TALMADGE & RAY Receives Dixon Place Reading

Dixon Place presents a one-night-only reading of excerpts from the new play Talmadge & Ray, written and performed by Andy Nagraj and Jonathan Spivey on August 3rd at 7:30 PM. Talmadge & Ray is the first work by the writing team that the pair also perform themselves.

Talmadge Fox, the flamboyant and outspoken musical director for the First Baptist Church of Stillwater, is preparing for his usual Wednesday night choir practice when a broken toilet threatens to flush his rehearsal down the drain. No-nonsense plumber and family man Ray Patel breaks the news that the repair is going to take an extra week, and suddenly these two very different men are spending more time together than either ever hoped for. Set in the fictional Southern town of Stillwater, this irreverent peek into a modern day Mayberry honors the Southern Gospel musical tradition while exploring a budding friendship between two black sheep who have more in common than they think.

Though the play is not autobiographical, the fictional town of Stillwater where Talmadge & Ray is set is inspired by the towns in Virginia where Spivey and Nagraj grew up as well as the fictional town of Mayberry from The Andy Griffith Show. Nagraj remarks, "It's important today for people with different views of the world to hear each other. And we've always enjoyed bringing people together with music and comedy." Spivey adds, "We're using classic sitcom humor and the music of small Southern churches to examine our differences."

Nagraj and Spivey began writing this piece just before the presidential primaries in 2016 and originally performed a staged reading of the two-hander for a select audience in August 2017 at A.R.T. in New York City. This forty-five minute reading of excerpts at Dixon Place is the culmination of a year of significant edits including streamlining the show into an eighty-five minute one-act.

Andy Nagraj is a Chicago-based actor who recently appeared in the world premiere of Matthew-Lee Erlbach's The Doppelgänger at Steppenwolf Theatre directed by Tina Landau and starring Rainn Wilson, as well as the world premiere of Lauren Gunderson's The Book of Will at the Denver Center directed by Davis McCallum. Jonathan Spivey is a New York City based actor having appeared most recently Off Broadway in Summer and Smoke at Classic Stage Company (co-produced by Transport Group), in the NYMF production of the new musical '68, as well as on Broadway in The Front Page directed by Jack O'Brien and Act One at Lincoln Center directed by James Lapine.

Dixon Place is a New York City-based non-profit organization "founded in 1986 to provide a space for literary and performing artists to create and develop new works in front of a live audience." Their mission is "to support and nurture the development of new work and work in progress from diverse artists."

Dixon Place is located at 161A Chystie Street. 45 minutes. $13 in advance, $15 at the door. For more information and tickets, visit www.dixonplace.org or call (212) 219-0736.