Simone Federman to Direct STRANGE RAIN at FringeNYC, Begin. 8/9

STRANGE RAIN follows two reporters as they try to unravel the mystery of a prolonged rain with the aid of lesbian psychics, comic meteorologists, a street-kid poet, and a mysterious man who talks of UFOs and secret experiments in the desert, all leading back decades to the real-life experiments of Wilhelm Reich in the 1950s. The story, though, is not so much about Reich as about deciding what is real and making peace with a difficult past. There are several love stories-central, a boy's love for his father.

Performances are set for FRI. AUG 9 @ 9:45pm; FRI. AUG 16 @ 2pm; SUN. AUG 18 @ NOON; MON. AUG 19 @ 7pm; THU. AUG 22 @ 8:30pm at VENUE #14: The Lynn Redgrave Theater, 45 Bleecker Street (at Lafayette Street.

THE CAST features Sammy Bravo, Kaethe Fine, Charles Goforth, Scott Klavan, Andrew Langton, Kelly Miller, J. J. Pyle, Malachy Silva, Julia Steele Allen, and Jennifer Tchiakpe (*Member AEA) Music & Noise Band - Jon Pierson and Michael Andrew Hideto Kurihara.

DIRECTOR: Simone Federman has directed in New York City for the last 25 years at such venues as Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, H.E.R.E., Dixon Place, The Ohio Theatre, and regionally at Portland Stage Co. Internationally, she has worked with Bread and Puppet Theatre at the world expo in Hanover, Germany, and she collaborated with Le Theatrographe on a production about her father, writer Raymond Federman, which was selected for the 59th Avignon Theatre Festival. She has worked with living playwrights such as Diana Son, Paula Vogel, David Greenspan, Sarah Schulman, and Christopher Shinn, and has directed classic and modern plays by such authors as Chekhov, Strindberg, Beckett, Ionesco, Lorca, Genet, Pinter, Stein, Churchill, Wertenbaker, Moliere, Goldoni, Aristophanes, and Kaufman & Hart. Her graduate studies in directing included assistant teaching Robert Brustein's undergraduate courses in Modern Dramatic Literature at Harvard as well as assistant directing productions at the A.R.T. by Ron Daniels, and premiers directed by Richard Jones, Anne Bogart, and Francesca Zambello. She has taught Graduate and Undergraduate Directing, Acting, Modern Dramatic Literature, and Performance Art at Bowdoin College, SUNY New Paltz, and at Rowan University. Simone was "Director in Residence" at Denison University in Ohio where she directed Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" and a commedia version of "Ramses' Letter" by Achille Campanile for the Italian department at Harvard. She has her BA from Oberlin College and her graduate certificate in Directing from the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. She has extensive workshop training in Directing, Stanislavski, Meisner, Grotowski, Viewpoints, Lecoq, Commedia d'ell Arte, and Clown. Simone is very pleased to be directing her second show for FringeNYC and to have this production at the Lynn Redgrave Theatre.

PLAYWRIGHT: Lynda Crawford's "A Procession of Clouds" was a finalist (and tied for Audience Favorite) in the 2013 Unchained Festival in LIC, NY, directed by Dennis Carnegie; "Consumer Behavior" (co-written with Gary Kupper) showcased at FringeNYC in 2002, directed by Victoria Pero, after having been the recipient of a Playwrights' Project grant from Abrons Arts Center-Henry Street Settlement; "Strange Rain" was a finalist in Reverie's Next Generation Playwriting Contest in 2004 and was presented in a staged reading at The Flea directed by Hayley Finn; "Secrets Of The Birds," inspired by the ancient Greeks, was directed by Terry Greiss and became a finalist in the 2006 Samuel French Short Play Festival; "Howard Ink!" was a finalist in the John Gardner Play Competition and in numerous other one-act competitions; "Day Lilies" was a finalist in the Lamia Ink One Page Play Festival. Lynda's plays and other writings have also appeared in the literary journalMaNHaTTaN Linear and in the book Titters: The First Collection of Humor by Women (Macmillan). Lynda received her MFA in Playwriting in 2001 from Brooklyn College, working with Jack Gelber, William Hauptman, and Mac Wellman. She also studied in workshops with Paula Vogel, Katt Lissard, Naomi Wallace, and John Guare. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Lynda leads the playwriting lab at SUNY Empire State College.

Tickets are now on sale, $15 in advance ($18 at the door) at www.FringeNYC.org or 866-468-7619. Discount passes for multiple shows (including the Fiver and the Lunatic Pass) are also available. For more information visit www.FringeNYC.org.

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