Cheeky Black Comedy SINGLE DEAD FEMALE By Lana Schwartz Comes to TNC Dream Up Fest

At the peak of the true crime boom in a world oversaturated in podcasts, "Single Dead Female," a cheeky black comedy by Lana Schwartz reveals an unconventional way in which a true crime podcast host can find her edge. When her intern accidentally kills a hot, young woman, the two conclude they have no choice but to use her as their subject. Will their listeners discover the truth? Find out, right after this ad for Harry's Razors. Theater for the New City's Dream Up Festival will present the comedy August 26 to September 16.

Taryn is the host of Single Dead Female, a mildly popular true crime podcast that runs ads between every sentence so it can stay afloat. Competing against true crime giants like Serial and Making a Murderer, Taryn finds herself without a buzzy subject, a.k.a. a dead white woman, for her new season. Opportunity seems to fall in Taryn's lap when one day a young, blonde college woman named Caroline charges into the studio and grabs Taryn's intern, Max, by the throat, accusing her of sleeping with her boyfriend. After an altercation that ends with Max inadvertently killing Caroline with a dictionary, Taryn convinces Max that Caroline would be a perfect subject for the next season of the podcast.

However, without much content to offer on the case, or any new developments to investigate due to the uselessness and frat-brother maturity of the local police force, the podcast starts losing traction. Moreover, Max finds herself haunted by the ghost of Caroline and grows increasingly more anxious. Taryn and Max have a decision to make: is a clean conscience and going down in true crime history worth the time in prison? The charmingly crude and hilariously ridiculous piece satirizes the moral bankruptcy of society and draws attention to our own consumerism at the expense of human lives.

Lana Schwartz (author) is a New York City writer. She currently contributes to The Whiskey Journal and has previously written for The New Yorker, StarWipe, The Hairpin, and other sites around the internet. She has also written for the sketch teams 17:38 and Deathbird. You can find her performing with her indie improv team The Feds, or in the Nanners Comedy videos she and her partner-in-comedy, Ilana Michelle Rubin, create. They also host the monthly variety show My Hometown (a 2018 Official New York Television Selection) and an Annual Chanukahstravangza show that was selected as a critic's pick in the New York Times. By day, Schwartz is a writer at an environmental non-profit, which means she is liable to bring up climate change at any given moment. (Twitter: @_lanabelle)

Originally from Wisconsin, Becky Chicoine (director) is an actor, comedian and writer living in Brooklyn. She can currently be seen in "Famous Male Duo" and "O.S.F.U.G.," two sketch comedy shows at the UCB Theatre, and in a monthly character variety show she co-hosts with SNL's Sudi Green. She is one half of the comedy group Girls With Brown Hair. They've had three running sketch shows at UCB and toured sketch festivals across the U.S. including Chicago, Austin, Seattle, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. Coming from a musical theater background, Chicoine graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She's created and starred in several web series which have been featured on Splitsider, Mashable, College Humor, and Funny or Die. She appears in comedy sketches for Above Average and Refinery 29. She performed characters in the "Comedy Central Comics to Watch" and "I'm Cool" showcases at UCB theatre.

The actors are Kourtni Beebe, Claire Burns, Becky Chicoine, Lida Darmian, Ariel Gitlin, and Ilana Michelle Rubin. Music is composed by Pat Wise and graphic design is by Cory Palmer.

The ninth annual Dream Up Festival (www.dreamupfestival.org) is being presented by Theater for the New City from August 26 to September 16. An ultimate new work festival, it is dedicated to the joy of discovering new authors and edgy, innovative performances. Audiences savor the excitement, awe, passion, challenge and intrigue of new plays from around the country and around the world.

The festival does not seek out traditional scripts that are presented in a traditional way. It selects works that push new ideas to the forefront, challenge audience expectations and make us question our understanding of how art illuminates the world around us.

In addition to traditional plays, a unique and varied selection of productions will again be offered, drawing upon a variety of performance genres including musicals, puppetry and movement theater. The Festival's founders, Crystal Field and Michael Scott-Price, feel this is especially needed in our present time of declining donations to the arts, grants not being awarded due to market conditions, and arts funding cuts on almost every level across the country and abroad.