Cherry Lane Theatre's Production Of Charles Mee's FIRST LOVE Begins Tonight

Cherry Lane Theatre (Seri Lawrence, Janio Marrero, Co-Artistic Directors) is proud to announce that Academy Award nominee Michael O'Keefe and Angelina Fiordellisi will star in its upcoming Founder's Project presentation of Charles Mee's FIRST LOVE, directed by Kim Weild. Performances will begin on June 7, the production will open on June 14 and run through July 8 at Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street). Tickets are $65-$95 and are available at www.cherrylanetheatre.org or by calling Ovation Tix at 1.866.811.4111.

A couple in their sixties meet and fall in love for the first time in their lives. Through the eyes of celebrated playwright Charles Mee, First Love embraces Edith and Harold as they work their way toward one another through the accumulated baggage of their lives, wondering if they can avoid sabotaging the last chance for love they'll ever have.

As an actor Michael O'Keefe has garnered both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. He's appeared in the films Michael Clayton, Frozen River, The Pledge, Ironweed, The Great Santini and Caddyshack among numerous others. Television audiences will remember him as Fred on "Roseanne". Other TV appearances include HBO's Too Big to Fail, "The West Wing", "Law and Order", "House M.D.", "The Closer", "Sneaky Pete" and "Brothers and Sisters". He's appeared on Broadway in Reckless, Side Man, The Fifth of July and Mass Appeal, for which he received a Theater World Award. As a writer his lyrics were in the Grammy-winning song, Longing in their Hearts, which was composed and sung by Bonnie Raitt. He's also written with Irish singer-songwriter Paul Brady and numerous other composers. His writing has appeared in BOMB, Lake Affect and Chaparral. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College.

Angelina Fiordellisi has acted on Broadway, Off-Broadway, 3 National Tours and in regional theaters across the country. Highlights include Zorba with Anthony Quinn, Annie, Out of the Mouths of Babes, Snow Orchid, The Traveling Lady, Catch the Butcher, Nunsense, Man of La Mancha, Private Lives, Blithe Spirit, Tamara, What the Butler Saw and The Gravity of Honey. Film credits: When a Man Loves A Woman, Where the Heart Is, Walker Payne, Big Stone Gap, Straight Outta Tompkins, Out of Darkness, Delusion and Word of Honor. Television credits: "Law & Order," "LA Law," "Star Trek: TNG," "Crime and Punishment," "The Cosby Show," "Roseanne," "Thunder Alley" and "The Kennedy Center Honors Program". Angelina owns and runs the historic Cherry Lane Theatre, celebrating its 95th Anniversary in Greenwich Village. She founded Cherry Lane Alternative, a not-for-profit organization in residence. During her time at Cherry Lane she has produced 100+ plays to date and served 3,500 artists. She created a number of new play development programs and co-founded the Obie Award-winning Mentor Project with Edward Albee, Charles Fuller, A. R. Gurney, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein, Michael Weller and Susann Brinkley, launching 61 emerging playwrights including Jocelyn Bioh, Sheila Callaghan, Katori Hall and Rajiv Joseph. She won a Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critic's Circle and Drama League awards as co-producer of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf starring Tracy Letts and Amy Morton and a Drama Desk award for producing Will Eno's The Realistic Joneses starring Tony Collette, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts and Marissa Tomei. Teachers/Mentors: José Quintero, Billie Allen, Charles Nelson Reilly, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Manuel Duque, David Regal and Arthur Beer. Most valued credits: Wife by Matt Williams and Mater by Matisse Elizabeth and Fredrick Emerson Williams.

The show will feature set design by Edward Pierce (Broadway: Wicked, Amazing Grace), costume design by Theresa Squire (Broadway: High Fidelity), lighting design by Paul Miller (Broadway: Amazing Grace) and sound design by Christian Frederickson (SITI Theatre's Antigone, Trojan Women).

Taylor Harvey is thrilled to be making her Cherry Lane and Off-Broadway debut! Regional credits include: The Heart of Robin Hood (Marion), The Clean House (Matilde), Nine (Claudia), Coriolanus, As You Like It (Menenius, Rosalind u/s), Hot Mikado (Yum-Yum), Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders (Laura Forbes- original cast). BFA: University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program.. www.taylorharveyonline.com

Charles Mee (Playwright) has written Big Love and True Love and First Love, bobrauschenbergamerica and Hotel Cassiopeia, Orestes 2.0 and Trojan Women: A Love Story, and Summertime and Wintertime among other plays-- all of them available on the internet at www.charlesmee.org. His plays have been performed at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, American Repertory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theater, Lincoln Center, the Humana Festival, Steppenwolf, and other places in the United States as well as in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Vienna, Istanbul and elsewhere. He was honored with a full season of his plays at the Signature Theatre. Among other awards, he is the recipient of the Award of Merit in drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and of the Richard B. Fisher Award. He is also the author of a number of books of history, and the former Editor-in-Chief of Horizon magazine, a magazine of history, art, literature, and the fine arts. His work is made possible by the support of Jeanne Donovan Fisher and Richard B. Fisher.

Kim Weild (Director) is a Drama Desk Award and seven-time New York Innovative Theater Awards nominee (winning two) including Outstanding Director of the world premiere of Charles Mee's NY Times Critic's Pick Soot and Spit. Her work has been seen at Lincoln Center Theater, Carnegie Hall, Teatro alla Scala, New York Theater Workshop, Beckett Theater, Goodspeed Musicals, Primary Stages, New York Live Arts, The Mark Taper Forum, Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, The Beall Center for Art and Technology, The Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, The New Ohio Theater (NYC) and Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center. Other notable productions include: Uncle Vanya (selection of the Prague Quadrennial), The Bacchae by Euripides and Aristophanes' The Birds. Co-writer of the new "Fusion Musical" Dusty (London's West End). Broadway: Associate Director Amazing Grace, Terrence McNally's Deuce, Mark Twain's Is He Dead? and Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit; Off-Broadway: Associate Director to Tina Landau on Iphigenia 2.0 and Tarell Alvin McCraney's Wig Out!. Recent/current projects include: Indian Joe by TONY nominee Elizabeth A. Davis (Goodspeed Musicals), Harold Pinter's A Kind of Alaska in celebration of Dr. Oliver Saks (a world premiere American Sign Language translation that wove three forms of ASL into the text), Edward Beck's Sweetened Water, Keith Hamilton Cobb's AUDELCO-winning American Moor (Shakespeare's Globe in London, August 2018), world premiere of Liza Birkenmeir's The Way out West. Weild is on the directing faculty of Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, holds an MFA in directing from Columbia University School of the Arts and a BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Member SDC.

One of the most renowned theatres in the country, Cherry Lane Theatre has produced a large succession of plays by leading writers from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee and Harold Pinter. Under the artistic leadership of Angelina Fiordellisi since 1996, and currently under Seri Lawrence and Janio Marrero, Cherry Lane remains devoted to developing and producing new works for the stage through its various programs including the award-winning Mentor Project, which each year pairs established playwrights with emerging writers for a season of dramaturgy, rehearsal, casting and production. Cherry Lane Mentor Project just concluded its 20th Season, where it presented Kate Cortesi's A PATRON OF THE ARTS mentored by Anne Washburn and THE OPPORTUNITIES OF EXTINCTION by Sam Chanse, mentored by Migdalia Cruz.

Angelina Fiordellisi is Founding Artistic Director of Cherry Lane Theatre; Seri Lawrence and Janio Marrero are Co-Artistic Directors, Diane Alianiello is General Manager.

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