Cast Announced for Mac Rogers' UNIVERSAL ROBOTS at The Sheen Center, 6/3-26

Gideon Productions will proudly present at The Sheen Center (18 Bleecker Street between Bowery and Lafayette) - UNIVERSAL ROBOTS, a science fiction epic from acclaimed playwright Mac Rogers (The Honeycomb Trilogy; The Message Podcast) inspired by Karel Capek's seminal 1921 play R.U.R. The production, directed byJordana Williams (The Honeycomb Trilogy; Asymmetric at 59E59), will run June 3-26 with performances Thursday through Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 2pm, and Monday at 8pm with additional performances on Wednesday, June 15 & 22 at 8pm. Tickets ($25) are available online at http://sheencenter.org or by calling OvationTix at866-811-4111.

UNIVERSAL ROBOTS offers a compelling alternate history of the Twentieth Century, imagining the invention of the robot in 1921 Czechosolvakia and chronicling the shocking consequences of that invention right up to the present day.

The cast will feature Nikki Andrews-Ojo (The Death of Papa with PlayMaker's Repertory Company), Greg Oliver Bodine* (Poe, Times Two with Cape May Stage; The Baltimore Walz with Retro Productions), Hanna Cheek* (The Pumpkin Pie Show; GOODBAR at The Public), Jorge Cordova* (Family Play with CollaborationTown),Tandy Cronyn* (NYIT Nominee for Old Familiar Faces), Neimah Djourabchi* (Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G with Vampire Cowboys), Jason Howard* (NYIT Nominee for Universal Robots in 2009; Advance Man in 2012), Tarantino Smith* (Invisible Man with American Place Theatre; Songs of Love at FringeNYC), Sara Thigpen* (NYIT Award for Burning the Old Man with Boomerang Theatre Company), and Brittany N. Williams* (Bob Marley's Three Little Birds with New Victory).*Appearing courtesy of the Actors' Equity Association

The creative team will include Costume Design by Amanda Jenks (Assistant Designer on School of Rock on Broadway), Props Design by Mozz Mendez (MossleStead), Sound Design by Jeanne Travis (Utility with Amoralists Theatre Company at Rattlestick), Lighting Design by Jennifer Wilcox (Playlab NYC), and Set Design bySaundra Yaklin (The Sand Box).

GIDEON PRODUCTIONS crafts gripping plays that explore human grace and darkness, through the kaleidoscope of popular genre forms and other cultural touchstones. We reject the notion that thrills are cheap or that big ideas are boring. We explore what's strange about being human and what's human about being strange, using thrilling entertainment as a delivery system for challenging stories that take on religion, sexuality, politics, compulsion, popular culture, and the often strange bonds that tie people together in a rapidly changing world. We honor the time our audiences and collaborators devote to our productions and seek to deliver the utmost quality in experience and content.

THE SHEEN CENTER FOR THOUGHT & CULTURE Named after the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, best known for his popular radio and TV ministry in the 1950s and 60s, The Sheen Center is a project of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and showcases works that affirm the highest values of the human spirit through the performing and visual arts, lectures and exhibits. The state-of-the-art complex has a 270-seat proscenium theater equipped with five-camera high-definition Livestream capability and a multi-track recording studio with thirty-two onstage inputs; an 80-seat black box theater; four rehearsal studios; and an art gallery.