Photo Flash: Project Y Premieres TRUTH/DARE

Project Y Theatre Company presents the World Premiere of TRUTH/DARE by Emmy nominee Tori Keenan-Zelt. The play, which was selected for Kilroy's Long List in 2014, will be directed by Andrew William Smith. Performances run through June 12 at IRT Theatre in the West Village.

TRUTH/DARE revolves around a trio of tween girls who live in their own world built of basements, secrets, loves, and backyard ghosts - until the last sleepover of the summer. High school looms, with the promise and threat of reinvention, and the group fractures as shifting beliefs and identities collide in a traumatic accident that none of them can explain. Four years later, questions and accusations fly as the survivors revisit the scene of the "crime" and try to understand what happened, what they have lost, and how to live now.

TRUTH/DARE stars Essence Stiggers, Emily Suarez, Roma Scarano, and Nuala Cleary with a production team that includes Jack Dentinger (assistant director), Nora Gair (stage manager), Mindy Eshelmen (costumes), Hallie Zieselman (set design), Anthony Stultz (sound design), and Christina Watanabe (lighting).

Founded in 1999, Project Y Theatre Company has been called the "smartest of the city's theatre troupes," by N.P.R. Project Y has had an unwavering presence in the New York Off-Off Broadway community and has been nominated for nine Innovative Theater Awards. Project Y has been the recipient of grants from NYSCA, ART/NY, The Nancy Quinn Fund, and the humanitarian Puffin Foundation. They have produced work, which includes Trump Lear, Gary Busey's One-Man Hamlet..., A User's Guide to Hell featuring Bernard Madoff, Connected, Fubar and Great Again, at venues including 59E59, A.R.T./New York Theatres, HERE, and Theatre Row Theaters. They have produced and/or developed work by playwrights including Hilary Bettis, Karl Gadjusek, Charles Mee, Lee Blessing, Chisa Hutchinson, Adam Szymkowicz, Caridad Svich, Johnna Adams, Lauren Yee, Crystal Skillman and Chiori Miyagawa.

Tori Keenan-Zelt is an alumna of the Ingram New Works Lab, Fresh Ground Pepper's PlayGround PlayGroup, Bastard Playground @ The Drama League, and Mission to (dit)Mars Propulsion Lab, she has recently been a Playwrights' Center Core Apprentice and Lark Dramaturgy Fellow and has written for Colonial Williamsburg's Emmy Award-winning PBS education series. She has been named an Emmy Nominee, Kilroys Lister, Jerome Finalist, Princess Grace Finalist, and Playwrights of New York Nominee. She is currently a member of Super Secret Play Lab, Ensemble Studio Theatre Playwrights Unit, The Actors' Studio Playwrights/Directors Unit & the Dramatists Guild. Some of her short plays are published by Next Stage Press.

TRUTH/DARE runs Wednesday, 5/30 at 7:30pm; Thursday, 5/31 at 7:30pm; Friday, 6/1 at 7:30pm; Saturday, 6/2 at 7:30pm; Friday, 6/8 at 7:30pm; Saturday, 6/9 at 5pm; Sunday, 6/10 at 7:30pm; and Tuesday, 6/12 at 7:30pm as part of the 3rd Annual Women in Theater Festival. IRT Theatre is located at 154 Christopher Street, between Washington & Greenwich Streets in the West Village. Tickets $25 general admission / $15 for students. For more information or for tickets, visit www.witfestival.projectytheatre.org.