Gideon Presents Advance Man: Part One of Mac Rogers' Honeycomb Trilogy

Gideon Productions will present Advance Man, part one of Mac Rogers' (Universal Robots; Viral) sc-fi epic The Honeycomb Trilogy, January 12-29 as part of BFG Collective's six month long residency at The Secret Theatre (44 02 23rd Street, Long Island City). The production will be directed by JorDana Williams (Viral; Hail Satan) and will feature Becky Byers (New York Innovative Theatre Award Nomination for Flux Theatre Ensemble's Dog Act), Becky Comtois (Independent Theater Bloggers Association Individual Performance Citation for Viral), Amanda Duarte (Endoftheworldlovesong at The Flea), Jason Howard (New York Innovative Theatre Award Nomination for Gideon's Universal Robots), Abraham Makany (The Brig at The Living Theater), David Rosenblatt (The Play About My Dad at Collaboration Town), Brian Silliman (Henry IV), Kristen Vaughan (New York Innovative Theatre Award for Retro Productions' Benefactors), Sean Williams (Hail Satan), and Shaun Bennet Wilson (Interchange at WorkShop Theater Company). The creative team will include Lighting Design by Sarah E. Lurie, Costume Design by Amanda Jenks, Sound Design by Jeanne Travis (New York Innovative Theatre Award nomination for Boomerang Theatre Company's The Desk Set), Props Design by Stephanie Cox-Williams & Pete Boisvert, and Set Design by Saundra Yaklin. The production will be Stage Managed by Devan Hibbard.

Advance Man centers on the family of Bill Cooke, the leader of a group of astronauts who have returned from the first manned mission to Mars bearing secrets and illicit cargo that could forever alter not only their lives, but all of humanity.

The Honeycomb Trilogy by Mac Rogers are three stand alone plays set in the same futuristic universe, that together create an epic sci-fi trilogy. Part Two: Blast Radius will run March 29-April 15 and Part Three: Sovereign will run June 14-July 1.

The production, presented by Gideon Productions as part of the BFG Collective, will play a three-week engagement at The Secret Theatre (44 02 23rd Street, Long Island City), January 12-29; Thursday through Saturday at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm with additional performances on Wednesday, January 18 and Monday, January 23 at 8pm. Tickets ($18/$15 students & seniors) may be purchased online at www.bfgcollective.com or by calling 866-811-4111.

Mac Rogers (Playwright) is an award-winning Brooklyn-based playwright, professional writer, and performer who writes and produces emotionally gripping thrillers, science fiction, horror, and dark comedies for the stage. Through critically-praised hits like Universal Robots ("one of the strongest, most exciting plays I've seen in years" Theatre Online) and Viral ("one of the best plays we've seen in New York in a very long time, and we see a lot of plays," Flavorpill), Mac combines the popular appeal of film and television genre storytelling with the best traditions of finely-etched characters and memorable dialogue of the theater to create plays that are taut, exciting, provocative, and unflinching. Mac's recent works include the darkly comic horror play Hail Satan (winner of the Outstanding Playwriting Award at the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival), Universal Robots (which won Best Off-Off Broadway Play from the New York Theatre Bloggers Association and earned four nominations from the New York Innovative Theater Awards), Viral (which won the Outstanding Play honor from the 2009 FringeNYC), and Fleet Week: The Musical (winner of the Outstanding Musical award from FringeNYC 2005). He also regularly appears as an actor in the independent theater scene in New York, and earned an NYIT nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in James Comtois's The Adventures of Nervous-Boy: A Penny Dreadful. As a producer, Mac is a co-founder of Gideon Productions, through which he has mounted a number of his plays to great acclaim.

JorDana Williams (Director) has directed several plays by Mac Rogers, including Viral (FringeNYC 2009 Outstanding Production of a Play, 2010 ITBA Outstanding Production of a Play and individual Performance Citations for Amy Lynn Stewart and Rebecca Comtois), Hail Satan (FringeNYC 2007 Outstanding Play, Backstage "Performance to Remember" for Laura Perloe), and three productions developed through the Vampire Cowboys' episodic, genre-bending Saturday Night Saloon (The Control Room, Mother Sacramento, and Asymmetric). She has also directed a number of strange and wonderful projects for such companies as Flux Theatre Ensemble, Boomerang Theatre Company, Piper McKenzie, GroundUp Productions, kef Productions, Impetuous Theater Group, The Brick Theater, The 24-Hour Plays and The One-Minute Play Festival. She is the lyricist of the musicals Fleet Week, Air Guitar and The First Annual St. Ignatius Chanukah Pageant (which she also directed). She is a founding member of Gideon Productions.

Gideon Productions crafts lively, engaging plays that explore what's strange about being human and what's human about being strange, using familiar genres and cultural touchstones as a springboard to something wholly unexpected. Gideon primarily produces work by playwright Mac Rogers, including Viral (Outstanding Production of a Play, FringeNYC 2009; 2010 ITBA Outstanding Off-Off Broadway Show; two ITBA citations for Individual Performances), Universal Robots, co-produced with Manhattan Theatre Source (4 2009 NYIT Award Nominations, including Outstanding Playwright and Production of a Play), and Hail Satan (Outstanding Playwright, FringeNYC 2007; Backstage "Performance to Remember"). Gideon has also produced several musicals by Williams/Rogers/Williams, including Fleet Week (Outstanding Musical, FringeNYC 2005), Air Guitar (FringeNYC 2006), and The First Annual St. Ignatius Channukah Pageant (Theatre Row, 2005). Gideon and Mac Rogers spent three years in residence at the Vampire Cowboys' monthly episodic workshop, The Saturday Night Saloon. Gideon's own Blueprint Project presented four playwrights' (Mac Rogers, August Schulenburg, Crystal Skillman, and Catherine Trieschmann) profoundly different takes on the exact same plot.

BFG COLLECTIVE Three of New York City's top indie theatre companies, Boomerang Theatre Company, Flux Theatre Ensemble, and Gideon Productions, have joined forces to form the BFG Collective, which will hold a six-month-long residency at Long Island City's The Secret Theatre.

www.gideonth.com