Cast Set for Life Jacket Theatre's GOREY: THE SECRET LIVES OF EDWARD GOREY Premiere at HERE

Life Jacket Theatre Company has just announce the cast for GOREY: THE SECRET LIVES OF EDWARD GOREY, a new play exploring the life of Tony Award-winning artist, author, and designer Edward Gorey.

Eccentric, satirical, and fabulous, Gorey enraptured readers with his darkly subversive and delightful pen-and-ink drawings and cryptic children's stories about adult subjects: death, love, joy, strangeness, and loss. During his lifetime, Gorey authored over 100 works including The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Doubtful Guest, and The Unstrung Harp -- all of which are creatively woven throughout this play.

Written and directed by Travis Russ, this introspective play fuses fact and fiction using lush projections and inventive storytelling to investigate Gorey's dark imagination, his personal demons, and the heartbreaking loneliness of creative genius. The result is a compelling collection of fragmented memories that are lyrical, revealing, and often funny.

The cast includes Andrew Dawson, Phil Gillen, and Aidan Sink who play Gorey at three different stages of his life, from young adulthood to shortly before his death. The design team includes John Narun (projections and lighting), Elizabeth Ostler (puppetry), Emma Wilk (sound), Katie Proulx (choreography), Peri Grabin (costumes), and Russell Warren-Fisher (original artwork). Carl Vorwerk is technical director.

"We're very excited to bring our imagining of the life of Edward Gorey to the stage," says director and playwright Travis Russ. "The more we delved into Gorey's work and his interviews, the more intrigued we became about the real man tucked away behind the literary myth. We've created an intimate production that provides an up-close-and-personal look at one of America's most original artists."

GOREY will run from April 30 to May 22 in a limited three-week engagement at HERE as part of the SubletSeries@HERE, located at 145 Ave of the Americas (6th Ave). Tickets are available through HERE's website: www.here.org.

Life Jacket's mission is to create smart, original, and unpredictable theatre. The company produces investigative works based on real-life stories, often engaging with the people whose stories we tell. They experiment with new theatrical languages and forms in pursuit of visually inventive and lyrically rich works. For more information visit: www.LifeJacketTheatre.org, like them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LifeJacketTheatre, and follow them on Twitter and Instagram @LifeJacketNYC. See what everyone's talking about at #LifeJacketNYC and #GoreyNYC.