Watermark Ensemble Presents A Staged Reading of Roberts Manns' YORKTOWN 9/21

The Watermark Ensemble will present a staged reading of Yorktown by Roberts Manns, on Monday, September 21st @ 7pm at the Theatre at St. Luke's (308 West 46th Street). Directing the reading will be Eric C. Dente, Ensemble Director.

Featured in the cast are Christine Marie Brown (Henry IV at Lincoln Center), Patrick Cummings (Paper Mill, Pittsburgh CLO), Antony Hagopian (Frost/Nixon - Broadway & Tour), Andrew Kaempfer (Film-Cadillac Records, Revolutionary Road, The Squid and the Whale), k.c. keene (Watermark Ensemble, Manhattan Theatre Source, The National Tennessee Williams Festival, Provincetown Playhouse), Tom O'Neill (Playwright's Horizons), Jeffrey Evan Thomas (The Ritz - Broadway/Dir: Joe Mantello).

Director Eric C. Dente is a founding member & Ensemble Director of The Watermark Ensemble, a theatre director, award-winning playwright & theatrical sound designer. Eric was apprenticed to Christopher Selbie, former Associate Artistic Director of The Old Vic Theatre & an award winning West End director, where he learned the skills requisite to dedicate himself to a career in the theatre. Eric's past appointments & Artistic Directorships include Resident Director of The New York Drama Garden New Play Development, Associate Artistic Director of The Denver Civic Theatre & Artistic Director of Compass Theatre Company. Eric is a member of The Dramatist's Guild & his New York directing credits include Brother, Mine at Manhattan Theatre Source; Say You Love Me at American Theatre of Actors; A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sandy Shores Shenanigans & The Canterbury Tales at New York Theatre Arts Center; & Six Passionate Women, The Factory Girls & Fen at The Stella Adler Studio.

Robert Manns is the author of fifteen full length plays & more than 30 one acts. After studying philosophy & creative writing at Wayne State University, he began his theatre experience at World Stage in Detroit on the production end: light and sound. In 1949, at 21 years of age, he opened the Lyric Theatre in downtown Detroit with productions of Shaw & Ibsen. Venturing to New York with his first finished one-act, Pygmalion & Galatea & after completing two more, Alan Schneider found a place for them with Lucille Lortel at her White Barn Theater in Westport, CT, with a young John Astin as the director. Next his one-act, The Useless Man & the Useful Man, was performed at the Actors Repertory Theatre of Third Street, in New York. He left New York for Florida in 1960, followed by Atlanta, spending three years with the National Audubon Society as its Southeastern Representative, a great influence on the wildlife imagery in his plays. He was also Director of Callenwolde Art Center & Playwriting, later serving as an administrator & teacher at the Atlanta College of Art. His productions include Night of the Frogs (1971); The Hedonists (1993); a reading at the Georgia Ensemble Theatre of The Lincoln Plays, Part I & II (1994); The Rats (1996) & a staged reading of his epic piece, Lincoln I & Lincoln II at the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern (1996). In 2004, The Neighborhood Playhouse presented a costumed reading of Lincoln in the White House. In Maine, where he currently resides, his productions include The Pendulum Swings in Belfast, The Swan That Slept, One Manns' Maine & a costumed reading of Yorktown at the Knox Mansion in Thomaston.

DATE: Monday, September 21st @ 7pm

THEATRE: Theatre at St. Luke's

308 West 46th Street @ 8th Ave.

RSVP: The Watermark Ensemble (212)501-4811