THIN WALLS to Close Kitchen Theatre Company's 2014-15 Season

Writer/performer Alice Eve Cohen, whose solo play What I Thought I Knew closed the 2012-2013 Kitchen Theatre Company season, is back with another play to close another successful season at the Kitchen. Thin Walls is a one-woman play set in a century-old New York City residential hotel, once elegant but now crumbling. This darkly humorous and moving play interweaves stories of the building's long-term residents, its recent arrivals, and its ghosts. Audiences who loved What I Thought I Knew will love this one too! Thin Walls opens for previews on June 10, press opening is on June 13, and performances run through June 28.

Alice Eve Cohen is a writer and solo theatre artist. Her new book, The Year My Mother Came Back, was published by Algonquin Books in March. Her first memoir, What I Thought I Knew (Viking / Penguin) won the Elle magazine Grand Prize for Nonfiction, Oprah Magazine's 25 Best Books of Summer, and Salon's Best Books of the Year. She has written for Nickelodeon, CTW, and CBS, and has toured her solo shows and plays to theatres, festivals and schools, nationally and internationally. Her essays and editorials have appeared in many print and online publications, and she is currently working on a YA novel. The recipient of fellowships and grants from the NYS Council on the Arts and the NEA, she has been a writer-in-residence at Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Voice & Vision's Envision Retreat, University of Michigan, and the Frank McCourt high school for writing and journalism. She has taught writing and performance workshops at schools and universities around the country. The founding editor of Play by Play, Theatre Development Fund's acclaimed theatre journal for teens, she holds a BA from Princeton University and an MFA from The New School. She teaches playwriting and creative writing at The New School and lives with her family in New York City.

Directing Thin Walls is Kitchen Theatre Company Artistic Director Rachel Lampert, a long time colleague and friend of Cohen's. "Working with Alice on this piece, I continue to be struck by her ability to bring nuance to each of the real-life people she inhabits. Her ear for dialect and her uncanny way of finding just the right gesture to show us an entire character are remarkable," says Lampert. "I have also always admired the efficiency of her writing: just enough to tell the story, just enough to make us laugh, or cry. I cherish the opportunity to work with a writer and performer like Alice."

Leading the design team is NYC-based lighting and scenic designer Tyler M. Perry. Perry's work at Kitchen Theatre Company includes: Count Me In, The House, Lungs, Venus in Fur, Crooked, Opus (Scenic & Lighting Designer); Lonely Planet, Slashes of Light, Heroes, What I Thought I Knew, The Motherf**ker with the Hat, The Whipping Man, Frankie and Johnny in the Clare de Lune, and The Mystery of Irma Vep (Lighting Designer). In NYC: The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Learned Ladies, The Crucible, Spring Awakening (Atlantic Acting School); A Man of No Importance (b-side Productions); The Sin Eater, As You Like It. Regionally, he designed Smokey Joe's Cafe (Hope Summer Repertory Theatre); Stage Kiss, Lend Me A Tenor, Into The Woods (Cider Mill Playhouse). Perry received Kitchen Theatre Company's Norma Fire Emerging Artist award for his work during the 2013-14 season. The costume design for Thin Walls is by Lisa Boquist, designer of many Kitchen Theatre Company productions, including, most recently, this season's A Body of Water and Sunset Baby. The Production Stage Manager is Jennifer Schilanksy.

Thin Walls is Underwritten by TRAVIS HYDE PROPERTIES and sponsored by Barry Chester and Elissa Cogan, with media sponsorship by WRVO Public Media.

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