Jane Elias' DO THIS ONE THING FOR ME Begins Tonight at TBG Theatre

"Do This One Thing for Me," Jane Elias's poignant solo play of self-discovery through her relationship with her father, a Holocaust survivor, will be reprised in a special four-week engagement at The TBG Theatre, 312 West 36th Street, beginning tonight, April 9. Written and performed by Elias, with direction by Tracy Bersley, "Do This One Thing for Me" dramatizes the delicate balance between family legacy and a quest for independence that the children of survivors must often strike.

The show's four-week Off-Off-Broadway engagement plays from Thursday April 9 through Sunday May 3, with an opening set for Sunday April 12 at 3pm. Tickets are now on sale through www.brownpapertickets.com

In her affecting story in which she pirouettes through her Long Island upbringing and her rich relationship with her father, Beni, a Greek Jew who survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, Elias describes, with both humor and a growing sense of longing, her dilemma at not being able to grant her father's wish that he live to dance the first dance at his daughter's wedding. Now 70 years since he lost almost everything, and four years after his death, father and daughter are still joined in a transcendental pas de deux in which promises to the departed are still meant to be kept.

A love letter to her dad, "Do This One Thing for Me" traces a commitment to fulfill the promise of family even if this might be practically impossible.

The production design team includes Renée Molina (lighting design). Farrah Crane is the production manager.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the camps, and coincides with Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), which begins on the evening of April 15, the day that Beni Elias was among those liberated from Bergen-Belsen by the British army in 1945.

"Do This One Thing for Me," seen in a one-week run at Access Theater in January 2014, was originally developed in Matt Hoverman's Go-Solo workshops.

Elias's poetry and fiction have appeared in publications including Washington Square, trans lit mag, podium, and The Southampton Review. Her short plays and monologues have been developed with Naked Angels, Access Theater, Core Artist Ensemble, and Stony Brook Southampton. Bersley has choreographed and directed for the Civilians, Red Bull Theatre, the Keen Company, and Clubbed Thumb.

"Do This One Thing for Me" runs from Thursday April 9 through Sunday May 3 at The TBG Theatre, 312 West 36th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues). Performances (a total of 23) are Thursdays & Fridays at 8pm; Saturdays at 2pm & 8pm; Sundays at 3pm; and Mondays at 8pm. Tickets, which are $25, are now on sale and can be purchased in advance visiting www.brownpapertickets.com Running time 65 minutes.

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