'Crawl, Fade to White' Announces Casting and Other Changes

13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.), the OBIE Award-winning theater company made up of 13 playwrights, in association with Minetta Street Productions, will present the New York premiere of Sheila Callaghan’s (P#7) “CRAWL, FADE TO WHITE,” directed by Paul Willis. “CRAWL. FADE TO WHITE” will be performed at the Ideal Glass Gallery (www.idealglass.org), 22 East 2nd Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue), with performances running from October 11 through November 1, 2008. The official opening night will be Monday, October 13 at 8:00 PM.
 
Business is at an all time low for Louise in her profession as a “consultant.” So in order to keep her daughter April in school, she must sell an expensive family heirloom lamp at the neighbors’ yard sale. April sneaks home to steal the lamp, but she is too late — it has been intercepted by the quiet and bizarre couple next door. April is soon taken in by this odd pair, and from within their home she unlocks a haunting secret. This sets off a firestorm of revelations, confessions, and vengeance that rattle this sleepy suburban block, ultimately forcing April to ask her mother the forbidden question: “What’s in your briefcase, Louise?”

Sheila Callaghan’s plays have been produced and developed with Actors Theatre of Louisville (Humana Festival), Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, The Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project, New Georges, LABrynth, South Coast Repertory, The Lark, Clubbed Thumb, Annex Theatre, and Moving Arts, among others.  Sheila is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award for emerging artists, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, the prestigious Whiting Award, a LA Weekly Award for Best One-Act, a Jerome Fellowship from the Playwright’s Center in Minneapolis, and a MacDowell Residency. Her full-length plays include Dead City, Scab, The Hunger Waltz, Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), We Are Not These Hands, Lascivious Something, Kate Crackernuts, Fever/Dream, and her opera Elemental with music by Sophocles Papavasilopoulos. Later this season her That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play will make its world premiere at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. She teaches playwriting throughout the country, is a resident artist at HERE Arts Center, and also a resident of New Dramatists.
 
Paul Willis most recently directed One Thing I Like to Say Is by Amy Fox for Clubbed Thumb. Other New York credits include Perverter by Andy Horwitz at Dixon Place, They Saw Dreams by the Free Theatre of Belarus at The Culture Project, and Aaron Landesman’s Open House with the Foundry Theatre as an actor. He co-founded Seattle’s acclaimed Printer’s Devil Theatre in 1996, where he served as co-Artistic Director for five years. His stage production of Hedda Gabler for Printer’s Devil was named one of Seattle’s “Top 10 Great Theatre Events of the Decade” by Seattle newspaper The Stranger. Other theatrical directing credits include world premiere productions of Hurricane by Erin Cressida Wilson, Horrible Child by Lawrence Krauser, The Scandal by Kristen Kosmas, and The Gas Man by Herbert Bergel.
 
The six-member cast for “CRAWL, FADE TO WHITE” will be (alphabetically): Matthew roi Berger (Nolan), Shawtane Monroe Bowen (Niko), Carla Harting (Louise), Jocelyn Kuritsky (April), Matthew Lewis (Dan), and Black-Eyed Susan (Fran). Matthew roi Berger appeared as Randall Rockyjohn in Adam Rapp’s Stone Cold Dead Serious at The Clurman; Shawtane Monroe Bowen was last seen Off-Broadway in The Seven at New York Theatre Workshop; Carla Harting’s recent New York theater credits include Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Eurydice, and Valparaiso; Jocelyn Kuritsky returns to 13P after having appeared in last season’s Have You Seen Steve Steven? Other NY credits include: Twelve Ophelias at the McCarren Park Pool, and Smoke and Mirrors at The Flea; Matthew Lewis was seen this summer in Lenora Champagne’s TRACES/fades at IceFactory ’08. Other New York credits include A Shayna Maidel at the Westside Arts Theatre, Fathers and Sons at the Public Theater, and the world premiere production of Lanford Wilson’s Balm in Gilead. Black-Eyed Susan spent twenty years as the leading lady of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company in such plays as The Artificial Jungle, Secret Lives of the Sexists, and The Ventriloquist’s Wife. The production stage manager will be Pamela Salling.
 
The set design will be by Anna Kiraly; the lighting design by Ben Kato; the costume design by Jessica Pabst; and the sound design by Eric Shim. Producers for P#7 are Caleb Hammons and David Tirosh. Maria Goyanes serves as 13P’s Executive Producer and Karina Mangu-Ward its General Manager.
 
The members of 13P (www.13P.org) are: Sheila Callaghan, Erin Courtney, Madeleine George, Rob Handel, Ann Marie Healy, Julia Jarcho, Young Jean Lee, Winter Miller, Sarah Ruhl, Katherine Ryan, Lucy Thurber (P#8, next production), Anne Washburn, and Gary Winter.
 
The complete performance schedule (October 11 through November 1) will be: Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. There will be one additional performance: the Opening Night performance on Monday, October 13 at 8:00 pm. Tickets are a suggested donation of $18.00. To reserve, please visit www.crawlfadetowhite.com or call 212-352-3101.

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