Halley Feiffer to Discuss New Play 'A FUNNY THING HAPPENED...' at Drama Book Shop

The Drama Book Shop will welcome back playwright and actress Halley Feiffer for an intimate discussion about her craft and her new play, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Gynecologic Oncology Unit At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Of New York City. The play is currently receiving its world premiere at MCC's Lucille Lortel Theatre. Feiffer and Playwright and Drama Book Shop employee Steven Carl McCasland will discuss her work on Friday, May 27th at 5:00pm. The event is free to the public. The

In A Funny Thing... a foul-mouthed twenty-something comedian and a middle-aged man embroiled in a nasty divorce are brought together unexpectedly when their cancer-stricken mothers become roommates in the hospital. Together, this unlikely duo must negotiate some of life's biggest challenges... while making some of the world's most inappropriate jokes. Can these two very lost people learn to laugh through their pain and lean on each other when all they really want to do is run away? A Funny Thing... marks the MCC Theater playwriting debut for Halley Feiffer (I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard) and the return of director Trip Cullman (Punk Rock).

Halley Feiffer is a New York-based writer and actress. Her full-length plays include I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard(Atlantic Theater Company, dir. Trip Cullman; OCC Nomination, John Gassner Playwriting Award), How To Make Friends And Then Kill Them (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, dir. Kip Fagan), and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Gynecologic Oncology Unit At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MCC, Spring 2016, dir. Trip Cullman). Her plays have been developed by MTC, Second Stage, New York Theater Workshop, LAByrinth, The O'Neill, The Orchard Project, Naked Angels, Cape Cod Theatre Project, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Keen Company, Partial Comfort, and the Amoralists. Halley is a former Playwright in Residence at Stella Adler Studio, a winner of the Young Playwright's Competition, and a winner of the 2015 Lotos Foundation Prize for Playwriting. She is currently under commission by MTC, Jen Hoguet Productions, MTC / Sloan, Playwrights Horizons, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her work is published by Dramatists Play Service, Overlook Press, Vintage Books, Applause Books, and Smith & Kraus. Halley co-wrote and starred in the 2013 film He's Way More Famous Than You, and co-created and stars in the web series What's Your Emergency for Stage17.tv (both directed by Michael Urie). She won the Theater World Award for her performance in the Broadway revival of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves (dir. David Cromer); other theater credits include Daniel Godfarb's Legacy (Williamstown, dir. Oliver Butler), Jon Robin Baitz' The Substance of Fire (Second Stage, dir. Trip Cullman), Ethan Coen's Women or Nothing (Atlantic, dir. David Cromer), Kenneth Lonergan's Medieval Play (Signature, dir. Kenneth Lonergan), Kim Rosenstock's Tigers Be Still (Roundabout, dir. Sam Gold; Drama League Nomination). TV / Film credits include HBO's Bored To Death and Mildred Pierce, and the films The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, Gentlemen Broncos, and others. She is currently a writer on the upcoming Starz series The One Percent, created by the Academy Award-winning writers of the film Birdman. She holds a BA from Wesleyan University.

Tickets and more information on the play's world premiere production at MCC are available at: http://mcctheater.org/shows/15-16_season/funnythinghappened/index.html. For more information on this and other events, please visit www.dramabookshop.com.

Photo by Jennifer Broski