CHRISTINE JORGENSEN REVEALS Makes Its Historic Return 2/26

After winning awards in New York, Boston and Dublin while garnering rapturous rave reviews internationally, Bradford Louryk's mesmerizing and vibrantly sensuous reincarnation of the 1950's most famous woman on earth, "CHRISTINE JORGENSEN REVEALS", will make its historic return engagement off-Broadway at The Lion Theatre (410 West 42nd Street) on Thursday, February 26th.

Produced by GREG TULLY for the PLATFORM THEATRE GROUP, the return engagement of "CHRISTINE JORGENSEN REVEALS" will begin Preview Performances on Thursday, February 19th.

The show will run through Sunday, March 15th.
CHRISTINE JORGENSEN was born GEORGE Jorgensen, Jr. on May 30th, 1926 to unsuspecting middle-class Danish-American parents in the Bronx. She was drafted into an unsuspecting United States Army where she served out her time at a desk at Fort Dix in New Jersey from 1948 to 1950.
She then flew to Copenhagen, Denmark where she was re-born as CHRISTINE Jorgensen, the first American transsexual.

On December 1st, 1952 the New York Daily News printed a front-page story about Christine's miraculous transformation.

The headline read, "EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY: OPERATION TRANSFORMS BRONX YOUTH". FAME! CELEBRITY! NOTORIETY! COMPLETE LOSS OF ANY SEMBLANCE OF ANONYMITY! UNPRECEDENTED MEDIA COVERAGE! When she returned to New York on February 12th, 1953 her plane landed at Idlewild Airport to be greeted by the largest throng of photographers, reporters and news crews ever gathered in one spot to date.

She became the most publicized person on the planet Earth. She allowed this insanity to continue for four years without any interference from herself or her parents
with whom she lived in a house on Long Island that FAME built.
THEN.
In 1958 CHRISTINE JORGENSEN walked into a recording studio in New York and allowed herself to be interviewed - for 51 minutes. Arguably the most revealing, truthful and riveting 51 minutes ever set down on vinyl.
"CHRISTINE JORGENSEN REVEALS" is a one-man-tour-de-force-paintakingly-acurate-reincarnation
of those searing and revolutionary 51 minutes.
BRADFORD LOURYK is a wizard of deception and a master of the impossible as he morphs his six-foot frame into a completely convincing demure woman of the 1950's who stands no taller than 5'6" in a size 10 suit draped over an extremely petite 120 pound figure.
Within minutes MR. LOURYK literally disappears and the revelation begins.
Under the scrutiny of the questions posed by MR. RUSSELL, the interviewer, and under the uncompromising glare of very revealing lighting CHRISTINE JORGENSEN does what she ultimately became famous for. SHE TELLS THE TRUTH.
It is absolutely riveting. She backs away from nothing.
She faces each question head on. She never flinches. With eyes wide open she blinds her audience with complete candor. The result is a theatrical triumph of what almost became a lost treasure of communication.

THE RETURN ENGAGEMENT
"CHRISTINE JORGENSEN REVEALS"

THE CREATOR & STAR
Bradford Louryk

THE INTERVIEWER
Rob Grace

THE DIRECTOR
Josh Hecht

THE PRODUCER
Greg Tully

THE DESIGNERS
Costumes-Mary Ping
Scenery-Wilson Chin
Lighting-Josh Bradford
Sound-Rob Kaplowitz
Projection Design-Kevin French
Properties-Jung Griffin
Wigs-Jason P. Hayes

THE THEATRE
The Lion Theatre
410 West 42nd Street
(between 9th & 10th Avenues)

THE PLAYING SCHEDULE
Wednesdays - Saturdays @ 8:00pm
Saturdays @ 2:00pm
Sundays @ 3:00pm
TICKETS
$48

RESERVATIONS
www.TICKETCENTRAL.com
212-279-4200

59 E 59 - 2005
The Edinburgh International Fringe Festival - 2005
Dodger Stages - 2006
Studio Theatre - Theatre Row - 2006
The Boston Centre For The Arts - 2006
The Project Arts Theatre - Dublin - 2006

Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience
The Hilton Edwards Award for Outstanding Production
The Micheal MacLiammoir Award for Best Actor
GLAAD Media Award Nomination for Best Play
IRNE Award Nomination for Best Play

