Ensemble Studio Theatre's Obie-Award winning EST/Youngblood program for emerging playwrights follows the success of their last two productions (the award-winning Year of the Rooster and the Broadway-bound Hand to God) with the world premiere of Five Times In One Night by Chiara Atik, directed by R.J. Tolan.
Five Times In One Night, a comic survey of sexual relations throughout human history, features actors Dylan Dawson and Darcy Fowler playing five different couples in five different time periods. Previews begin Thursday, February 12, at 7:00pm for an opening Saturday, February 14, at 7:00pm at Ensemble Studio Theatre, 549 West 52nd Street. Five Times In One Night runs through March 21.
Playwright Chiara Atik, known for her handbook Modern Dating: A Field Guide (Harlequin, 2013), had a breakout hit last year with Women, her mash-up play of
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and HBO's Girls. The play was a New York Times Critics' Pick and was named "highbrow brilliant" in New York magazine's Approval Matrix en route to extended runs in New York and Los Angeles. Even given that background, she says the play surprised her.
"I actually kind of can't believe I wrote this play, because I'm definitely pretty uptight when it comes to talking about sex!" says Atik. "But sex has always been hard for people to discuss, and that, I guess, is what I thought could be fun to explore. If you really had to have sex with the last man on earth, how would you, like... bring it up? Sex is the most natural, fundamentally human act in the world, and yet... so terrible and awkward to talk about!"
"Sex carries so much importance in our lives," adds director
R.J. Tolan. "It costs us so much psychic energy, but we only talk about it in these weird, limited, ways and we tie ourselves in such knots about it. And Chiara captures the comedy and the heartbreak of that so perfectly."
According to EST Artistic Director
William Carden, the play fits as the next step in Atik's already wide-ranging body of work. "Over her time in Youngblood, we've seen Chiara rise from a promising talent to an accomplished writer with a world view unlike any I know. As an author, journalist, screenwriter, and playwright, she confronts modern problems of the heart in a fresh, funny, unconventional way. Five Times is the best use of those skills we've seen yet. When a writer that talented brings in a script this good, you jump on it. You don't wait."
Slated to run in EST's intimate 6th floor studio space, Five Time In One Night was fostered through the theatre's company-based aesthetic. Both cast members,
Dylan Dawson and Darcy Fowler, are fellow playwright members of Youngblood with Atik, and Tolan has been co-Artistic Director of the group since 2003. All have been working with Atik on the piece since she first got the idea.
Carden points out this close collaboration is what EST does best.
"If you look at the work coming out of this theatre over the last five years, whether it's Hand to God or Year of the Rooster or (Drama Desk nominee) Finks, there's a shorthand and trust that comes from actors and writers and directors working together again and again and again," he says. "Chiara, R.J., Dylan and Darcy know each other so well, they can take chances and play to each other's strengths. It's exactly the right group for this play's sideways, irreverent brand of intimacy."
