The Ethereal Mutt - Limited and AJ Epstein Presents will present a reading of I Was A Teenage B-Movie King starring Alexander Gemignani, Will Swenson, Nicole Parker and Spencer Moses on today, May 19 at 3PM in New York City. This private presentation is open to members of the industry only.
Hollywood, 1959. An era of great change. The feds have broken the big studio monopolies, and an entirely new way of making movies begins to emerge. This is the birth of a New Hollywood - the dawn of the independent producer/director. Roger Corman leads the pack of this new generation. He makes genre movies - horror films, sci-fi flicks and teenage rebel pictures and he makes them quicker and cheaper than anyone in the business. When Roger falls in love with the actress Jackie Fulquard, a series of accidents, surprises and chance encounters drops him into a life or death situation straight out of his films. He is forced to make a Faustian choice about how far he will go to be a success in Hollywood.
I Was A Teenage B-Movie King has a book by Wayne Rawley (ACT Theatre's From the Last Night of My Life) and music and lyrics by Dan Lipton and David Rossmer (Don't Quit Your Night Job). The story is by AJ Epstein (Producer - An Oak Tree, How Theatre Failed America). Carolyn Cantor (Adam Rapp's Essential Self Defense, Craig Wright's Orange Flower Water) is the director and Fred Lassen (Broadway's South Pacific, Cabaret) is the musical director.
The cast also includes Christopher Gurr, J. Elaine Marcos, Dan Marzollo, Gayle Rankin, Sam Tedaldi and Ken Triwush.
Wayne Rawley (Librettist) is the creator and writer of Money & Run: An Action Adventure Serial for the Stage, and the web series What the Funny? produced by The Caution Zero Network. Full-length plays include God Damn Tom, Live! From the Last Night of My Life (commissioned by ACT Theatre in Seattle), and a present-day adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. His multi-media adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 had its world premiere at The Empty Space Theater and was directed by Allison Narver. His short play Controlling Interest, has been produced all over the world, and was a finalist in the National Ten-Minute Play Contest. The play can be found in the Random House collection Laugh Lines: Short Comic Plays, edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold. It was produced by The Actors' Theatre of Louisville in January 2009 as part of their main stage production, "Match Games." Mr. Rawley is the 2010 Faith Broome Playwright-in-Residence at the University of Oklahoma. His play Live! From the Last Night of My Life will be produced by the OU School of Drama in April 2010.
David Rossmer &
Dan Lipton (Composers and Lyricists) have created several original musicals together, jointly writing all lyrics, book and music. They are currently under commission with
Broadway Across America, developing their original musical comedy The Blonde Streak. They are also working for
The Araca Group on a musical adaptation of a bestselling memoir. Their dramatic fairy tale notes to MariAnne received a workshop in the summer of 2008 at New York Stage & Film. MariAnne was previously featured in the
Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's summer 2007 National Musical Theater Conference, where the team received the
Georgia Bogardus Holof Award, for their lyrics. Their form-bending musical satire JOE! received a production in the summer of 2007, by
Equity Library Theatre in Chicago. JOE! has also been seen at the Kennedy Center's Theater Lab and the NAMT Festival in New York.
Lipton & Rossmer are also currently working on one musical with stage writer Wayne Rawley for producer
AJ Epstein, and another with TV writer Janis Hirsch for producer
Jayson Raitt. They write special material regularly for singers including
Kelli O'Hara (Lincoln Center American Songbook, Café Carlyle) and
Sutton Foster (Joe's Pub). And the duo co-created, with
Steve Rosen and
Sarah Saltzberg, the comedy improv variety show Don't Quit Your Night Job, which began at Joe's Pub in downtown NYC and has run off-Broadway in Times Square and at
The Zipper Theater.
David Rossmer holds a degree in theater from Penn State University. He composed music for the off-Broadway play Spain (SPF) and has performed numerously on and off- Broadway, in films and TV shows (Barrymore Award nominee, Nerds). Rossmer is author of the play When the Dog Comes Knockin' at Your Door and is developing a TV show with
Steve Rosen called SAY AH. Along with Lipton and filmmaker Jeff Yorkes, Rossmer co-wrote and produced the film A Bathroom Story, which won the Robot Media Film Festival. He is singer, songwriter and keyboardist for the rock band The Misconceptions, whose second album Super Orange Happy Sauce was just released.
Dan Lipton holds a degree in music composition from
Northwestern University. Lipton wrote music for the off-Broadway play Prometheus Bound (Aquila) and orchestrations for the musical Most Wanted (La Jolla). He performed onstage as music director of The Coast of Utopia (Lincoln Center), Herringbone (Williamstown, McCarter) and The Bridge Project (BAM, Old Vic). As a pianist, Lipton accompanies
Audra McDonald in concerts across the country. He also performs with
Kelli O'Hara as her music director/arranger. His solo albums -- ZEITGEIST, Life In Pictures and Travelogue - have earned four ASCAPlus Awards for Popular Music. He played on three Grammy-nominated albums: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Full Monty and
John Lithgow's Sunny Side of the Street.
AJ Epstein (Story, Producer)
AJ Epstein's company, The Ethereal Mutt - Limited produces theatre, music and indie film - often with an eye towards the exploration of Science through Art. Off Broadway:
Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree,
Mike Daisey's How Theatre Failed America, Regional and Touring: The
Flying Karamazov Brothers'; L'Universe; Starball; A Dreamy Musical Astronomy Show; Saving Tania's Privates; Muffin Face. TV and Film:
Lynn Shelton's We Go Way Back; Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain!;
Tim Crouch's England at the Henry; Survival Skills. In 2004, Seattle Weekly named him "Seattle's Best Lighting Designer", and his lighting works have been seen in theatres nationwide. He sits on the boards of The Lark Center for Play Development in New York and Humanities Washington. He studied with
Mabou Mines and toured with AC/DC,
Rod Stewart and the Eagles.
Photo Credit: Monica Simoes