Drama Desk Award winner BRADFORD LOURYK is an actor and theater artist who most significantly conceived and performed the critically acclaimed Christine Jorgensen Reveals, which has played at 59E59 Theaters, The Assembly Rooms at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Dodger Stages, Theatre Row, The Boston Center for the Arts (BCA), and The Project Arts Centre in Dublin (where Mr. Louryk received the Hilton Edwards Award for his work). Christine Jorgensen Reveals also received a 2006 GLAAD Media Award nomination for Best Play. His other New York credits include his Klytaemnestra's Unmentionables at hERE; Clay McLeod Chapman's redbird and Rob Grace's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark at The Culture Project for Studio 42; the American Premiere of First You're Born at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons; Jewish Mothers (also by Clay McLeod Chapman) for the Culture Project's Women Center Stage Festival; and New Georges' ManFest, in which he performed his Elektra. More recently, Mr. Louryk was named a Fellow of The Sundance Institute (where he developed his solo play Lukrezia Borgia at the Institute's Theatre Laboratory) and has had the privilege of working with Tony Award-nominated directors Moises Kaufman and Christopher Ashley. In August 2008, he headlined a cast of thirteen in the sold-out World Premiere of The Most Lamentable and Tragical Historie of the Barber-Surgeons before returning to solo work to present a concert version of his Klytaemnestra's Unmentionables for The Performance Project at The University Settlement in December 2008. Bradford has been profiled by or featured prominently in major international media including The New York Times, The Post, The Daily News, Newsday, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Boston Phoenix, The Scotsman, The Guardian, American Theatre, GOTHAM Magazine (as one of New York City's 100 Most Eligible Bachelors), and Backstage; on television and radio; and in the books Dionysus Since `69 (available from Oxford University Press) and We Will Have Justice, released in November 2008 by McFarland. He is the founding Artistic Director Studio 42 (a New York City-based, not-for-profit producing organization), a founding member of The Starving Artists Award Fund, and three-time Co-Chair of The Starving Artists Ball. Recent and ongoing collaborations include Version Mary with Josh Hecht, Jack Ferver, Mike Albo, David Grimm, Lisa Kron, Bryony Lavery, Wendy MacLeod, Pulitzer Prize finalist Theresa Rebeck, and Emmy Award nominee Kate Robin; BLOW with Bathsheba Doran and Ken Rus Schmoll; and an opera with Guggenheim Fellow and Rome Prize winner Yotam Haber and Kelly Dupuis.

GEORGE JORGENSEN, Jr. was born May 30, 1926 to Danish-American parents in the Bronx. After graduating from high school in 1945, the awkward, introverted George was drafted into the U.S. Army for two years of service at a desk in Fort Dix, New Jersey. Having always felt more feminine than masculine, George desperately began researching at a local medical library, where he read about hormone experiments and sex studies abroad. He soon discovered that sex change operations were being performed in Scandinavia, and in 1950 George flew to Copenhagen, Denmark, telling his family he was visiting relatives. He underwent months of hormone therapy and finally had his male sexual organs removed in 1952. The newly-named Christine's celebrity began on December 1, 1952 when the New York Daily News printed a front-page story entitled "Ex-GI Become Blond Beauty: Operations Transform Bronx Youth." She returned to New York City on February 12, 1953, where she was met by an unprecedented 300 reporters. The formerly shy Christine blossomed into her new role as a public icon. She put together a professional nightclub act in 1953 that toured successfully into the 1960s, then in the 1970s established herself as a popular speaker on the college lecture circuit, often drawing audiences in the thousands. With her health failing fast by the late 1980s, she moved to California and lived a more quiet life of working crossword puzzles and spending time with friends. Christine died in 1989 of bladder cancer. Though her name is generally unknown today, in the mid-fifties Christine Jorgensen was arguably the most famous person in the world. Her very public life after her 1952 surgery was a model for other transsexuals for decades; she was ahead of her time in understanding gender identity as a social construct, as performative, and as something in need of constant iteration. She forced the world to reconsider the boundaries of personhood-and she did it with grace, intelligence, and unreserved style.

PLATFORM THEATRE GROUP was formed in 2008 by GREG TULLY to create theatrical events to employ artists and engage audiences. Platform Theatre Group envisions the stage as a platform for connection that enlivens the senses, ignites the spirit, instigates discussion, celebrates diversity, and touches the heart. In the 1980's and 1990's, Mr. Tully began producing both independently and with a producing team (TRAN Theatreworks) in a variety of venues: the Emelin Theater, national touring sites, summer theater companies, and NYC metropolitan area universities. A social work practitioner, administrator, and academic for the past twenty years, he now returns to producing theater with the vision of creating memorable productions that both entertain and encourage thought-provoking insight while also providing quality, paid opportunities for gifted theater performers, directors, writers, designers, and administrators. Greg holds a BS in Educational Theatre and a PhD., both from NYU.

 

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