Marina & Nicco's New Comedy About Race, ROOM 4, Comes to The PIT

ROOM 4, a new play by Marina & Nicco (runtime 1 hour), comes to The PIT, (123 East 24th Street, by Lexington Avenue) Sunday, May 22nd - 7:00pm; Thursday, May 26th - 9:30pm; and Friday, May 27th, 2016.

The Academy Awards has a race problem. It's big. But the four black actors in Room 4 aren't particularly concerned with that, because they have a much bigger problem at hand. They've just realized they're stuck in a time loop, auditioning for the same "Drug Dealer #2" role over and over. What once felt like a messed- up metaphor has become a literal existential nightmare. Get them out of there.

Marina & Nicco's new play, Room 4, is like "Waiting for Godot" meets "A Chorus Line" meets "Groundhog's Day" meets "the real-life experience of virtually every black actor in America." It's funny, but a little angry, but mostly funny.

About Marina & Nicco's Residency - Comedy duo Marina & Nicco are thrilled to be in the midst of their ambitious six- month playwriting residency at The PIT, in which they write and produce a brand new play every month through June 2016.

"In the comedy world, putting on monthly shows is a standard practice. In this six- month residency, we're really merging the depth and rigor of live theater with the producibility of the comedy world," says Tempelsman. "And by doing so, we're really creating extraordinarily diverse and immersive pieces."

Whether having an audience light a ghost play using flashlights or depicting five black actors caught in the existential loop of auditioning for the same token drug dealer role, each play explores narrative and space in fresh new ways.

"Seeing a Marina & Nicco show is like walking through a mysterious doorway, and finding yourself in a world that looks and feels just like your own, but...different. Like Pinkerton, the seminal Weezer album, or Warhol's Factory, every Marina & Nicco work is a series of small, gleeful surprises, each of which opens up a whole new realm of hilarious weird. This residency was built around finding a way for these two to one-up themselves over and over again, and I can't wait to see what kind of impossible they shake out on our stages for these six glorious months." ~ Kevin Laibson, Artistic Director of The PIT

For more information, visit www.marinaandnicco.com.

About Marina & Nicco - Like The PIT itself, Marina & Nicco's work is genre-bending, engrossing, and hilarious, creating not just great comedy but addictively compelling
stories. They've written feature films, shorts, plays, and an original eight-episode radio series. Whatever the project, they craft deeply original stories and create a unique relationship with the audience that fully capitalizes on whatever medium they're writing in. In 2016, they'll create six exciting original projects for The PIT.

Marina Tempelsman and Niccolo Aeed have written and performed together since 2006. As the duo "Marina & Nicco" they've been featured on Comedy Central, The New Yorker's "Shorts and Murmurs," Funny or Die, and were recently finalists in the LA Film Festival "Make Em LAFF" competition. They perform regularly at major New York comedy theaters, having had runs at The PIT and The Treehouse Theater, as well as several shows at The UCB, and have appeared at many other venues across around the East Coast. They co- wrote the feature film "Delusions of Guinevere," which was called "a surprisingly dark satire of modern celebrity" by The Village Voiceand "sly and smart" by The New York Times. They have also written several pilots, a radio play series, and a number of one-act plays. They recently wrote for Morgan Spurlock's "Call Bullshit" series about the presidential debates, and are currently working on videos for The New Yorker.

Niccolo Aeed is a writer and director. Nicco has directed numerous plays across the city including, Abraham's Daughters, The ToyMaker, and W.R.E.X. He wrote and directed the short film How People Die and is currently developing the feature film Where Did You Go on Saturdays? He also writes and develops educational video games for Amplify Education which have been featured in the New York Times.

Marina Tempelsman, a New York based writer and performer, has co-written several original pilots and a feature screenplay with Niccolo Aeed. In the summer of 2010 Marina was a Guest Artist at the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive, where she studied with Theresa Rebeck, Marsha Norman, David Ives, Jason Robert Brown, Gary Garrison, and Heather McDonald, among others. She currently writes for the UCBT Maude team "Lover," as well as the critically- acclaimed Livia Scott Sketch Program (also at The UCBT).