Cherry Lane Theatre's award-winning MENTOR PROJECT will begin its 13th season on February 21 with a production of Elizabeth Rose's RELATIVE PITCH, the first of four new works in 2012 MENTOR PROJECT running February 21 to April 14 at Cherry Lane Studio Theatre (38 Commerce Street in Manhattan).
Scheduled February 21 through March 3, RELATIVE PITCH is directed by Gretchen Cryer, who also serves as Ms. Rose's mentor for this production. Elizabeth Rose's RELATIVE PITCH is a one-woman musical comedy about the roller-coaster ride of a performing songwriter. Written and performed by Rose, the musical's score features 19 original songs (from opera to rap) to depict her story of a childhood in a noisy musical family through the Vietnam and Woodstock eras to an inner-city classroom where hip hop trumps the blues.
Winner of an American Theatre Wing Award, a Village Voice Obie Award and the Dramatist Guild's James Kirkwood Award for fostering new work by contemporary playwrights, MENTOR PROJECT is the cornerstone of Cherry Lane's development program, each year pairing leading dramatists with emerging writers for a full season of script development, casting, rehearsals and a showcase production of the mentored playwrights' works in the Studio Theatre.
MENTOR PROJECT has become an important national launching pad for new writers and their plays since it was begun in 1998 by Angelina Fiordellisi and Susann Brinkley along with Founding Mentors Edward Albee, Charles Fuller, A.R. Gurney, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein and Michael Weller. The list of more than 40 playwrights whose early works at MENTOR PROJECT have lead to significant productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway and on stages around the world
include: Katori Hall, Rajiv Joseph, Christopher Shinn, Anne Washburn,
David Adjmi, Julia Cho, Anton Dudley, Sheila Callaghan, Colin McKenna, Bathsheba
Doran and Molly Smith Metzler.
The playwrights and their plays -- Anne DeSalvo (MAMMA ROMA), Patricia
Buckley (EVOLUTION) and Elizabeth Rose (RELATIVE PITCH) -- will be mentored
respectively by David Rambo, Jean-Claude van Itallie and Gretchen Cryer.
MENTOR PROJECT productions are not open for review.
As a performer Elizabeth Rose's wide-ranging credits include having sung
the National Anthem at Shea Stadium, composing music for Discovery Channel and
PBS as well as for the film "Sex and the Other Man" starring Stanley Tucci.
She created the music video "Leave Me Alone" featuring a cast of
nonagenarians, wrote the hit single "I'm Too Beau'ful for You," and recorded an
original CD "Sleep Naked."
Gretchen Cryer is an award-winning playwright, lyricist and actress
best-known for writing the book and lyrics and starring in I'M GETTING MY ACT
TOGETHER AND TAKING IT ON THE ROAD along with NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN
and THE LAST SWEET DAYS OF ISAAC (Obie, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle
Awards), SHELTER on Broadway, HANG ON TO THE GOOD TIMES (Manhattan Theatre Club),
THE FABULOUS PARTY (Williamstown) and ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (Theatreworks).
RELATIVE PITCH will be presented at the Cherry Lane Studio Theatre (38
Commerce Street) from Tuesday, February 21, 2012 to Saturday, March 3, 2012.
Performances are scheduled Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7:00pm and a
Saturday matinees at 3:00pm. Tickets are $18 (plus $1 facility fee) and can be
purchased by calling 212-352-3101 or online at www.cherrylanetheatre.org.
MENTOR PROJECT's 13th season will also feature productions of the new works
EVOLUTION by Patricia Buckley, mentored by Jean-Claude van Itallie (March
13-24), MAMMA ROMA by Anne DeSalvo, mentored by David Rambo (April 3-14).
Also this season, MENTOR PROJECT will debut the program's first-ever
commissioned play, Lisa Ramirez's PAS DE DEUX (LOST MY SHOE), to be given two public
staged readings (dates TBA). Ms. Ramirez will be mentored by Cynthia
Hopkins.
Angelina Fiordellisi is Founder and Artistic Director of Cherry Lane
Theatre.
The Mentor Project continues Cherry Lane Theatre's long and rich history of
presenting works by both emerging and seasoned playwrights that reveal the
social consciousness of our ever-changing world. Now 87 years old and New
York's longest, continuously-running Off-Broadway theatre, Cherry Lane's
roster of iconoclastic writers whose work has been at home at the theatre since
the 1920s includes O'Neill, Saroyan, Auden, Albee, Odets, Orton, Mamet, and
Lanford Wilson. Such distinctive actors as Ruby Dee, James Earl Jones,
Colleen Dewhurst, Cicely Tyson, Frank Langella, Tyne Daly, Estelle Parsons,
Dennis Quaid and Judith Ivey have performed on its stage.
For more information about THE MENTOR PROJECT or The Cherry Lane Theatre,
please visit www.cherrylanetheatre.org.
