Cherry Lane Theatre Announces 2015 MENTOR PROJECT Line-Up; PEERLESS Begins Tonight

Cherry Lane Theatre announced the 2015 line-up today for the Obie Award-winning Mentor Project's 17th season, the corner stone of Cherry Lane Theatre's development programs.

This season's plays include peerless by Jiehae Park, mentored by playwright, actor, and CenterStage Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah; King Lear re-envisioned and directed by Jesse Jou, mentored by author and Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein; and The Idea of Me by Kristina Poe, mentored by actor and Artistic Director of Victory Gardens Theater Chay Yew.

"This year we're continuing to build on the incredible legacy of the Mentor Project, not only by creating a home for playwrights, but for early-career directors as well," said Mentor Project Producing Artistic Director Stephanie Ybarra. "Jiehae, Jesse, and Kristina each have a unique authorial voice that I'm certain will reverberate throughout the American Theatre, and I'm proud that Mentor Project can server as an amplifier."

Mentor Project 2015 tickets, priced at $30 for all three shows (with membership), and single tickets, priced at $15, are available online at www.cherrylanetheatre.org, by phone 212-352-3101 or 866-811-4111, or at the Cherry Lane Theatre Box Office. The performance schedule is Mondays through Saturdays at 7:00 p.m. Please check the website for the most up-to-date performance information.

Founded by Angelina Fiordellisi and Susann Brinkley, the Mentor Project engages leading dramatists in one-on-one mentoring relationships with emerging artists, the result of which is a workshop production in Cherry Lane's studio theater. Established in 1998, Mentor Project was inspired by an important precursor in residence at Cherry Lane in the 60s: ALBARWILD, a collaboration between producers Richard Barr, Clinton Wilder and playwright Edward Albee, who created production opportunities for such early-career playwrights as Sam Shepard, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), A. R. Gurney and Jean-Claude van Itallie. To date, Mentor Project has nurtured and launched new works by 47 emerging dramatists. The Mentors help the young artists hone their craftsmanship through meetings, readings, and workshops while forming a personal and trusted relationship of support. The project culminates in a workshop production that remains critic-free to avoid commercial concerns that would inhibit the creative process. The Project has elevated a third of its alumni to professional and public notice. Their work has flourished on and Off-Broadway, regionally and around the world. Cherry Lane's Mentors are truly a priceless resource - they count among their distinctions eight Pulitzer Prizes, six Pulitzer Prize nominations, thirteen Obie Awards, eight Tony Awards, six Tony nominations, two Oscars, and an Oscar nomination.

Each Mentor Project Fellow receives a $5,000 stipend, a team of professional collaborators, rehearsal support and a workshop production at the Cherry Lane Theater.

The effectiveness of the Mentor Project program is affirmed by the continued success of the early- career playwrights we have worked with. It is the Mentor Project's goal to provide these artists with a supportive yet challenging developmental structure for their plays. It is the program's hope that the artists leave Mentor Project experience with a stronger draft of their play, an appreciation for what the audience can teach us, a professional working process and a deepened commitment to their craft. They will have benefited from the crucial element of interaction between master and protégé, and realize that it is within a community that the artist thrives. The creative bond and continued relationships of our alumni with their mentors, as well as their lasting membership in the Cherry Lane community is a clear indication of the need for this type of program. Thanks to our gracious mentors, CLT Mentor Project is a rarely experienced phenomenon among playwrights.

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2015 MENTOR PROJECT LINE-UP:

peerless
By Jiehae Park
Directed by Margot Bordelon
Mentor Kwame Kwei-Armah
March 4 through 14
"The one where they'd do just about anything to get in."

The complete cast includes Gideon Glick, Anne Huston, Teresa Lim, Christopher Livingston, Emma Ramos, Tiffany Villarin, and Merrick Williams.
peerless features scenic design by Edward Morris, costume design by Moria Clinton, lighting design by Oliver Wason, and sound design and music composition by Palmer Hefferan.

King Lear
By William Shakespeare
Re-Envisioned and Directed By Jesse Jou
Mentor Barry Edelstein
March 25 through April 4
"The one where four actors tackle Shakespeare's great tragedy"
The complete cast includes JJ Perez, Brenna Palughi, Eileen Rivera, and Shannon Sullivan.
King Lear features scenic design by Carmen Martinez, costume design by Moria Clinton and Kristina Makowski, lighting design by Alan Edwards, and sound design by Matt Otto.

The Idea of Me
By Kristina Poe
Directed by Jose Zayas
Mentor Chay Yew
April 15 though 25
"The one where the girl comes home from a mental hospital and no one hides the scissors."

The complete cast will be announced at a later date.
The Idea of Me features scenic design by Jason Simms and sound design by Jane Shaw.

