Penny Fuller & Tony Roberts to Lead Reading of CHEZ RIKERS: AN URBAN FABLE at TNC

Theater for the New City and Executive Director Crystal Field present a public developmental reading of Chez Rikers: An Urban Fable, a new play by Charles Leipart, Tuesday, June 6 at 7PM at Theater for the New City (155 First Ave, between E. 9th & 10th streets).

Directed by Richard Sterne, the performance will feature Tony nominees Penny Fuller and Tony Roberts.

A social political comedy. A prison cell on Rikers Island. Meg and Sam Massey, a well-to-do couple in their 60s find themselves and their neighbors held in protective custody as Manhattan streets rage with fire bombs and police sirens. Meg and Sam are certain they will be placed in a limousine and returned to their Park Avenue apartment-as soon as the squatters are removed. In the meantime, they experience a decidedly unsentimental education in class distinctions and urban politics. But who gets the fine crystal, china, and the Van Goghs?

Completing the cast will be Sen Enver, Fenton Li, Rafa Nadal, and Gloria Sauve. This developmental reading of Chez Rikers: An Urban Fable is free and open to the public. (There is a suggested donation of $5.00 per person.) This developmental reading is part of the New City, New Blood reading series.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Penny Fuller (Meg Massey). Broadway: Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George with Jake Gyllenhaal; Neil Simon's The Dinner Party (TONY nomination); Barefoot In The Park; Cabaret; Rex and Applause(Tony nomination). LCT: A New Brain (Drama Desk nomination); An American Daughter; Ancestral Voices. Off-Broadway, London, LA, National tours, Regionals. TV: Five Emmy nominations, Emmy Award for "The Elephant Man." Cabaret: 54 Below, Birdland, the Metropolitan Room.

Tony Roberts (Sam Massey). Broadway: The Royal Family; Xanadu;The Tale of The Allergist's Wife; Victor/Victoria; Sugar; How Now, Dow Jones (TONY nomination); Play It Again, Sam (TONY nomination); and dozens others. Film: Annie Hall; Play It Again, Sam; Serpico; The Taking of Pelham...; Radio Days, 18 Again!; Star Spangled Girl; A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy; Switch; etc. TV: "The American Clock," "Seize the Day," "Rosetti and Ryan," "The Four Seasons." More than 50 audio books. Attended Manhattan's High School of Music and Art and Northwestern University.

Charles Leipart (Playwright). Cream Cakes in Munich, 1st Prize Award 2016 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. A Kind of Marriage, 2015 Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation LGBT Playwrighting Award. Swimming at the Ritz, his original portrait of Pamela Churchill Harriman was developed with award-winning BBC director David Giles, and supported by the Arts Council England. U.S. regional premiere 2015 at New Jersey Rep. Recognized for his writing in the musical theatre: Kleban Award as librettist for Showgirl of 52nd Street; Outstanding Lyrics for Frog Kiss, NYMF 2010, three-time finalist for the Fred Ebb Award. A former Fellow of the Edward F. Albee Foundation and member of the Dramatists Guild and ASCAP. www.charlesleipart.com

Richard Sterne (Director) has directed Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, Lord Byron's Love Letter, and Talk to Me Like The Rain. As a student of Marcel Marceau in Paris, he directed Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre and a 10-city tour of France. He has directed Shaw's Arms and the Man in both classic and updated productions. Richard is founder and coordinator of a Monday Play Reading Series at Saint Luke's Church on Restaurant Row, where he has directed Eugene O'Neill's Marco Millions, Victor Hugo's The King Amuses Himself, and Charles Leipart's Short Histories. At TNC, Full Moon; NYC Fringe Festival, Artaud Le Momo; author of Gielgud Directs Burton (Random House).

THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York's most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC's Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Vin Diesel, Oscar Nuñez, Laurence Holder, Romulus Linney and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, The Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and COBU, the Japanese women's drumming and dance group. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company's 1997 production of BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 42 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.