AS WE LIE STILL to Make Southwest Premiere at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas

The Southwest Premiere of As We Lie Still adds cutting-edge production design to this spellbinding contemporary score that premiered at the New York Musical Theatre Fringe Festival in 2014.

The award-winning creative team on this production consists of director and Broadway veteran Michael Serrecchia, media projection designer Peter Rand, magic-man extraordinaire Trigg Watson, and composer Patrick Emile.

As We Lie Still opens October 28 and runs through November 20, 2016 at CTD. Performances are Thursdays at 7:30pm, Fridays at 8:00pm, Saturday Matinees at 3:00pm, Saturday Evenings at 8:00pm and Sunday Matinees at 2:00pm. Tickets: $10 - 40. Pay What Can Preview is Thursday, October 27. 2016 at 7:30pm. Order Online at www.contemporarytheatreofdallas.com/tickets-subscriptions or call the Box Office at 214-828-0094

As We Lie Still is a new musical about Avi Leiter, a magician in New York at the turn of the 20th century. His assistant, Josephine, is the key to his most astonishing trick. Together they rise to Vaudevillian fame - until the trick goes horrifyingly wrong. As We Lie Still is a double- knotted story of love and forgiveness, of life and death, of this world and the next.

Composed by Patrick Emile (2014 Frederick Loewe Award Winner), with book by Olivia de Guzman Emile, As We Lie Still was workshopped at Nouveau 47 in Dallas and at Western Kentucky University. It premiered Off-Broadway in 2014, at the Pearl Theatre, as an official selection of the New York Musical Theatre Festival.

In 2015, playwright and CTD Managing Director Miki Bone established the Incubator Series at the theatre with the goal of encouraging the development of emerging theatrical works - plays, musicals, and interdisciplinary creations. Composer Patrick Emile was invited to perform a showcase of his work, and the work of other area composers. Two selections from As We Lie Still were presented which led to a Second Staged singing of the entire work. With that, Bone convinced artistic director Sue Loncar to allow her to produce the work as part of the 2016 season.

As We Lie Still marks the second creative endeavor for Emile and Rand. Their first project was the stunning STARfield multimedia public artwork installed in 2011 at the Annette Strauss Square in Dallas, Texas.

STARfield multimedia public artwork installed at the Annette Strauss Square in Dallas, Texas. STARfield is part of Dallas' AURORA festival with support from the University of North Texas and the Dallas Arts District. In essence, STARfield is visual music sculpture. Inspired by the work's original score by Patrick Emile, STARfield visually and sonically interprets the evolution of how we have perceived the stars with a 15ft x 15ft sculpture that served as surface for custom projection mapping.

Patrick Emile is an award winning composer, arranger, lyricist, and multi-instrumentalist. His past work includes scoring and arranging for Happily Ever After, an official selection of The New York International Fringe Festival 2011, as well as Starfield, a collaborative large-scale visual music installation commissioned by The Dallas Arts District! More recently, Emile had the honor of participating in the New Dramatists 2014 Composer-Librettist Studio. In May 2014, Emile won the 2014 Frederick Loewe Award for Musical Theatre with collaborator, Carlos Murillo. He made his Off Broadway debut in summer 2014 with As We Lie Still, an official selection of The New York Musical Theatre Festival.

Emile's relationship with New Dramatists started when he was invited to participate in the 2014 Composer-Librettist Studio hosted by New Dramatists. That same year, he won The Frederick Loewe Award, which is under the stewardship of ND along with his collaborator Carlos Murillo. Carlos and Patrick then workshopped their musical The Ballad Hunters at New Dramatists in June supported by the Loewe Award. While Patrick is not a formal member of New Dramatists (a playwrighting residency program), he is grateful to be included in his capacity as a music composer.

Peter Rand (Media Designer) is an artist working with video, installation, interactive media, sculpture, socially engaged art, and performance. His work focuses on a variety of topics ranging from identity, urban spaces, technocentrism, synesthesia, and the absurd. He finds the multitude of possibilities within art-making too compelling to limit his practice to just one form, and continually seeks out new ways of exploring value and meaning within the places he finds himself. He has been a professional VJ, Americore volunteer, and has received a BFA in New Media Art from the University of North Texas, and an MFA from the Design | Media Arts department at UCLA. www.peterrandart.com

Michael Serrecchia (director) began his professional career began in modern and classical dance with the Jose Limon Youth Company and The Harkness Ballet in NYC. It was at Harkness House that he met and studied with the great American Jazz teacher Luigi. In NYC, he studied acting with Mary Tarcai (Stanislavski) and Fred Kareman (Meisner Technique, Neighborhood Playhouse) Voice with Sylvia Sirlya of the Metropolitan Opera and the famous Keith Davis. But mostly, his training came from the practical experience of performing on Broadway for 18 years, in many original Broadway Musicals. In 2011, Michael was selected for the Natalie Skelton Award for Artistic Excellence award for having "invested his life to artistry, teaching, and directing at a truly outstanding level." As an original cast member of A Chorus Line, Michael was part of American Musical Theatre History.

At 26 years old, Trigg Watson has wowed audiences from London to Las Vegas with his magic. He is a two-time winner of the Texas Magic Competition, and is Dallas's 2015 Magician of the Year. Last year he was selected to represent North America in the World Championships of Magic in Italy. He has appeared on Pop TV's "Don't Blink", Penn & Teller's national TV show "Fool Us," and most recently, "Masters of Illusion" on the CW. In addition to performing at corporate bookings and on cruise ships around the world, Trigg enjoys working as a magic consultant for other local theater companies, including PrismCo, Shakespeare Dallas, and Undermain. He is excited to be helping create magic for CTD's upcoming production of As We Lie Still.

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