Kenny Leon's True Colors Theatre Company's AMERICAN BUFFALO Begins Tonight

Artistic Director Kenny Leon and True Colors Theatre Company are proud to announce its production of the award winning drama AMERICAN BUFFALO by David Mamet.

Directed by former Milwaukee Repertory Theatre Artistic Director John Dillon, the play will star actors Neal Ghant, G. Valmont Thomas, and Garrett Gray in the play that put David Mamet on the map as a major American playwright when it appeared on Broadway in 1977, three small time criminals' work together to pull off one big time heist. Winner of the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play. Running tonight, February 9, through March 6, 2016 at Fulton County's Southwest Arts Center's Performance Theater.

Set in an urban junk shop, three small-time crooks make plans to rob a man of his coin collection, including what they believe to be an extremely valuable "Buffalo nickel." However, as the night goes on, motivations change, loyalties squirm and shift and paranoia rises to generate heart-pounding drama. Contains Adult Language. Recommended Ages 15+.

AMERICAN BUFFALO will be in preview performances February 9 - 11, 2016 at 8 PM. Opening night is February 12, 2016 and the show is running through February 22, 2015. Performances during the run are Wednesday - Saturday at 8 PM and Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 PM. All performances will be presented at Fulton County's Southwest Arts Center's Performance Theater at 915 New Hope Rd, Atlanta, GA 30331.

Tickets and Season Subscriptions are available by contacting Ticket Alternative at 1.877.725.8849 or www.ticketalternative.com or through the True Colors website at www.truecolorstheatre.org.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

DAVID MAMET is the author of the plays: Race, Keep Your Pantheon, School, November, Romance, Boston Marriage, Faustus, Oleanna, Glengarry Glen Ross (1984 Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle Award), AMERICAN BUFFALO, The Old Neighborhood, A Life in the Theatre, Speed-the-Plow, Edmond, Lakeboat, The Water Engine, The Woods, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Reunion and The Cryptogram (1995 Obie Award). His translations and adaptations include: Faustus and Red River by Pierre Laville; and The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov. His films include: The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Verdict, The Untouchables, House of Games (writer/director), Oleanna (writer/director),Homicide (writer/director), The Spanish Prisoner (writer/director), Heist (writer/director), Spartan (writer/director) and Redbelt (writer/director). Mr. Mamet is also the author of: Warm and Cold, a book for children with drawings by Donald Sultan, and two other children's books, Passover and The Duck and the Goat; Writing in Restaurants, Some Freaks, and Make-Believe Town, three volumes of essays; The Hero Pony and The China Man, a book of poems; Three Children's Plays, On Directing Film, The Cabin, and the novels The Village, The Old Religion and Wilson. His most recent books include the acting books, True & False and Three Uses of the Knife. Glengarry Glen Ross was awarded the Tony® Award for Best Revival of a Play in 2005.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

JOHN DILLON has staged productions at leading theaters in England, Russia, Egypt and Japan and has directed new works by such noted playwrights as David Mamet, Romulus Linney, Larry Shue, Ariel Dorfman, Y York, Israel Horovitz, Joanna Glass, David Rambo, Anthony Clarvoe and Amlin Gray. He's worked at over two dozen of the country's leading regional theaters, including the Alliance Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Syracuse Stage, Georgia Shakespeare, Chapel Hill's PlayMakers Rep, the Missouri Rep, D.C.'s Arena Stage, Chicago's Goodman Theatre, New Haven's Long Wharf, Seattle's ACT Theatre, the Seattle Children's Theatre, the Berkeley Rep, Portland's Artist Repertory Theatre and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (where his staging of WIT won him a BackstageWest Garland Award). Although he makes his home in Seattle, John is also the Associate Director of Tokyo's Institute of Dramatic Arts, where his productions have twice won Japan's highest theater award. He's the Founding President of Theatre Puget Sound and he's a core member of Seattle's Endangered Species Project. From 1977 to 1993 he was the Artistic Director of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater and during his time there launched a number of innovative exchanges with theater companies in Mexico, Russia, Ireland, Chile, Japan and England. From 2004 to 2010 he served as the director of the theatre program at Sarah Lawrence College and he works regularly as a guest artist at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts. Dillon is a fellow in the College of Fellows of the American Theatre and a member of the National Theatre Conference. He is a Danforth and Woodrow Wilson fellow with graduate degrees in theater from Columbia and Northwestern Universities. Oh yes, and he had a burger named after him at a restaurant in Baltimore.

CAST

NEAL GHANT (Henry Brown) Regional credits include: Glenn Gary Glenn Ross, A Christmas Carol, Shakespeare's R&J (Alliance Theatre); Bus Stop, A Life in the Theatre, Tradin' Paint (Theatre in the Square); Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Nights Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Titus Andronicus (Georgia Shakespeare Festival). Film credits include "Remember the Titans". He is currently Head Artistic Consultant for Giddeon Games, a company he and a childhood friend have built from the ground up. He also spends many a late weekend night performing hip hop music with his band Phace Oricalz.

G. VALMONT THOMAS has recently returned to Seattle after 13 seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. During his time away from Seattle, he has worked as a director and teacher of theatre on many projects including "The Art of the Director" at Southern Oregon University Theatre Department, "Sonnets and Rhetoric" at the SOU Center for Shakespeare Studies, Directing Artist-taught workshops for schools at OSF's Shakespeare Institute, and MFA actor training at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A narrator of audiobooks as well, he has voiced James Sallis's six book Lew Griffin series, Ron Hansen's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and a part of Roberto Balaño's crime/mystery masterpiece 2666. He recently gave voice to the late Manning Marable's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Malcolm X, Malcolm: A Life of Re-Invention.

Garrett Gray is stoked to be making his True Colors Debut. Previous Atlanta Credits: Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, Macbeth (The Atlanta Shakespeare Co.); Urinetown: the Musical (Fabrefaction Theatre Co.); Blood Will Out (New Origins Theatre Co.). Film & Television: Dan Pritzker's "Bolden!" & "USA's Necessary Roughness". He currently resides as a Company Member with The Brickabrack Ensemble of New York City.

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