Axis Company to Present EVENING - 1910, 4/28-5/28

Playwright, songwriter and director Randy Sharp (Last Man Club, Edgar Oliver'sEast 10th Street and In the Park)and songwriter, guitarist and longtime Blondie member Paul Carbonara (Blondie) have teamed up again to create Evening - 1910, a new musical about an immigrant to 1910 New York and a Bowery theater facing eviction as the dawn of cinema becomes day. Axis Company, of which Sharp is the founding Artistic Director, will present the world premiere of the work April 28 - May 28.

Performances will take place April 28, May 4, 5, 12, 19, 25 & 26 at 7pm; and May 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, 21, 27 & 28 at 8pm. Critics are welcome May 5 at 7pm and May 6 & 7 at 8pm for an official opening May 8 at 7pm. Tickets are $15 for the April 28-30 performances and $40 ($30 students/seniors) for all others, and can be purchased at 212.807.9300 and www.axiscompany.org. Axis Theatre is located at 1 Sheridan Square in the heart of the West Village.

Evening - 1910 tells the story of Henry (Michael Sheehy), an Irish immigrant who comes to New York just as kinetoscopes to exhibit motion pictures are replacing the city's vaudeville shows. In a theater owned by George Spencer (James Scheider) and stage-managed by Frank (Justin McEllroy), the showgirls (Shira Averbuch, Lynn Mancinelli, Stephanie Lynne Mason and Katie Rose Summerfield) dream of a better life working in the garment factory nearby. Determined to become the new American success he has imagined, Henry is pulled by heart and hunger toward disparate and uncertain destinies, like a loving heiress' (Emily Kratter) fortune, a hopeful laborer's dignity, and flickering visions of greatness that yet persist in the darkness of our city.

This world premiere production features dramaturgy by Marc Palmieri, lighting design by David Zeffren, sound design by Steve Fontaine, costume design by Karl Ruckdeschel, set design by Chad Yarborough and choreography by Lynn Mancinelli. A band including Carbonara on guitar will perform his and Sharp's score live on stage.

To create Evening - 1910, Sharp and Carbonara took as their point of departure several songs from their 2014 Theatre: Village Festival offering, Solitary Light, amusical about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. They have written an entirely new narrative and added numerous new songs, and Sharp and the design team have devised a fresh production.

About Randy Sharp (Music & Lyrics, Director)

Randy Sharp is Axis Theatre Company's founder and Artistic Director. She has been writing and directing theater for 30 years. Her plays include the Drama Desk Award-nominated Last Man Club (published by DPS), Nothing on Earth, Down There, Seven in One Blow (published by DPS and performed every December in NYC and around the country) and Hospital, a long-running serial about the interior life of a man in a coma, which is a West Village phenomenon each summer. She wrote and directed The Vast Machine, about the dilemmas facing the crew of a slave ship at sea in the Middle Passage, in 2015.

Sharp's directing credits also include Last Man Club, Nothing on Earth, Down There, Seven in One Blow, Hospital, Edgar Oliver's East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House (Fringe First Award, Edinburgh Fringe; Spoleto Festival USA 2011) and In the Park, A Glance at New York (Edinburgh Fringe & NYC), Julius Caesar and the U.S premiere of Sarah Kane's Crave, starring Deborah Harry.

Paul Carbonara was born in Greenwich Village and has been a performing musician for 30 years. He was the guitarist and musical director for the seminal pop band Blondie from 1997 through 2010. Carbonara has performed with Ray Davies, Coolio, Jose Carreras and Chubby Checker, among others, and was the guitarist for the New York art rock Band Giant Metal Insects in the 1990s. He has composed music for three independent movie soundtracks, including Randy Sharp's Henry May Long and Jyllian Gunther's Pull Out. He has composed commercial jingles for Nickelodeon, SBLI and Waterworks. Paul composed music for the noted choreographer Robert Moses' work Faith and Fable, presented at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Carbonara performs and records with his own band The Mudlarks. He has also toured much of the world with the Mary McBride Band since 2010, travelling to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He is a graduate of NYU and studied with the noted jazz guitarist Sal Salvador.