JIEHAE PARK is a writer and actor in NYC. Her play Hannah and the Dread Gazebo won the Princess Grace Award and Leah Ryan Prize in 2013, and was on the first annual Kilroys List. Her work has been developed through Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep's W/D Lab, Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor, the Public's 2015 Emerging Writers Group, Dramatists Guild Fellowship, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, & the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. Residencies: MacDowell, Yaddo, & Hedgebrook. Proud 2014 facilitator for NYTW's Mind the Gap intergenerational playwriting workshop. Upcoming development includes the Cherry Lane Mentor Project, NYTW, & Local Lab 2015. As a performer: NYTW, La Jolla Playhouse, Collection of Shiny Objects, Studio Theatre, Tiny Little Band @ Prelude, & REDCAT. BA (theater), Amherst College; MFA (acting), UCSD.

KRISTINA POE spent the first 20 years of her theater career stage/company/production managing regionally and in New York, including a seven year stint as company manager for LAByrinth Theater Company. Her first play, Lovesick, was produced in both L.A. (extended twice, and named one of the Top Ten Reviewed plays in L.A. in 2011) and NYC, and is published by Dramatists Play Service. Her next play, The Restlessness of Desire, closed out LAByrinth's 2012 Barn Series and was a Semi-Finalist for the O'Neill Conference. Her work has also been developed at Barefoot Theater Company, The Actors Studio, The Public Theater, NY Madness, Nylon Fusion Theatre Company and Cincinnati Playhouse. She has received the Celebrating Women Playwrights grant, attended University of North Carolina School of the Arts, is a member of LAByrinth Theater Company and The Actors Studio Playwright/Directors Unit.

JESSE JOU, originally from Houston, Texas, is based in New York City, where he works primarily as a freelance theater director of new and contemporary plays. Some of his favorite projects include Zen Ties by Y York (The Rose Theatre, Omaha, NE); Say You Heard My Echo with spoken word artist Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai (HERE); The Betrothed by Dipika Guha and Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom by Jennifer Haley (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, Cape Cod, MA); The Netflix Plays (Ars Nova); and the things are against us [les choses sont contre nous] by Susan Soon He Stanton (Carlotta Festival, Yale School of Drama). His work has also been seen at the Lark Play Development Center; the New York International Fringe Festival; The Kitchen Theatre Co. (Ithaca, NY); and the Yale Cabaret. He was the Artistic Director of the 2010 Yale Summer Cabaret and served as the Staff Repertory Director of The Acting Company. Jesse was the recipient of a Classical Fellowship from the Drama League's Directors Project, which sent him to Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA, where he assisted Tony Simotes on The Tempest, starring Olympia Dukakis, and co-directed Jenry V for their celebrated Fall Festival of Shakespeare. He is also an alumnus of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and the Civilians' R&D Group. He received his MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama.

MENTOR BIOS:

BARRY EDELSTEIN, Old Globe Artistic Director, is a stage director, producer, author, and educator. Widely recognized as one of the leading authorities on the works of Shakespeare in the United States, he has directed nearly half of the Bard's works. His directing credits at the Globe include his directorial debut with Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale starring Billy Campbell, the first Shakespeare to be staged in our indoor theatre in over a decade; his 2014 Summer Shakespeare Festival production of Othello starring Blair Underwood, Richard Thomas, and Kristen Connolly in the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre; and the upcoming Globe for All, a free professional production of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well that will tour a variety of community venues throughout San Diego. Before his appointment as Artistic Director of The Old Globe, Barry was most recently the Director of the Shakespeare Initiative at New York City's Public Theater. In this capacity he oversaw all of the company's Shakespearean productions, including its famous Shakespeare in the Park series in Central Park, as well as The Public's extensive educational, community outreach and artist-training programs. He was Associate Producer of The Public's recent Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino. Other productions he supervised there were As You Like It and All's Well That Ends Well directed by Daniel Sullivan, King Lear with Sam Waterston and Bill Irwin, Measure for Measure directed by David Esbjornson, The Winter's Tale directed by Michael Greif, Twelfth Night with Anne Hathaway, Othello with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Hamlet with Michael Stuhlbarg. He supervised the addition of Shakespeare to The Public's Public LAB small-scale producing series with his own production of Timon of Athens with Richard Thomas in the title role, and he supervised Love's Labour's Lost, Titus Andronicus and the upcoming Troilus and Cressida in that series. He launched The Public's Mobile Unit tour to prisons, homeless shelters and other underserved audiences with Measure for Measure and Richard III. This body of work led NPR to call Barry "one of the country's leading Shakespeareans." From 1998-2003 Barry was Artistic Director of Off Broadway's Classic Stage Company, where he directed Richard III starring John Turturro and Julianna Margulies and The Winter's Tale starring David Strathairn. He also staged the world premiere of Steve Martin's The Underpants, which he commissioned, Ben Jonson's The Alchemist and Molière's The Misanthrope starring Uma Thurman in her stage debut. At Williamstown Theatre Festival, he directed As You Like It starring Gwyneth Paltrow. His other New York credits include Arthur Miller's All My Sons (which won the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Revival) and, at The Public, Steve Martin's Wasp and Other Plays, Julius Caesar starring Jeffrey Wright for Shakespeare in the Park and The Merchant of Venice featuring Ron Leibman's Obie Award-winning portrayal of Shylock. He has also directed many contemporary and classic plays at leading regional theatres. His first film, My Lunch with Larry, starring Lisa Edelstein (no relation) and Greg Germann, played the festival circuit in 2006 and 2007. Most recently in New York he directed the premiere of novelist Nathan Englander's first play, The Twenty-Seventh Man, at The Public. Barry's book Bardisms: Shakespeare for all Occasions "instructs and entertains" (New York Post) and was re-released in paperback in 2010. His book Thinking Shakespeare (called by New York magazine "a must-read for actors") is the standard text on American Shakespearean acting. Barry has taught at The Juilliard School, New York University's Graduate Acting Program, Yale School of Drama and University of Southern California. He has lectured on theatre around the USA and the world and has written on the subject for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic and American Theatre. He is a graduate of Oxford University where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He and his wife, Hilit, have two children, Tillirose and August.

