Susan Louise O'Connor to Lead Readings of Wild Root Company's PERFECT ARRANGEMENT, 6/19

The Wild Root Company, a New York City-based production endeavor committed to cultivating new works from emerging playwrights and screenwriters, will present two free industry readings of Topher Payne's timely new comedy PERFECT ARRANGEMENTon Thursday June 19, 2014 at 3:00 and 7:30 pm at The Creative Center at Manhattan Theatre Club. Linda Lombardi, who helmed the play's critically acclaimed, sold-out world premiere at The Source Festival in Washington, D.C. in 2013, will direct. The Wild Root Company will produce the readings in association with Sean Hudock, Rocco Natale and Thatcher Stevens.

The cast of PERFECT ARRANGEMENT will feature Susan Louise O'Connor, who received a Theatre World Award, the Dorothy Loudon Broadway Debut Fellowship and an Outer Critics Circle Nomination for her Broadway debut in Blithe Spirit opposite Angela Lansbury, as well as members of the original Washington D.C. cast: Raven Bonniwell, Christine Callsen, Andrew Keller, Kiernan McGowan, Jill Nienhiser, Zach Brewster-Geisz.

In Topher Payne's PERFECT ARRANGEMENT two gay couples marry each other's partners and live next door to each other in a seemingly perfect picture of 1950's domestic bliss. But when the US government focuses on a new "threat" to national security, their perfect arrangement is in jeopardy. "It ends up being [about] how much you should disrupt your own existence for the sake of demanding something more." said Payne in a 2013 interview with The Washington Post. "And that's an argument we're still having"??Payne, an established theatre artist in the greater Atlanta theatre community, received the American Theatre Critics Association 2014 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play award for an emerging playwright forPerfect Arrangement. The award, which was presented on April 5 at the Humana Theater Festival at Actor's Theatre of Louisville, recognizes "the work of an author who has not yet achieved national stature." PERFECT ARRANGEMENT received its world premiere at 2013 The Source Festival in Washington, D.C. and was developed in 2008 by the Process Theatre Company's Plays-in-Process in Atlanta, Georgia. An earlier version of the script premiered in April 2009 under the direction of Barbara Cole Uterhardt.

The Creative Center at Manhattan Theatre Club is located at 311 West 43rd Street on the 8th Floor.

Industry folk who wish to reserve free seats for PERFECT ARRANGEMENT may do so by emailing wildrootcompany@gmail.com or by visiting www.WildRoot.org.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride