QUEEN OF THE MIST to be Taped for New York Public Library, 12/1

Transport Group, the Drama Desk and OBIE award-winning theater company, has announced that its acclaimed production of Queen of the Mist, words and music by five-time Tony Award nominee Michael John LaChiusa, directed by four-time Drama Desk Award nominee Jack Cummings III, will be taped for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Theatre on Film and Tape Archive on December 1.  Queen of the Mist is currently playing a two-week extension through Sunday, December 4 at The Gym at Judson Memorial Church, 243 Thompson Street at Washington Square South. 

The Theatre on Film and Tape Archive is the world's foremost collection of films and video recordings of live theatre.  It includes Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional theatre productions, as well as theatre-related documentaries, interviews, dialogues, lectures, and awards programs.

Based on an astounding, outrageous, and haunting true story, Queen of the Mist stars two-time Tony nominee Mary Testa as Anna Edson Taylor, who, in 1901 at the age of 63, set out to be the first woman to shoot Niagara Falls—in a barrel of her own design.  Navigating both the treacherous Falls and a fickle public with a ravenous appetite for sensationalism, this unconventional heroine vies for her legacy in a world clamoring with swindling managers, assassins, revolutionaries, moralizing family, anarchists, and activists.  Convinced that there is greatness in her and determined not to live as ordinary, she sets out to battle her fear and tempt her fate.  With a score that incorporates turn of the century themes with signature LaChiusa elements, Queen of the Mist is the story of a single great fall, and how one woman risked death so that she could live. 

Queen of the Mist continues the long collaboration between Transport Group and Mr. LaChiusa, which includes the critically acclaimed Drama Desk Award-nominated productions of First Lady Suite and Hello Again.

Queen of the Mist is the inaugural production of Transport Group's 20th Century Project, a ten-year initiative spanning ten productions, each production focusing on a different decade of the 20th century.  The ten productions comprise five musicals and five plays—including three commissioned musicals, two commissioned plays, and five revivals.  Queen of the Mist focuses on the decade 1900-1910.

The cast of Queen of the Mist is D.C. Anderson (The Phantom of the Opera, The Life Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby); Stanley Bahorek (See Rock City & Other Destinations,The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee); Theresa McCarthy (Titanic, Floyd Collins); Julia Murney (Wicked, The Wild Party, First Lady Suite); Andrew Samonsky (South Pacific, Tales of the City); Tally Sessions (The House of Blue Leaves, Yank!); and Mary Testa (On The Town, Marie Chrtistine, Xanadu, 42nd Street).

Queen of the Mist was commissioned by Transport Group Theatre Company and is made possible through major support from The Shen Family Foundation. 

Founded in 2001, Transport Group, under the leadership of Jack Cummings III, Artistic Director, and Lori Fineman, Executive Director, is a not-for-profit theatre company that stages new works and re-imagined revivals by American writers.  Their visually progressive productions of emotionally classic stories explore the challenges of relationships and identity in America.  Transport Group is the winner of a special Drama Desk Award for its “breadth of vision and its presentation of challenging productions.”   Transport Group presented its premiere production in 2002: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which featured older actors in the roles of Emily and George and a twelve-year-old girl as the Stage Manager.  Its second production, Requiem for William, an evening of seven seldom produced plays by William Inge, that featured a cast of 26 as well as original songs, premiered in 2003.  In 2004 the company presented the first New York revival of Michael John LaChiusa’s First Lady Suite, which received rave reviews, played to sold-out houses, and earned two Drama Desk Award nominations including Outstanding Revival of a Musical.  Other productions include the world premiere of the musical The Audience, which featured a cast of 46 actors and earned three Drama Desk Award nominations, including Outstanding Musical; Normal, a new musical about a mother’s battle to save her daughter from anorexia; cul-de-sac, a new play by Tony Award nominee John Cariani; the first New York revival of Tad Mosel’s Pulitzer Prize play, All the Way Home; the 50th anniversary, OBIE-winning production of William Inge’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs; the world premiere musicals Crossing Brooklyn, Marcy in the Galaxy, and Being Audrey, and the first New York revival of Irwin Shaw’s Bury the Dead.  Both First Lady Suite and Bury the Dead were filmed for the New York Performing Arts Library’s Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at Lincoln Center.  In 2010 Transport Group presented a sold-out, extended engagement of Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band, which received an OBIE Award and was nominated for five 2010 Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Revival of a Play—the most for an off-Broadway play.  Transport Group’s productions of See Rock City and Other Destinations by Brad Alexander and Adam Mathias, and Hello Again by Michael John LaChiusa combined for eleven 2011 Drama Desk Award nominations and one win.  Transport Group’s production of Lysistrata Jones, by Douglas Carter Beane and Lewis Flinn, opened to rave reviews, played to sell-out houses, and transfers to Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre on November 12.  The company most recently completed a critically acclaimed run of The Patsy andJonas at The Duke on 42nd Street, starring OBIE winner David Greenspan.  For more information about Transport Group visit www.transportgroup.org.

Queen of the Mist plays at The Gym at Judson Memorial Church, 243 Thompson Street at Washington Square South.  The playing schedule for the remainder of the run is as follows:

Week of November 21 – Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday through Sunday at 8pm; Friday and Saturday at 2pm.

Week of November 28 – Monday through Thursday, Saturday, Sunday at 8pm; Saturday at 2pm.

General admission tickets start at $58; premium reserved seating tickets start at $65.  For tickets and information, visit www.transportgroup.org or phone 866-811-4111.

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