Broadway-Bound WHAT WOMEN DO (AND MEN TOO) Gets Reading at MTC Studios

A cast of six will lead a reading of the Broadway-bound WHAT WOMEN DO (and men too) written by playwright and Broadway performer William Youmans and directed by Don Stephenson. The new play is a battle-of-the-sexes farce set in New York City. The reading, which is being produced by The Resonance Ensemble, takes place on Tuesday July 7, 2015 at 7:00 p.m at the Manhattan Theatre Club Studios (311 W 43rd Street 8th Floor) and is open to the public. For tickets, contact info@resonanceenseble.org.

WHAT WOMEN DO (and men, too) is a madcap farce, set in contemporary New York City, in which two young men engage in a screwball game of seduction, each testing the fidelity of the other's fiancée. Explosions ensue, with verbal pyrotechnics, door slamming, and identities gone mad. The unexpected consequences prove that men and women are equal in the game of love - equally bad!

Featured in the cast are: Charlotte Cohn; Baz Luhrmann's La Bohème and Handle With Care), Steve French, Ashley Austin Morris, Destan Owens (Chicago, Rent),Noah Plomgren (Hair), and Geena Quintos (Miss Saigon).

William Youmans (Playwright) is a long-time performer in the New York theatre scene and also studied playwriting with Austin Pendleton and Joanna Adler. His play,Misperceptions, was produced by Jon Jory at Actor's Theatre of Louisville, and at N.Y. Stage and Film. His musical, I Want To Be Happy, based on the life of his Great Uncle, Tea for Two composer Vincent Youmans was directed by Ted Sperling at Don't Tell Mama. Two other plays, Victoria's Secret and Closure were produced at T. Schreiber Studios in New York; as well as Fine Young Cannibals at NYU. His play, The Whittler, won third place in a national young playwright's competition, sponsored in part by Northlight Theatre in Chicago. Youmans also appeared in the original Broadway casts of Wicked, The Little Foxes (Elizabeth Taylor revival), The Farnsworth Invention, La Bohème, Big River, Titanic, Pirate Queen, Finian's Rainbow (recent revival), Hands on a Hardbody, as well as in Billy Elliot, working with Des Macanuff, Doug Wright, Joe Mantello, Aaron Sorkin, Neil Pepe, Elizabeth Taylor, Lillian Hellman, Baz Luhrmann, Stephen Daldry, and many others. Youmans also worked on original Off-Broadway productions with Tony Kushner, Stephen Sondheim, Michael Greif, Julie Taymor, Kirsten Childs, Tina Landau, Michael John LaChiusa, Chen Szhi-jen, Leigh Silverman, David Greenspan, and others.

Don Stephenson (Director) most recently directed Guys and Dolls at Goodspeed. He has directed Titanic at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall The MUNY Opera, and The Hangar Theatre, Of Mice and Manhattan for the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center, and most recently, Vanya, Sonya, Masha, And Spike and Lend Me a Tenorat Paper Mill Playhouse. He also directed Deathtrap, Noises Off, and The 39 Steps at the Flat Rock Playhouse, and The Great Unknown for The New York Theatre Festival, the critically acclaimed productions of Oleanna, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and the hit musical comedy Doctors and Diseases at the historic Barter Theatre, Noises Off at Pittsburgh Public Theatre, And the World Goes Round at Bucks County, and The Cottage at Theatre Aspen. Other New York directing credits include Buck Simple(Garrick Gaieties), When Pigs Fly (Kaufman Center Theatre), Golden Voices (Symphony Space), Old Flames (Theatre Studio Inc.) and the workshop production of My Time of Day; The Letters, Lyrics, and Music of Frank Loesser, and Sleeping Beauty at The American Stage Festival. He will direct the upcoming production of Guys and Dolls at Goodspeed Opera House and Buyer and Cellar at Pittsburgh Public Theatre. As a performer, he played the D'ysquith family in the Tony Award winning A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder and starred as Leo Bloom in the Tony Award winning Broadway production of The Producers. He also performed in Rock of Ages, Private Lives, Dracula, Titanic, Parade, By Jeeves, The Bandwagon, Pardon My English and Wonderful Town.

Resonance Ensemble's (Producer) goal is to weave a thread between the theatre's past, present, and future. We explore how classic plays by writers such as Euripides, Shakespeare, Molière, Chekhov, and Williams remain relevant and vibrant across countless eras and cultures, and endeavor to create new work in their spirit. By learning from and paying tribute to history's master dramatists, we strive to craft new theatre that is just as timeless and universal. To accomplish this goal, we invite the playwright to join the director in the exploration and interpretation of classic plays. We challenge writers to study their predecessors in order to create new work that resonates today. We are not interested in direct adaptations, but rather innovative new work that evolves from preexisting material. The process culminates with a production of the new play in repertory with the classic that inspired it.

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