KWAME KWEI-ARMAH, OBE, an award-winning British playwright, director, actor, and broadcaster, is in his fourth season as artistic director of Center Stage in Baltimore, Maryland. At Center Stage he has directed dance of the holy ghosts (Baltimore City Paper Top Ten Productions of 2013); The Mountaintop; An Enemy of the People; The Whipping Man (City Paper Top Ten Productions of 2012), for which he was named Best Director; and Naomi Wallace's Things of Dry Hours. Among his works as playwright are Elmina's Kitchen and Let There Be Love-which had their American debuts at Center Stage-as well as A Bitter Herb and Statement of Regret. His latest play, Beneatha's Place, debuted at Center Stage in 2013 as part of the ground-breaking Raisin Cycle. His other directorial credits include Let There Be Love and Seize the Day at the Tricycle Theatre, Dominique Morisseau's Skeleton Crew at the Lark Play Development Center in New York, New York's Public Theater's production of Much Ado About Nothing, the world premiere of Detroit '67 (nominated for Best Director) at The Public Theater, and the world premiere of The Liquid Plain at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He was named the chancellor of the University of the Arts London, and in 2012 was named an officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. He is currently writing a musical based on the life and music of Bob Marley, Marley, which will have its world premiere at Center Stage in May 2015.

CHAY YEW joined Victory Gardens Theater in July 2011 as its first new artistic director in 34 years. He is a recipient of the Obie and DramaLogue Awards for Direction.His productions have been cited by the Los Angeles Times and New York Times as one of the "Ten Best Productions of the Year;" Seattle Times and Strangers' Best Achievement in Theatre; and was named Best Director by Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He has directed world premieres by playwrights Jose Rivera, Naomi Iizuka, Kia Corthron, Julia Cho, David Adjmi and Jessica Goldberg, and performance artists Rha Goddess, Universes, Alec Mapa, Sandra Tsing Loh and Brian Freeman. He is the recipient of the London Fringe Award for Best Playwright and Best Play, George and Elisabeth Marton Playwriting Award, GLAAD Media Award, Asian Pacific Gays and Friends' Community Visibility Award, Made in America Award, AEA/SAG/AFTRA 2004 Diversity Honor, and Robert Chesley Award; he has received grants from the McKnight Foundation, Rockefeller MAP Fund and the TCG/Pew National Residency Program. Chay is also an accomplished and widely respected playwright, and his plays are published in two titles, The Hyphenated American Plays and Porcelain and A Language of Their Own, by Grove Press; the latter was nominated for a Lamda Literary Award. He is presently editing a new anthology Version 3.0: Contemporary Asian American Plays for TCG Publications. An alumnus of New Dramatists, he has held residencies at Mu Lan Theatre Company, Northwest Asian American Theatre Company and East West Players. He serves on the National Advisory Board at the Playwrights Center and the Artistic Advisory Board of Partial Comfort Theatre. He is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect and Vineyard Theatre Community of Artists. He has also served on the Board of Directors of Theatre Communications Group and is presently on the Executive Board of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. Upcoming productions include the world premiere of Dael Orlandersmith's Black and Blue Boys at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Goodman Theatre (spring 2012).

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