VIDEO: MS. GUIDANCE Series, With Adriane Lenox, Amber Gray & Tyler Hanes, Launches Kickstarter

The Guidance Department is excited to announce their Kickstarter campaign to fund the final three episodes of a six-episode first season of their new dark comedy, MS. GUIDANCE. Click below to watch the Kickstarter video, and click here to learn more about the project!

Created by three-time Emmy nominee Van Hansis and acclaimed downtown playwright James Ryan Caldwell, Ms. Guidance is a show that follows Jenny Bump, a struggling actress, who, after a nervous breakdown on the New York stage, returns to the performing arts boarding school she attended in her youth to act as an interim guidance counselor. However, listening to the dreams and ambitions of her students only stokes the dying embers of her own, and soon Jenny is back to her old tricks, scheming for fame, and ruining lives (her own included) in the process.

Tonally, Hansis describes the show as "Strangers With Candy meets Anton Chekhov'" noting that although the series is an entertaining "fast and dirty comedy", underneath the humor is "that layer of life that a lot of artists- actually, a lot of anyone- feel all too deeply. It's a feeling you carry along with you, but try to ignore- the feeling that what you have become is less then what you were meant to be."

Producer and star Tyler Hanes elaborates, saying "Ms. Guidance shows a side of the business that the Broadway audience doesn't typically get to see. Audiences going to the theater see a fully realized piece and the fact that it's being produced is a success unto itself. They never get to see the other side of that coin. They never get to see what happens to those who haven't made it." Ms. Guidance examines the different stages an actor finds themselves at throughout their career - the wide eyed ingénue, the artist boldly reinventing himself, and the actress trying to let go of the dream that wont let go of her. Ms. Guidance explores reinvention, resignation, and determination, feelings all actors are intimately familiar with.

Having privately funded the first three episodes, Ms. Guidance shot almost entirely on location at Walnut Hill School for the Arts, Hansis' alma mater, in Natick, Massachusetts last summer and is looking to the public to raise funds to finish the six episode season.

The cast includes Tony Award winner Adriane Lenox, Amber Gray (the title role of Soho Rep's Obie Award winning "An Octoroon," "Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812"), Tyler Hanes (The Coen Brother's upcoming "Hail, Caesar!", Broadway's "A Chorus Line," "Hairspray," among others), Ian Unterman (The Good Wife, Associate Director of Broadway's "Rocky"), Van Hansis (Three-time Daytime Emmy nominee for "As The World Turns), film and television star Marco Zunino (Billy Flynn, "Chicago"), and introduces Elliotte Crowell as Jenny Bump.

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