Susan Hardie

David Casteal transports audiences to 1804 in this riveting first-person account of the only Black man on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. As William Clark's personal slave, York faced challenges that were inconceivable, exhilarating, and - at times - harrowing. One part history and one part pure creative vision, Casteal's passionate and playful portrayal is set against the driving backdrop of live West African drumming and traditional Native American drum recordings.

Theatre Palisades opened George Bernard Shaw's social commentary 'MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION' on Friday, April 1 at Pierson Playhouse with performances continuing through Sunday, May 8, 2016. The production is directed by Sabrina Lloyd and produced by Martha Hunter and Sherman Wayne by special permission with Samuel French. The cast features (in alphabetical order) Brooks Darnell, Susan Hardie, Craig Jessen, Frank Krueger, Ken MacFarlane and Jenna Tovey.

In Shaw's controversial attack on society's hypocrisy, Young Vivie Warren is intelligent and self-sufficient, but astounded to learn how her mother rose from poverty to riches through the world's oldest profession. Mrs. Warren ably justifies her past, attacking a hypocritical society that rewards vice and oppresses virtue, stating that poverty and the society that fosters poverty are the real villains. Certainly her profession is preferable to life in a 19th century factory!

Farce is a very difficult type of comedy to do well. It takes the ability of actors to present real characters in outrageously unreal situations so that we care about what happens to them. Just using over-the-top mannerisms and loud vocalizations does not accomplish this, and what you wind up seeing onstage are caricatures rather than real people who just get caught in outrageous situations beyond their control. Such is the case with the two one acts now being presented at Santa Monica's Morgan-Wixson Theatre, The Still Alarm by George S. Kaufman and Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer.

BLACK COFFEE is a little known, slow-paced mystery by Agatha Christie which her fans will enjoy. Written in 1934, the story takes place in the library of the home of Sir Claud Amory, a physicist who has just come up with a formula for the atomic bomb. When Sir Claude is poisoned, in his coffee of course, Detective Hercule Poirot is called to solve the mystery. He does so after many wonderful twists and turns in true Christie fashion.

York, a play that looks at the Lewis and Clark Expedition through an African-American lens, will play in NYC at the 78th Street Theatre Lab (236 West 78th Street) in a limited engagement from Thursday, July 6th-9th