AMT Theater To Present LIES By Jerry Slaff To Kick Off New Play Reading Series

AMT Theater, New York's newest Off Broadway house, announces the first in a series of New Play Readings.

AMT hopes to discover new talent and new plays and move them on to the next level. The New Play Reading program is headed by Mimi Warnick and the play chosen is Lies by Jerry Slaff, directed by Steven Ditmyer and featuring Tamara Flannagan and Erik Kochenberger. The reading will be held at 6pm on January 8th, 2023 at AMT Theater, 354 West 45th Street. The reading is free and open to the public.

Lies is set in 1950 and tells the story of a young and inexperienced Jewish lawyer for the New York public defender's office who is asked to represent a female German-American WWII radio propagandist, imprisoned for treason, for her parole hearing. Except she doesn't want to leave prison. The play was a semi-finalist for the O'Neill in 2020, the Grand Prize winner of the 88th annual Writer's Digest writing competition over 6,000 entries across 8 genres. It was also a finalist for the Signature Theater's Sigworks reading series in Arlington, Va.

Jerry Slaff was born in Brooklyn and lives just outside Washington, D.C.. His first play, Peanuts and Cracker Jack, was produced at the Cleveland Playhouse, with follow up productions at the Arkansas Repertory Theater and Mint Theater in New York. His play Grand Union was a finalist for the 2020 Austin Film Festival's playwriting competition. Both Lies and his new play Who's Yehoodi? were semifinalists for the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference.

Steven Ditmyer is a director and acting teacher. He was the co-producer and director of the OFF THE PAGE Reading Series for Tony Randall's National Actors Theatre with such notable productions as: The Night Of The Iguana with Alec Baldwin, Golf With Alan Shepard with Jack Klugman, Charles Durning, Len Cariou and John Cullum and Ladies In Retirement with Rosemary Harris and Marian Seldes.

Tamara Flannagan, a multi-hyphenate artist, is a scholarship graduate of Broadway's, Circle In The Square Theatre School. As a founding member of The Neighborhood Theater Company, she is best known for her critically acclaimed performance in The Syringa Tree, a one woman, 24-character play about apartheid South Africa, playing both men and women, black and white, from 3-83.

Erik Kochenberger earned his BFA from NYU's Tisch School for the Performing Arts. He is a member of the WorkShop Theater and has been performing in NYC and regionally, as well as in film and television for nearly a decade.

Mimi Warnick is a New York City based director, and is so excited to be beginning AMT's new work development program, and showcasing new playwrights for the local community.

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