Alan Hruska’s NEW HOUSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION receives World Premiere at 59E59 Theaters

59E59 Theaters (Elysabeth Kleinhans, Artistic Director; Peter Tear, Executive Producer) welcomes Victory Theater Company, with Rock and a Hard Place and Red Horse Productions with the World Premiere production of NEW HOUSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION, written and directed by Alan Hruska. NEW HOUSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION begins previews on Thursday, December 4 for a limited engagement through Sunday, January 4. Opening Night is Wednesday, December 10 at 8:15 PM. The performance schedule is Tuesday - Friday at 8:15 PM; Saturday at 2:15 PM and 8:15 PM; and Sunday at 3:15 PM. NEW HOUSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION performs at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison). Single tickets are $35 ($24.50 for 59E59 Members). To purchase tickets, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or go to www.ticketcentral.com. For more information, visit www.59e59.org .

Please note the Holiday performance schedule: Wednesday, December 24 at 2:15 PM; No performance on Thursday, December 25; and Sunday, December 28 at 3:15 PM and 7:15 PM.

Two married couples approaching 40 reunite in the lake district town where they all grew up. It's been 15 years, but old rivalries and passions-as well as long-buried secrets-ignite, and re-entangle, their relationships. A sexy fusion of humor and mystery drives this wry new play from the director and writer of the films Nola (with Emmy Rossum), which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival; and
The Warrior Class, which premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

The cast includes Tony Crane (Broadway's Sight Unseen), Sam Coppola (Off Broadway's Waiting for Godot), Shannon Koob (The Syringa Tree), Nancy Lemenager (Broadway's Chicago, Movin' Out) and Kevin Isola (Broadway's Brooklyn Boy).

The design team includes Kenneth Foy (sets); Jason Kantrowitz (lights); and Sarah Holden (costumes). The production stage manager is Bonnie Brady.

Alan Hruska's (writer and director) first film Nola, with Emmy Rossum and Mary McDonnell, was chosen in a special Best of Tribeca program, sponsored by The Tribeca Film Festival, Vanity Fair and MTV, to be presented by General Tommy Franks to the troops in Kuwait and Qatar. It was
released by Samuel Goldwyn in 2004 and is now appearing on Lifetime TV. His second film, The Warrior Class, with Anson Mount, Erica Leerhsen, Robert Vaughn, Dan Hedaya, Jake Weber, Jamey Sheridan and others, premiered in the Hamptons International Film Festival and is being distributed by Echo Bridge.

In 2005, Alan directed an off-Broadway revival of Waiting for Godot, The New York Times said that Hruska's Godot was "a pleasure to watch" and "under Alan Hruska's direction [Gogo and Didi] have the dynamic of an old married couple, comfortable and quarrelsome and mutually dependent." The
New York Post said, "just the right mixture of pathos and comic bluster," "an admirable production that well serves the work's brilliant combination of broad humor and existential despair."

Recently, Alan co-founded a website, FilmCatcher.com, for the distribution of independent films, finished his third film, Reunion, which was shot in January 2008 in New York.

Alan is a graduate of Yale ('55) and Yale Law School ('58).  In 1958 Alan joined Cravath Swaine & Moore. As a litigator, over the next forty-four years, he won more than two hundred cases. As an associate, he tried the tetracycline price-fixing and patent monopolization cases (for Squibb), the plant-closing cases (for National Sugar) and the Salad Oil litigation (for the American Express
board of directors).

As a Cravath partner, Hruska handled all the Time Inc litigation for seven years (mostly libel, privacy and other First Amendment cases, including the Clifford Irving/Howard Hughes action), the CBS litigation for ten years (including the newsman's privilege case in the Supreme Court), the
turbine-generator price-fixing litigation for Westinghouse, the patent and trade secrets litigation for IBM, much of  the IBM antitrust litigation, and a wide variety of cases for Price Waterhouse, Painewebber, Merrill Lynch, Warner Lambert, Ashland Oil, Lever Bros., Esquire Magazine, Curtis
Publishing, Studebaker, Vassar College, and most of the domestic steel industry. He has represented Henry Kissinger, William Paley, Sam Walton, Katherine Graham and many others. And he has tried cases in state and federal courts, Tax Court, the Court of International Trade, the International Trade Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission. Among the lawyers with whom Alan worked most closely were Nicholas Katzenbach, Lloyd Cutler, Arthur Liman and Tom Barr. David Boise worked for Alan when David first came to Cravath, and the two later worked together on CBS cases and the steel litigation in the International Trade Commission. Alan has also worked with Ronald Reagan, Bobby Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Brent Scowcroft, Al Haig, Bill Buckley and Fred Friendly, among others, on a variety of matters.

Alan has been President of the Federal Bar Council and the Institute of Judicial Administration, a Commissioner of the New York State Executive Advisory Commission, Chairman of the Second Circuit Judicial Conference Planning and Program Committee, a Fellow of The American College of Trial Lawyers, and Chairman of the Spence School, among his other civic and professional activities.

In 1986, Dial Press (Doubleday) published Alan's novel, Borrowed Time. Also in 1986, Alan co-founded the book publishing company Soho Press, of which he is Chairman of the Board.

Photo: Kevin Isola

To post a comment, you must register and login.