IN FOR A PENNY Comes to Hollywood Fringe

Central City Productions has announced the world-premiere of Crystal Keith’s In For A Penny at the 2024 Hollywood Fringe Festival. In For A Penny is a time-smashing thriller that puts a modern day forensic criminologist at a Jack the Ripper crime scene, sending him veering through centuries to catch the original serial killer. With a vicious streak and a heavy dose of humor, In For A Penny examines the Ripper victims from a feminist perspective and explores the complexity of surviving as a woman in a man's world. In For A Penny is directed by Jacob Sidney and will run for six performances at The Broadwater Blackbox this June.

About the Show

In For A Penny is an exercise in juxtaposition; A realistic story based on the fantastical premise of time travel. The story is a feminist take on legendary violence that's fun to watch. A thriller that gets laughs. In For A Penny was born as a storyline in Sacred Fool’s Serial Killers at The Hollywood Fringe Festival: an episodic theater tournament, in which audience votes determined which stories survived into each succeeding round. Penny made it to the semi- finals before bowing out and has haunted its author ever since. As the world grows increasingly hostile to women, this story's response grows louder. Friends, family, supporters, and collaborators have all come together to help the team realize this purpose - to tell this story at this critical moment in history. "The more we work on these human beings surrounding the omnipresent Jack, the more I see them as representing us - women, cis men, marginalized/ostracized people (be they trans, poor, etc) - navigating our way through systemic, sometimes violently enforced patriarchy.” says director Jacob Sidney. “It gives murder podcasts and third-wave feminism in a package that's thrilling, sexy, and under an hour."

Who

Writer and actor Crystal Keith is a Los Angeles native who did her theatre training at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, England. Upon returning home, she embarked upon an obsessive love affair with Los Angeles’ intimate theatre scene, appearing in a vast array of world premieres, improv/sketch shows, and overnight theatre festivals. Notable projects: Louis and Keely: Live At The Sahara (in which she played the role of Keely Smith for 21 performances at The Geffen Playhouse), The Burning Opera LA (in which she acted, sang, and played bass and piano, within a living recreation of Burning Man, in a cavernous loft on a sketchy block of Downtown LA), and Model Behavior (her eighth collaboration with Theatre Movement Bazaar which was featured in the NOW Festival at REDCAT). Also active in her local music scene, she sang lead and backing vocals for the bands Throttle Back Sparky and The Honeysuckle Jones Revival, appearing at SXSW, the IPO, and Topanga Days, while moonlighting as a studio session vocalist and voiceover artist. This is her third appearance at Fringe but her first standalone production as a playwright. She is currently working on a full length ghost story set in a bygone Los Angeles. IG - @thenativeangel 

Actor and Director Jacob Sidney’s Regional credits include: Conference of the Birds (Broad Stage); Holmes and Watson (Holmes); Of Mice and Men (George); Bent; The Normal Heart (Felix); Uncanny Valley (“a tour-de-force” - LA Times); Stuart Little (Stuart); Hamlet (Dir. Jessica Kubzansky), A Chorus Line (Paul); The Grapes of Wrath (Tom); West Side Story (Riff); La bohème (Schaunard); The Duchess of Malfi; Saint Joan (Dir. Dan Savage); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Lysander); Much Ado About Nothing. Los Angeles stage credits include: Hamlet (Guildenstern, Dir. Michael Michetti); The Behavior of Broadus; Hamlet Max (Hamlet); We Are Proud to Present... ; You Can’t Take It With You; The Government Inspector; The Treatment; Sparks’ The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman (Ford Amphitheater, Dir. Guy Maddin); The Tempest (Caliban); Model Behavior(Jekyll/Hyde, Theatre Movement Bazaar); The Beastly Bombing; Peer Gynt (Peer). Film credits include: Cockroaches, Worm, Killer Bud, The Velocity of Gary. Directing credits include: Waiting for Waiting for Godot, Rose and the Rime, Hamlet Max (Sacred Fools). www.jacobsidney.com , IG @sirjacobsidney 

