Get a Sneak Peek at Open Fist Theatre's THE GARY PLAYS - PART 3 This Summer

The Open Fist Theatre Company presents an 'Early Look' at the third installment of Murray Mednick's eight-play "Gary Plays" cycle, directed by Padua Playwrights Artistic Director Guy Zimmerman and playwright Murray Mednick.

Four performances of Part 3 (comprised of Mednick's Nightmare Audition, The Fool and the Red Queen and Charles' Story) will be presented on August 4, 5, 6, and 7 at the Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. in Los Angeles, paving the way for a full production of the entire octet in early 2017.

The first installment of the series featuring three performances of Mednick's Tirade For Three, parts of Gary's Walk and Girl on a Bed were presented together on December 4, 5 and 6 at the the Skylight Theatre in Los Angeles.

The second installment of the series featuring four performances Out Of The Blue Here and parts of Gary's Walk ) were presented on April 21, 22, 23 and 24 at the Greenway Court Theatre in Los Angeles.

"As Murray Mednick experiments with language... he is emblematic of a Los Angeles dramatic tradition in much the same way that Clifford Odets is identifiable with Gotham or David Mamet with Chicago," Bob Verini wrote in Variety in 2011.

In this final installation, Mednick experiments with archetypes to explore human nature and the processes of theater. Gary, a down-on-his-luck actor, finds himself at a nightmarish audition where we, the audience, discover the magical ability of theater to create new realities. Segueing directly into a darkly funny and improvised play-within-a-play-a love story in the tradition of Edward Albee's Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Wallace Shawn's Marie and Bruce, and Mednick's own Joe and Betty-The Fool and The Red Queen, like all the playwright's work, is driven by poetic impulse rather than linear story-telling. In Charles' Story, the final play in the cycle, Gary is working as a 'theater therapist' at a high-end rehab facility in Malibu, where he encounters figures from his past.

Taken as a whole, The Gary Plays presents a compelling portrait of economic and spiritual distress in the contemporary urban wilderness of the City of Angels. "Each of these plays is very different from the others stylistically, but they share a lyricism that is present in all my work," says Mednick. "For me, language has always been the essence of theater."

L.A. audiences were first introduced to Gary in 2003, when Padua presented the first three plays in the cycle, Tirade for Three, Gary's Walk and Girl on a Bed, in repertory ("one of the most engaging and ambitious local theater events of the past few seasons" - KCRW). The fourth play, Out of the Blue, premiered three years later ("Critic's Pick" - Back Stage), and DaddyO Dies Well ran in 2011 (full of vitality and truth"-EyeSpyLA). In 2012,The Nightmare Audition and The Fool and The Red Queen were combined into a single evening ("Critic's Choice" - Los Angeles Times). The entire octet is published by TCG (Theatre Communications Group) in a single volume titled Beneath the Dusty Trees, The Gary Plays by Murray Mednick.

Mednick, a pioneer of the Off and Off-Off Broadway movements in the '60s and '70s and playwright-in-residence for Theater Genesis, wrote such ground-breaking works as The Hawk, The Hunter, Sand, Are You Lookin' andThe Deer Kill (1970 OBIE Award for Outstanding Play), and was the founder/artistic director of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival in Los Angeles from 1978 to 1995. He is the recipient of two Rockefeller Foundation grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Theatre Critics Association Best New Play citation (for Joe and Betty), a Career Achievement Award from the LA Weekly, an Ovation Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to Los Angeles Theater from the L.A. Stage Alliance, a Local Hero Award from Back Stage West.

THE GARY PLAYS - PART 3 will perform on Thursday, August 4 at 8pm; Friday, August 5 & Saturday, August 6 at 8PM, and Sunday, August 7 at 3pm at the Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. in Los Angeles, 90039. Tickets are $20. Preview Tickets are $10. For tickets and details, visit www.openfist.org.

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