Broadway's Craig Lucas & Pulitzer Prize Winner Beth Henley In Discussion At Black Box PAC

Black Box PAC's 2022 Save Our Stages season continues with the world premiere production of Exposed by Beth Henley. The show runs at The Black Box Performing Arts Center - 49 East Palisade Avenue in Englewood, NJ - now through Saturday May 28. On Sunday May 22, Ms. Henley - who collaborated during rehearsals with the creative team via Zoom from the West Coast - will participate in a live-and-in-person Q&A session after the show. The Q&A will be moderated by the renowned 2022 Tony Nominee Craig Lucas, whose play Ode to Joy received its NJ Premiere at BBPAC this February to rave reviews! Specially priced tickets for this special Exposed performance (which starts at 8PM) and the Q&A that immediately follows are $45 in advance at www.blackboxpac.com.

Exposed was presented as a workshop by New York Stage and Film Company and The Powerhouse Theater at Vassar in July 2003. This fast-moving, poignant comedy follows five interconnected individuals on the Winter Solstice as they try to escape the pervasive loneliness of late 1990's Los Angeles.

Beth Henley is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and professor. Her plays include Crimes of the Heart (Pulitzer Prize in Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play), The Wake of Jamey Foster, The Miss Firecracker Contest, Am I Blue, The Lucky Spot, The Debutante Ball, Abundance, Control Freaks, Impossible Marriage, Family Week, Ridiculous Fraud, The Jacksonian, Laugh, and The Unbuttoning. Her plays have been produced on Broadway and across the country as well as internationally and translated into twelve languages. Ms. Henley's screenplays include Crimes of the Heart (nominated for an Academy Award), Nobody's Fool, The Miss Firecracker Contest, and David Byrne's True Stories. Ms. Henley is a recipient of The American Theatre Wing 1998 Award for Distinguished Achievement in Playwriting, Susan Smith Blackburn Finalist for Crimes of the Heart and Ridiculous Fraud; Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award 2000; New York Stage and Film Honoree, 2007, ATHE Career Achievement Award, 2010, and the American Theater Award at the William Inge Festival, 2017.a?? Originally from Mississippi, Ms. Henley now lives in Los Angeles and serves as the Presidential Professor at LMU/LA.

Craig Lucas' plays include Missing Persons, Reckless, Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss, God's Heart, This Thing of Darkness (co-authored with David Schulner), The Dying Gaul, Stranger, Small Tragedy, Prayer for My Enemy, The Singing Forest, Ode to Joy, The Lying Lesson, I Was Most Alive with You and Change Agent. Screenplays include Longtime Companion (Sundance Audience Award), The Secret Lives of Dentists (NY Film Critics Best Screenplay Award), Reckless, Blue Window, The Dying Gaul. Libretti include The Light in the Piazza (music and lyrics by Adam Guettel), Two Boys (composer Nico Muhly, world premiere at the English National Opera, American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera), Orpheus in Love (with composer Gerald Busby), 3 Postcards (with composer/lyricist Craig Carnelia), An American in Paris (music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin), Amélie (music by Dan Messe, lyrics by Nathan Tysen and Dan Messe), Sousatzka (music by David Shire, lyrics by Richard Maltby), Prelude to a Kiss (music by Dan Messe, lyrics by Sean Hartley and Dan Messe), Days of Wine and Roses (music and lyrics by Adam Guettel), and Marry Me A Little, Songs by Stephen by Sondheim (co-conceived with Norman René and Suzanne Henry). His new English-language adaptations include Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, Galileo and Miss Julie. He directed the world premiere of The Light in the Piazza, Harry Kondoleon's plays Saved Or Destroyed & Play Yourself, and the films The Dying Gaul & Birds of America. Lucas has worked with a host of remarkable directors including Mark Wing-Davey, Norman René, Pam MacKinnon, Lisa Petersen, Daniel Sullivan, Tyne Rafaeli, Christopher Wheeldon, Alan Rudolph, Mark Brokaw, Bartlett Sher and Joe Mantello. He received the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Laura Pels/PEN Mid-career Award, the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, LAMBDA Literary Award, Hull-Warriner Award, Flora Roberts Award, Steinberg/ACTA Best Play Award among many others. He has 4 Tony nominations (most recently for Paradise Square this Awards Season, currently on Broadway), 3 Obie Awards and has been a Pulitzer finalist.

Black Box Performing Arts Center (BBPAC), a 501c3 nonprofit organization founded in Teaneck 2015 and relocated to 49 East Palisade Avenue in Englewood in 2019, and Black Box Studios (BBS), which has operated in Bergen County since 2007, together form Northern NJ's premiere theater and performing arts school combo. BBPAC is a working professional theater run by The Black Box Rep Company, a group of collaborative artists engaging in collaborative, cutting-Edge Theater. The tight-knit community self-generates full seasons of cutting Edge Theater, reviving classics both old and newer, while also developing original works for the intimate stage. Many of these professionals double as teaching artists for Black Box Studios, running classes and workshops at the theater and at various schools and organizations in the area, for students currently ranging in age from 9 to 81. Our team is also focused on presenting other art forms within the space, such as comedy and music, as we host the emergence of a new and unique artistic community.

Exposed follows BBPAC's NJ regional premiere of legendary filmmaker Paul Schrader's The Cleopatra Club, one of his few works for the stage. The 2022 Save Our Stages season also featured the NJ premiere of Craig Lucas' Ode To Joy, short works from John Guare and Caridad Svich, and the regional premiere workshops of Eric Bogosian's 1+1 and Neil LaBute's Ten x Ten, which both remain in active development. Follow @BlackBoxPAC on socials for updates!

For further information email blackboxpac@gmail.com or call 201-569-2070.

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