chimpanzee sanctuary in Africa. Surrounded by poachers, antagonistic adolescent chimps, and an eccentric French boss, she suddenly needs to choose between caring for animals and caring for people. With human allegiances unraveling and chimps running a wild mock, the line between animals and humans dissolves under the canopy of the African jungle

August 22nd at 4pm - American Drum Circle by Vanessa Shealy, directed by Melissa Attebery and featuring Natalie Venetia Belcon, Katelyn Manfre, William Jackson Harper, Becca Lustgarten and Rick Younger.

Mandy's mother has died, and her father is desperate. She's torn between college or continuing work at the local post office. Then she meets Olujimi, a rising hip hop artist from Africa, who escaped his parents to pursue dreams of stardom in America. From family fraud and family failure, Mandy and Olujimi look for a future in each other. Will that be enough to escape the rhythm of the past?

August 29th at 12pm - Jersey Intersections by Tina Esper Kolomatsky, directed by Jade King Carroll and featuring Kelly AuCoin, Jeanette Bonner, Maria Dizzia, Leah Dietrich, Einar Gunn, Autumn Horne, Quentin Maré, Morgan Reis and Jason Watkins.

Olivia dumbs herself down to stay in a broken relationship with Leigh. Ben works like a dog to support his unforgiving wife Maggie. Kate and Lisa dream of fairytale lives, but wake up to harsh realities. Trapped by their habits and their needs, these friends, lovers and co-workers are spinning their wheels in the pursuit of happiness. Maybe, just maybe they can make it. If they can only find the road that leads out of Jersey.

August 29th at 4pm - In Ways Both Frivolous and Deep by Marin Gazzaniga, directed by Alexandra Aron and featuring Walker Hare, Talaura Harms and Jessica Hecht.

When Sparky makes a quick getaway from a relationship, going on tour and out of reach, his apartment provides the perfect hideout for Millicent, also on the run from her life, pressures, and disappointments. Caught in the act of forced metamorphosis, these wanderers have no choice but to rely on the chancey wisdom of Craigslist and the kindness of a stranger.

Performances are August 22nd and 29th at 12pm and 4pm at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street between Park and Madison.
FREE ADMISSION. Please RSVP at espa@primarystages.org
KATE TARKER (Playwright, The Green) is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her plays have been read and produced in Portland, New York, Colorado, and Boston. She attended the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive in 2007 and won a Kaspar Lochar Scholarship for playwriting. She is a member of Lizard Claw, a band of scaly and highly theatrical playwrights, as well as a member of the Old Vic New Voices Network. She received her B.A. in Literature Theatre at Reed College and has continued her studies at the Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA).

VANESSA SHEALY (Playwright, American Drum Circle) debuted as a playwright in the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival with Tea in the Afternoon, in which she also performed along with Alice Spivak. Her full length play, American Drum Circle, has been in workshop in classes at ESPA with Cusi Cram, Sheri Wilner and Michele Bossy, and in The Actors Studio Playwright/Director Workshop, of which she is an active member. Other writing includes short plays: Cataracts and The Sublet; short screenplays: The Audition, Cooking and Whistle & Snap, which she also starred in and produced (Roxbury Film Fest, San Diego Film Festival and Urban Mediamakers Film Fest). As an actor, she has worked with numerous NYC theater companies and has appeared in several national commercials, many short films and a few soap operas. www.VanessaShealy.com
TINA ESPER KOLOMATSKY (Playwright, Jersey Intersections) Tina's one-act play, Runaway Heart, was part of the Illuminating Artist's One Woman Standing Festival at Tada Theater this spring. Her full-length play, Into the Fire, about the German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, was selected as a semi-finalist for this year's Dorothy Silver Playwriting Award. Tina has collaborated on performance art pieces that have been staged at Dance Theater Workshop, White Columns, The Brooklyn Terminal and The Clocktower. Tina has volunteered as a writing coach at New Jersey's public schools where she has helped students write stories, poetry and plays. She is currently working on a new play, Enchanted City, about four women neighbors and the secrets they keep. Tina's plays have all been written and developed in her home away from home, the Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA).

