David Aaron Baker, Nina Hellman, Richard Topol & More to Star in THE UNBELIEVING at 59E59 Theaters

59E59 Theaters and The Civilians have announced the full cast & creative team for
The Unbelieving by Marin Gazzaniga (So Close) and directed by Steve Cosson (Whisper House). The Unbelieving begins previews October 20, 2022, in Theater B and opens October 27 for a run through November 20, 2022.

The cast of The Unbelieving will include David Aaron Baker ("Billions"), Jeff Biehl (Catch as Catch Can), Sonnie Brown (what you are now), Dan Domingues (A Sherlock Carol), Nina Hellman (The Lucky Star), Joshua David Robinson (Twelfth Night) and Richard Topol (Indecent).

The Unbelieving will feature movement direction by Sean Donovan, set design by Andrew Boyce & Se Oh, costume design by Emily Rebholz, lighting design by Lucrecia Briceño, and original music and sound design by Christian Frederickson. Jeremy Stoller serves as dramaturg. Megan Kingery serves as creative consultant.

In the classic tale of religious conversion, finding God holds the promise of a life filled with purpose and meaning. But what happens when this transformation occurs in reverse, and a faith you have built your life around begins to fall away? The Unbelieving takes a penetrating look into the lives of practicing clergy members- Catholics, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Jews, Mormons, Muslims-who have stopped believing in God.

Staged by NYC's acclaimed downtown theater company The Civilians in the brilliant investigative-theater style they pioneered, The Unbelieving tells the intimate stories of these faith leaders. Using their actual words, obtained during a groundbreaking study by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett and qualitative researcher Linda LaScola, the play explores the struggles, courage, and great humor of these "unbelievers" as they face the hardest decision of their lives-whether to continue living in secret or to risk everything by telling the truth. Based on interviews conducted for the book Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind by Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola.

The performance schedule for The Unbelieving is as follows: Tuesday - Saturday at 7:15pm, Saturday - Sunday at 2:15pm.

Tickets to The Unbelieving begin at $25 and are on sale now at www.59e59.org/shows/show-detail/the-unbelieving/.

ABOUT 59E59

59E59 Theaters was established by the Elysabeth Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation in 2004 to grant professional space and expertise to non-profit theater companies premiering their work in New York City. Under the leadership of Val Day, Artistic Director, and Brian Beirne, Managing Director, 59E59 Theaters presents a year-round curated program of Off Broadway plays and musicals that are nurtured and supported through highly-subsidized rental rates as well as production, ticketing, FOH, marketing, and press support.

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT

www.59e59.org

Marin Gazzaniga

Marin Gazzaniga's (Playwright) first play, So Close, premiered at Walkerspace in NYC. It was inspired by interviews she conducted while writing for Victim Services and told the story of a violent relationship. She co-produced and acted in the independent film version (which streamed on iTunes and Amazon). Her plays have been developed by The Civilians, LAByrinth Theater Co. and Primary Stages ESPA in NY, and Echo Theater Company in Dallas, and Santa Fe Playhouse. In Ways Both Frivolous and Deep was produced by Ashland New Plays Festival's Play4Keeps podcast (Apple Podcasts and Spotify). Gazzaniga started her career in journalism (NBC News, Vogue, MSN.com and Fortune.com) and has written and edited several nonfiction books, produced award-winning digital features for HBO and was director of the Filmmakers' Workshop for New York Stage and Film. Most recently she has worked in television: She was co-head writer for "One Life to Live" on Hulu and has sold pilots to Hulu and Freeform. Currently she is a Writers Guild Award- and Emmy-nominated writer for "The Young and the Restless" (CBS).

Steve Cosson (Director)

is a director, writer and Artistic Director of The Civilians. He's led many projects with the company created from interactions with the public, working with various communities ranging from Evangelical Christians to L.A.'s porn industry, to inmates in Colombia's national women's prison. With The Civilians, was the first theater company to be Artist-in-Residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Recent theater credits include the New York premiere of Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow's Whisper House at 59E59, world premiere of Paul Swan is Dead and Gone by Claire Kiechel; the Encores! Off-Center revival of Gone Missing (bookwriter); Jill Sobule's musical Times Square, bookwriter and director
of The Abominables at Children's Theater Company, writer/director of The Undertaking at BAM Next Wave and international tour; director of José Rivera'sAnother Word for Beauty (Goodman Theatre); director of Michael Friedman and Bess Wohl's musical Pretty Filthy; and the Off Broadway revival of The Belle of Amherst starring Joely Richardson; and he directed the world and New York premieres of Anne Washburn's
Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. www.stevecosson.com

Linda LaScola

Linda LaScola is co-author, with Daniel C. Dennett, of Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief
Behind (2013) and "Preachers who are not Believers" (2010). She is a retired independent qualitative research consultant who lives in Washington, D.C. She holds a master's degree in Social Work from the Catholic University of America and is a co-founder of the Clergy Project. 

Daniel C. Dennett

Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Freedom Evolves
(Viking Penguin, 2003) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Simon & Schuster, 1995), is a University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He lives with his wife in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and has a daughter, a son, and six grandchildren. He was born in Boston in 1942, the son of a historian by the same name, and received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he completed the D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965. He taught at U.C. Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since, aside from periods visiting at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the London School of Economics and the American University of Beirut. He is currently a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute and New College of the Humanities in London. His first book, Content and Consciousness, appeared in 1969, followed by Brainstorms (1978), Elbow Room (1984), The Intentional Stance (1987), Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), Kinds of Minds (1996), and Brainchildren: A Collection of Essays 1984-1996 (MIT Press and Penguin, 1998). Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness, was published in 2005 by MIT Press. He co-edited
The Mind's I with Douglas Hofstadter in 1981.His most recent books are Intuition
Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (Norton, 2013), Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind, with Linda LaScola (Amazon.com, 2013, with a second expanded edition published
by Pitchstone, 2015), and From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution
of Minds (Norton, 2017). His TED Talk: The Illusion of Consciousness, has received over 2.7 million views. He gave the John Locke Lectures at Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences and was awarded the Erasmus Prize in 2012. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the Co-founder (in 1985) and Co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. 

The Civilians

The Civilians began in 2001 with a company of artists, led by Founding Artistic Director Steve Cosson, who were interested in making new work at the intersection of the theatrical and the real. The company has a rich history of nurturing new work by some of America's leading playwrights and composers and has participated in several BAM Next Wave Festivals and has been produced at major New York and regional theaters. The company supports a number of emerging and established artists each year through its R & D Program, cabaret series, and its online journal, Extended Play. Read more at www.thecivilians.org.

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