Blake Daniel to Join Justin Vivian Bond in THE CLOCK OF THE LOCK at Players Club, 3/25

Blake Daniel (Spring Awakening) will join the cast of Justin Sayre's Play, The Click of the Lock. Daniel joins the cast already featuring Tony Nominated Downtown Performer Justin Vivian Bond, Zachary Booth (Damages, Keep the Lights On), Rob Maitner (Urinetown, NY Fringe Festival; Bistro Award for Fairy Tales at the WPA Theater), Brian Barefoot, Jax Jackson, Grant Chapman & Chris Tyler. The reading will be held at the Players Club (16 Gramercy Park South in Manhattan) at 8:00 PM, with a cocktail reception starting at 7pm. The play is the second production in The Players playwright development series. To reserve a seat, please contact clickofthelock@gmail.com

Set in Turn of the Century New York's Bowery, The Click of the Lock gives voice to what life was like in the "fairy resorts." Early predecessors of the gay bar, the resorts thrived from 1890 to roughly 1901 with such famous locales as Paresis Hall,(now the Village Voice Building) The Slide (lastly Kenny's Castaways), and Little Bucks. In the resorts young "fairies" with painted faces and affected lisps sold their wares to a diverse clientele of straight men and many of the resorts became popular stomping grounds for "Slumming tours" for New York's wealthiest. The Click of the Lock, takes place at the last of the fairy resorts, The Dream and follows Grace, a young fairy at the end of her

reign, she's turning 21. As Grace looks toward the future, she is stalked by an enemy from her past, Lillian Russell and is also confronted about her own ideas of love and possibility with a regular customer Daniel. The play deals with the invention of an identity as an individual practice but also as a group process, the rules we determine for ourselves and each other. With such self imposed boundaries where do we account for Love? for Hatred? for Hope?

The play was first read at The Cherry Lane Theater with Your Name Here Queer Theater Company. A second reading took place at LAByrinth Theater Company in partnership with Your Name Here. The first draft of the play was Finalist for The Eugene O'Neill Playwriting Festival in 2013.