MARIN GAZZANIGA (Playwright, In Ways Both Frivolous and Deep) Marin's first play, So Close was awarded a production grant from the Pilgrim Project and was co-produced by Rising Phoenix Rep at Walkerspace in New York, with Michael Sexton directing. The play was named a "Don't Miss" Critics' Pick by Time Out NY. The film adaptation of So Close screened at NewFilmmakers and Cinewomen in New York. Her play Tiffany's Shower was invited to LAByrinth Theater Company's Summer Intensive 2009. 100 Degrees Celsius was a semi-finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference 2009 and workshopped at LAByrinth's Punch the Clock development series in 2010. Marin has also worked in journalism as a writer and editor (NBC News, Vogue, InStyle, Elle, MSN.com) and has written and edited several books, including the critically acclaimed The Breast: An Anthology (Global City Press). Marin is a member of SAG, the Author's and Dramatist's Guilds, she graduated from Columbia College and has an M.A. in creative writing from City College. She has been studying at ESPA since 2008.

The Primary Stages Marvin and Anne Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA) organically developed from a collection of in-house playwriting classes at Primary Stages to a formalized multidisciplinary institution with fully formed departments in acting, writing, and directing. Since its 2007 inception, the School has housed over one-thousand students and a faculty of award-winning professional artists. The School has refined actors who have been seen on and off-Broadway, developed writers whose work has won awards and received workshops and productions, and ultimately crafted emerging artists on their road to professional success. With the naming of the School in 2010, ESPA emerged as a leading educational institution, offering an extensive array of opportunities for students to collaborate and showcase themselves on the New York stage.

Primary Stages (Casey Childs, Founder / Executive Producer; Andrew Leynse, Artistic Director) produces new work and fosters the artistic development of emerging and established playwrights. We operate on the strongly held belief that the future of American theater depends on nurturing playwrights and giving them the artistic support they need to create new works of local, national, and international significance. Since 1984 Primary Stages has contributed significantly to the arts community by producing more than one hundred World and New York premieres and engaging more than 2,000 theater artists.

A representative sampling of our collaborating artists and productions include: Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate (moved to the Booth Theatre on Broadway in 2008); Michael Hollinger's Opus; Brooke Berman's Hunting and Gathering (one of New York Magazine's Top Ten Plays of 2008); Terrence McNally's Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams (starring Nathan Lane and Marian Seldes) and The Stendhal Syndrome (featuring Isabella Rossellini and Richard Thomas); Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter's In the Continuum (which went on to tour the U.S., Africa and Scotland); Tina Howe's Chasing Manet; A.R. Gurney's Buffalo Gal and Indian Blood (which won the 2007 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play); Charlyane Woodard's The Night Watcher; David Ives' All in the Timing (the author's first big success); and Conor McPherson's St. Nicholas (which marked the Irish playwright's U.S. debut).

Primary Stages has been widely and consistently recognized for artistic excellence by industry standard bearers such as the Obie Awards, the Audelco Awards for Excellence in Black Theater, the Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Lucille Lortel Awards, the Drama League Awards, the Drama Desk Awards, the Helen Hayes Awards (Washington, D.C.), the LA Ovation Awards (Los Angeles, CA) and the Joseph Jefferson Awards (Chicago, IL). Primary Stages was honored with the 2008 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work and our Broadway production of Dividing the Estate was nominated for two Tony Awards: Best Play and Best Featured Actress in a Play.

In 2004, we became the proud Resident Theater Company of 59E59 Theaters. The new theater increased Primary Stages national profile as one of the premiere theaters for the development of new work while allowing us to better serve the artistic vision of our artists and the theater going experience of our audience. In 2006, we moved into our current administrative and studio facility on West 38th Street which houses our Marvin and Anne Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA) and our rehearsals, in addition to providing studio space to our developmental work and other not for profit organizations.

For more information on Primary Stages productions and programs, please visit us at www.primarystages.org.