Actor Casey McKinnon is a professional actress and producer born and raised in Montreal, Canada. She studied Shakespeare at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, holds a BA degree from McGill University, and won a BroadwayWorld Award for her portrayal of Jackie Kennedy in The Tragedy of JFK. Best known for her extensive web series career dating back to 2005, she produced and starred in four streaming series including SONY Playstation’s official Comic-Con coverage, which she also directed. Her two most popular shows, Galacticast and A Comicbook Orange, had a total of 8 seasons, received over 13 million views, and won her and her co-creator multiple awards over their run. She is often recognized for her guest appearances on TableTop and in NASA’s official YouTube series promoting STEM. In addition to her passionate local work in Shakespeare, she has appeared in two world premiere plays: as Stalin’s wife Nadya in Mayakovsky and Stalin and as the iconic Jackie Kennedy in The Tragedy of JFK. In 2007, she made her big screen debut in independent western film Six Reasons Why working opposite Colm Feore. More recently, Casey played the morally ambiguous spokesperson in sci-fi film Chromo46, and during the pandemic she starred in Crossover Point under the direction of Antony Johnston, creator of Atomic Blonde. After becoming an ambassador for The Chimaera Project in 2020, she developed and launched SUPPORT.HER, a mentorship program empowering women and non-binary filmmakers. Learn more at www.caseymckinnon.com

Actor Natalie Nicole Dressel is a transgender actress/writer currently living in North Hollywood, CA. In 2019, she attained her MFA in writing for the Stage and Screen from Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA, and in 2013 she earned her BFA in Theater from Michigan State University. She is a graduate of the UCB LA improv program, and her play There is Evil in This House was a 2019 O'Neill NPC finalist and the winner of Best Ensemble at SheLA this past July.  She has 10+ years of stand up comedy experience and in 2012 was named "Funniest Mouth of the South" in Chattanooga, TN. She has experience with ADR, Audiobook Narration, and Voice Over and is also a poet that has written free typewriter love poems at Pride celebrations in Los Angeles and Denver (though this year she did it via zoom). She's worked on two projects that are currently available on HBOMAX (Veneno, The Lady and The Dale) and in 2021, she is the recipient of an artist grant from West Hollywood and put up an exhibition of her work in 2022, and her play Granny, or How to Forgive When You Can't Forget: A Play in Poems was turned into an audio play by Antaeus Theatre, which drops on June 11th and is available wherever you find your podcasts. 

Guy Picot is a British writer/director/actor resident in Los Angeles. He directed the musicals Disasteroid and Earth To Karen, both Hollywood Fringe Award nominees. He wrote and directed Bonnie in Brighton, which has been presented at the Brighton, Edinburgh, and Hollywood Fringe Festivals. He served on the artistic committee of Sacred Fools Theatre in Los Angeles and was associate director of LA Sock-Puppet Sitcom Theatre, presenting sock-puppet versions of classic sitcom pilots. Guy has written for the British network TV shows Bad Girls and Footballer’s Wives and was script associate on the West End stage show Bad Girls The Musical. He co-wrote the book for the Merseybeat musical Ferry Crossing the Mersey which had two British National tours and a West End run. Guy’s seasonal dark comedy The Christmas Present has had productions in the UK and US, and is published by Stagerights. As an actor he played Charlie Chaplin in Stoneface at Sacred Fools Theatre and The Pasadena Playhouse. He recently played Pierce in the upcoming indie feature Delta County. In this year's Hollywood Fringe he is directing Melissa Greenspan's one-woman show, B+ Mom.

Actor Thomas Fiscella began his professional career in storefront Chicago and Detroit theaters, working with and learning from renowned “off-Loop” companies such as The Organic, Shattered Globe, American Blues, Live Bait, Prop, and Victory Gardens Theaters.  Eight years (and two Chicago Joseph Jefferson Ensemble Citations) later, Fiscella hit the ground running in Los Angeles, garnering industry and critical attention for his work with The Laguna Playhouse (Tranced), Circle X Theatre Company (The Bigger Man), and the International City Theatre (Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune), among others. Film and television work soon included Fox’s popular series 24, and his interactive game work as a performance/motion capture and voiceover artist included Tron, Red Faction, Silent Hill, The Saboteur, and Pirates of the Caribbean.  He originated the role of “Baba” in the world-premiere play adaptation The Kite Runner at the San Jose Rep and Arizona Theatre Companies, and understudied roles in Beau Willamon’s political thriller Farragut North for The Geffen Playhouse. Tom was cast in the Broadway National Tour of Jersey Boys, appearing in the show for 6 seasons in 175+ cities in front of over 1.2 million people. His recent work includes the Disney+ adventure series The Mysterious Benedict Society, the L.A. premiere of Finks with Rogue Machine Theatre Co., the streaming comedy series Meet Me at the Barre, and frequent collaborations with next generation filmmakers emerging from USC and the American Film Institute. He’s also provided American English voice character dubbing for various series on Netflix (Wrong Side of the Tracks), Paramount+ (Anderson ‘Spider’ Silva and Socorro), and AppleTV+ (Midnight Family). 

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