Phoenix Theatre to Stage NNPN Rolling World Premiere of DOGS OF RWANDA

Phoenix Theatre of Indianapolis announces the National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere of Dogs of Rwanda opening January 6, 2017 on the Livia and Steve Russell Stage. This production runs through January 15, 2017, with Bryan Fonseca serving as director. Dogs of Rwanda is a one-man show featuring Rob Johansen as David.

In 1994, 16-year-old David found himself in Uganda as a church missionary. When he follows the girl of his dreams into the woods to help a Rwandan boy, he enters a world which he will never be able to fully leave behind. 20 years later, after writing a memoir of his experiences, David receives a note: "You didn't tell them everything." David is driven to return and discover if his dedication to his story obscured the truth he was - or wasn't - willing to see.

For 33 years, director Bryan Fonseca has served as the Producing Director of the Phoenix Theatre. He previously worked in Indianapolis as the Producing Director of the Broad Ripple Playhouse and the assistant to the Producing Director at the Civic Theatre of Indianapolis. He was a founder and first Artistic Director of The Company Players in his hometown of Gary, Indiana. Bryan has directed for the MFA Playwrights Workshop at the Kennedy Center, The Human Race Theatre, Indiana University, Ball State University, and the Civic Theatre of Indianapolis. Over the years, he has transferred six Phoenix shows to Chicago. Bryan has received an Achievement and Service award from the Indiana Theatre Association, two Artist Fellowship awards from the Indiana State Arts Commission and two Creative Renewal Fellowships from the Arts Council of Indianapolis/Lilly Endowment. He is the first recipient of the Transformational Impact Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, with the generous funding support of Lilly Endowment Inc. In addition to his work at the Phoenix, he is an adjunct professor at IUPUI and lectures frequently at Butler University and the University of Indianapolis. He has served on the board of the National New Play Network and developed and served as the first president of the League of Indianapolis Theaters.

Sean Christopher Lewis' plays and solo works have won the Kennedy Center's Rosa Parks Award, the National New Play Network's Smith Prize, the Barrymore Award, two Central Ohio Critic Circle Awards, the NEA Voices in Community Award, the Rick Graf Award from the Iowa Human Rights Commission, the NNPN Emerging Playwrights Residency and the William Inge Fellowship.

His solo pieces include Killadelphia (Institut Del Teatre in Barcelona Spain; Interact Theatre, Baltimore Centerstage; Available Light Theatre; Touchstone Theatre; American Theater Company; Riverside Theatre; upcoming: Next Theatre in Chicago; Imagining America National Conference in Atlanta, GA), Dogs of Rwanda (Legion Arts; Available Light Theatre; Horizon Theatre; Ojai Playwrights Conference; upcoming: Redfern Performing Arts Center), JUST KIDS (Sandglass Theatre; KO Festival of Performance; Available Light Theatre; Revolutions International Theatre Festival) and I Will Make You Orphans (Uno Festival of Solo Performance; Hyde Park Theatre; Riverside Theatre).

He can be heard on NPR'S This American Life and his first film These Hopeless Savages is playing film festivals around the country.

Tickets for Dogs of Rwanda are on sale now. A second Sunday performance at 5 pm has been added on January 8 and 15. There are no Thursday performances for this production. Tickets are $27.00 per person on Sundays, $33.00 per person on Fridays and Saturdays, and $20.00 for anyone 21 & under. Tickets for Dogs of Rwanda may be purchased by calling the box office at 317-635-7529 or visiting phoenixtheatre.org. Curtain times for the production are: Fridays at 8 pm, Saturdays at 8 pm, and Sundays at 2 pm and 5 pm.

The National New Play Network (NNPN) is the country's alliance of non-profit professional theaters dedicated to the development, production, and continued life of new plays. Since its founding in 1998, NNPN has supported more than 150 productions nationwide through its innovative National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere program, which provides playwright and production support for new works. Additional programs - its annual National Conference, National Showcase of New Plays, and MFA Playwrights Workshop; the NNPN Annual and Smith Prize commissions; its residencies for playwrights, producers and directors; and the organization's member accessed Collaboration, Festival, and Travel banks, and online information sessions - have helped cement the Network's position as a vital force in the regional theater landscape. NNPN's programming allows its members and their affiliated artists to create, grow, and share new work across the country and around the world, and it strives to pioneer, implement, and disseminate ideas and programs that revolutionize the way theaters collaborate to support new plays and playwrights. Its most recent project, The New Play Exchange (www.newplayexchange.org), launched in January of 2015, is already changing the way playwrights share their work and others discover it. NNPN's 31 Core and more than 65 Associate and University Members - along with the more than 250 affiliated artists who are its alumni, the thousands of artists and artisans employed annually by its member theaters, and the hundreds of thousands of audience members who see its supported works each year - are creating the new American theater. For more information, visit www.nnpn.org.

The Phoenix Theatre is Indiana's only professional Contemporary Theatre, and has presented productions to challenge and entertain the Indianapolis community for over 32 years. An Equity house, the Phoenix presents the Midwest and Indiana premieres of many popular Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, and has presented more than 91 world premieres. The Phoenix operates the 130-seat proscenium Livia and Steve Russell Stage as well as the 75-seat cabaret-style black box Frank and Katrina Basile Stage. Both venues are housed along with administrative offices in a renovated 1907 church in downtown Indianapolis' historic Chatham Arch neighborhood, part of the Mass Ave Arts and Culture District. The Phoenix Theatre is a founding member of the National New Play Network and the League of Indianapolis Theatres, and is supported by the Indiana Arts Commission, the Arts Council of Indianapolis, and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as local corporate and foundation funders and more than 400 individual donors.

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