Obie Winner Renata Hinrichs Returns to the Stage With Live RANDOM ACTS

Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre will host RANDOM ACTS, a solo play written and performed by Obie Award winner Renata Hinrichs. Directed by Jessi D. Hill, performances begin May 23 at the cell. Performances will be presented open air for a strictly limited audience.

RANDOM ACTS opens in the 1960's at the height of the Civil Rights movement. It is here, on the south side of Chicago outside a church that straddles the black and white neighborhoods, that a scared five-year-old white girl finds kindness in chaos. How far can the ripple of one act of goodwill go? Now grown, one girl's story proves that the effect of even a small good deed can reach further than ever imagined.

RANDOM ACTS is written and performed by Renata Hinrichs. It received the Best Storytelling Script Award from the United Solo Festival in 2014 and was published by Indie Theater Now. It premiered Off-Broadway in February 2019 at TBG Mainstage Theatre. Hinrichs has performed the play at both the Hewitt School and Packer Collegiate Institute as part of their diversity programs. It has also been performed at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation for an interfaith gathering and in Waterbury Center, Vermont. In the fall of 2020 Hinrichs performed pop up performances in parks and gardens in NYC for socially-distanced audiences.

Renata Hinrichs is a founding member of Big Dance Theater, co-directed by Annie-B Parsons and Paul Lazar. With Big Dance Theater she has performed in New York, London, and the Georgian Republic, as well as at The American Dance Festival and The Yard, winning an Obie award for Best Ensemble Performance for A Simple Heart. She is currently a member of FAB Women of the Barrow Group, where she first performed and developed Random Acts. Other acting credits include the lead role in the short film Happy Now, which won first prize at both the Cannes Film Festival and the Deauville Film Festival. Theater credits: Dorset Theater Festival, Boise Contemporary Theater, The Barrow Group, EST, Soho Rep, Ohio Theater. TV: DeadBeat, The Blacklist, Law and Order: SVU, and Jessica Jones (Netflix). Ms. Hinrichs trained as an actor at the T. Schreiber Studio and The Barrow Group School with Carol Fox Prescott, Carol Reynolds, Seth Barrish, and Lee Brock. Other acting teachers include Bob Krakower, Tim Phillips, Tony Spiridakis, Maggie Low, and Devin Shackett. She studied writing and playwriting with Lisa Kron, Roderick Menzies, Maia Danziger, and Seth Barrish.

Jessi D. Hill has directed new work at New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theater/Joe's Pub, The Playwrights' Center, Primary Stages, Labyrinth, The Women's Project, 59E59, The New Group, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Culture Project, NYMF, The Acting Company, PS 122, New Dramatists, The Lark, The Playwrights Realm, New Georges, Wild Project, and many others. She has been a director in professional training programs at Yale School of Drama, Juilliard, NYU/Tisch, Fordham University, Powerhouse/NY Stage & Film, The Atlantic School, Playwrights Horizons, and others. Her work has been seen internationally in Edinburgh, London, New Zealand, Berlin, Bucharest and Hamburg. She is currently the Literary Chair at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and the Artistic Associate for Flying Carpet Theatre in NYC. She previously served as Associate Artistic Director of terraNOVACollective in NYC and Artistic Director of Stage Left Theatre Company in Chicago. MFA: Yale. Member SDC. Her recent Off-Broadway directing projects include Surely Goodness & Mercy by Chisa Hutchinson (Keen Company), Open by Crystal Skillman (All for One), Larissa Fasthorse's Vanishing Point (HERE), and Cusi Cram's The Helpers (59E59). www.jessidhill.com

Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre (Artistic Director Kira Simring) is a non-profit dedicated to the incubation and presentation of new works that mine the mind, pierce the heart, and awaken the soul. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the cell has successfully moved into the digital sphere by streaming virtual concerts and programming such as Dark Matter Immersive's Garden of Eden (New York Times' Top Ten Things to Do This Week), Tolerance Party (Time Out New York Best Theater to Stream this Week), the Room | to | Breathe series with Bright Shiny Things, Nourishment "Bites" with Holdtight Dance Company, Apex Sky, Harps Uncovered and Liquidverse a psychedelic & meditative show exploring the images of the cosmos through oil based dyes by Liquid Light Lab and music by composer and technical director of the cell Ricardo Romaneiro. Past productions include Found, Hoard (co-produced with Off the Wall), The Pink Unicorn (starring Alice Ripley co-produced with Out of the Box), The Evolution of Mann, Bastard Jones (Drama-Desk Nominated), Crackskull Row, Hard Times: An American Musical, The McGowan Trilogy, Hey Jude, Horse Girls and more. www.thecelltheatre.org @thecelltheatre

RANDOM ACTS runs Sunday, May 23 at 4pm and Sundays, June 6-27 at 5pm. Running time is 75 minutes. Patrons are required to follow all city-mandated COVID-19 precautions. Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre is located at 338 West 23rd Street. Tickets are $20, available at www.SpinCycleNYC.com.