ETERNAL EQUINOX to Receive NY Premiere at 59E59 Theaters, Begins 3/1

By: Gabrielle Sierra Feb. 13, 2012

59E59 Theaters (Elysabeth Kleinhans, Artistic Director; Peter Tear, Executive Producer) welcomes Grove Theater Center (Los Angeles, CA) with the New York City premiere of ETERNAL EQUINOX, written by Joyce Hokin Sachs and directed by Kevin Cochran.

ETERNAL EQUINOX begins performances on Thursday, March 1 for a limited engagement through Saturday, March 31. Press opening is Wednesday, March 7 at 7:30 PM. The performance schedule is Tuesday – Thursday at 7:30 PM; Friday at 8:30 PM; Saturday at 2:30 PM and 8:30 PM; and Sunday at 3:30 PM. Performances are at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues). Tickets are $25 ($17.50 for 59E59 Members). To purchase tickets, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or go to www.59e59.org.

Art, sex, conquest, and love collide on a fall day in 1923. Dashing mountaineer George Mallory, about to leave on his third Everest expedition, pays a surprise visit to the summer home of two of Britain's most important artists, the Bloomsbury Group painters Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. Based on actual events, ETERNAL EQUINOX is a sexually charged look at the emotional impact of bedroom politics.

ETERNAL EQUINOX features Hollis McCarthy (Road to Perdition) as Vanessa Bell;? Michael Gabriel Goodfriend (Twelfth Night at The Pearl) as Duncan Grant; and Christian Pedersen (Vieux Carre at the The Pearl) as George Mallory.

The scenic design, which features recreated elements of the flamboyant West Sussex home of these two artists, is by three-time Ovation Award-nominee Leonard Ogden. The lighting design is by David Darwin.

Joyce Hokin Sachs (playwright) is an editor, author, published poet, mother of four, grandmother of six, and long time teacher of English and literature. For over 20 years, she taught Advanced Placement and Honors English at Montclair Private School in California. Ten years ago, at age 66, she decided to retire and give herself time to write rather than just correcting essays. She became a student in UCLA’s writing program and began work on a novel about the Bloomsbury Group, a topic that attracted her interest many years before when she wrote her thesis on Virginia Woolf. After several trips to Charleston in West Sussex, England, the restored country home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant (two of the central artists of the Bloomsbury Group), she became fascinated with their relationship. The discovery of an early letter from Duncan to George Mallory, the famed mountaineer who coined the phrase, “because it’s there,” gave her the spark for her play, Eternal Equinox. It imagines a meeting of the three in 1923, just before Mallory embarks on his final, fatal attempt of Everest. An early version of the play, entitled simply Equinox, opened at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles in 2006. It was nominated for The LA Ovation Award and The LA Drama Critics’ Circle Award for costume, set and lighting design (and won the Ovation for Set and the LADCC Award for Lighting). In 2009, the revised version of the play, now entitled Eternal Equinox, was produced by Grove Theater Center at their home theater in Burbank, California (and was nominated for an Ovation Award for Set Design). Currently, Joyce is writing a play based on the life of Tilly Losch, the Viennese dancer and actress.

Kevin Cochran (director) co-founded Grove Theater Center in Southern California in 1994. Plays he has directed at GTC include Blake...da Musical (LA Ovation Award for Best New Musical, Ovation and LA Weekly nominations for Best Director); Film Chinois (Ovation Award for Best New Musical); R.R.R.E.D., the Red-Head Musical Manifesto (LA Weekly Nomination for Best Director); The Adding Machine (OC Weekly Award for Best Production); Straight Up with a Twist (Ovation nomination for Best One Person Show) and The Beckett Project II (OC Weekly nomination for Best Director). Off-Broadway, Kevin directed the premiere of Lightin' Out by Walt Stepp at the Judith Anderson Theater, Offending Shadows by David Paterson at Ensemble Studio Theater, and The Gospel According to Omaha by Libby Jacobs at the William Redfield Theater. Bobby & Matt, written and directed by Kevin, was presented at The Players Theatre as part of the New York International Fringe Festival this August. Kevin graduated as a Scholar of the House in Theater, Design and Circus Arts from Yale University.

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