David Van Asselt's A FABLE Begins Performances Tonight at Cherry Lane Theatre

piece by piece productions and Rising Phoenix Repertory in association with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater will present the world premiere of A Fable, written by David Van Asselt and directed by Daniel Talbott, beginning tonight, May 3 at 7pm at the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street. The opening night is set for Thursday, May 22 at 7pm. A Fable is scheduled to run through Sunday, June 28.

The epic adventure of an idealist spurred on by love to right a long-forgotten wrong, A Fable follow his encounters with a whole cast of characters--colorful and corrupt, lucky and ill-fated--as they each grope their way through a landscape of nationwide strife and corporate greed. A play of dualities, A Fable takes into question how each choice we make can drastically change our ending.

The cast of A Fable is Edward Carnevale, Liza Fernandez, Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Maxwell Hamilton, Jerry Matz, Hubert Point-Du Jour, Eileen Rivera, Pamela Shaw, Samantha Soule, Alok Tewari, Sanford Wilson, and Gordon Joseph Weiss.

Music for A Fable is by Elizabeth Swados; set design is by John McDermott; costume design is by Tristan Raines; lighting design is by Joel Moritz; projection design is by Kaitlyn Pietras; sound design is by Janie Bullard; fight direction is by UnkleDave's Fight-House. The production manager is Dave Nelson; the production stage manager is Andrew Slater.

David Van Asselt is the Artistic Director and a co-founder of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Because he is also a playwright (Dog Daze, Incident at Irving's Pet Place (a radio play), A Trip to the Beach, Winning), he started the company with six other playwrights as a kind of playwrights cooperative, which then evolved into the present day company. He has degrees in film and philosophy from NYU.

Daniel Talbott is an actor, director, playwright, producer, literary manager of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and the artistic director of the Lucille Lortel and NYIT Award-winning Rising Phoenix Rep. Recent directing work includes Gin Baby (IRT), Scarcity (Rattlestick), Mike and Seth (Encore), Slipping (Rattlestick), AZAK (Rattlestick/Encore), Lake Water (Neighborhood Productions), Eightythree Down (Hard Sparks), Much Ado About Nothing (Boomerang), Squealer (Lesser America), and The Umbrella Plays (the teacup company/FringeNYC - Overall Excellence Award: Outstanding Play). His plays include Slipping (The Side Project, Rattlestick), Yosemite (Rattlestick), AZAK (Encore/Rattlestick), What Happened When (RPR/HERE), Someone Brought Me (Quince Productions), Mike and Seth (Quince, Encore, upcoming at The Side Project), Extraordinary Things (Rising Phoenix Rep), and Grey. He is a graduate of Juilliard and of Solano College Theatre's ATP, teaches at Primary Stages/ESPA, and is a proud member of Lesser America.

Elizabeth Swados is perhaps best known for her Broadway and international smash hit Runaways. Ms. Swados has composed, written and directed for over thirty years. Some of her works include the Obie Award-winning Trilogy at La MaMa, Alice at the Palace with Meryl Streep at the New York Shakespeare Theater Festival and Groundhog at Manhattan Theater Club and was optioned for a Milos Forman film. Her work has been performed on Broadway, off-Broadway, at La MaMa, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, and locations all over the world. Ms. Swados has scored films for Francis Ford Coppola and Arthur Penn and many documentaries, including Auf Wiedersehen, and "What do Children Think About When They Think About the Bomb" for HBO. She was commissioned to write an oratorio commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. It was performed in New York City and at the site of the fire outdoors in Washington Square Park. In 2010, she adapted poems of Roald Dahl for the Atlantic Theater Company. She has had three books of poetry published by Hanging Loose Press, the most recent, The Contest, published in 2013. Her book, My Depression, A Picture Book (from which this film is based) won the Ken award from the National Alliance of Mental Illness. This book is being published this year by Seven Stories Press to coincide with the film's premiere. My Depression, A Picture Book also won the New York Public Library award for best non-fiction work for teenagers.

piece by piece productions (pbp) is a not-for-profit organization that was founded in 1999 by Wendy vanden Heuvel. Its mission is to produce and develop theater that is socially, politically, and spiritually relevant to our times. Productions have included: Medea directed by Deborah Warner with Fiona Shaw on Broadway (associate producer, Wendy vanden Heuvel), The Tricky Part (2004 Obie Awardand two Drama Desk nominations including Best Play) and All The Rage by Martin Moran(co-produced with Rising Phoenix Rep and The Barrow Group; Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Solo Show 2013). The Walworth Farce by Enda Walsh, Mabou Mines DollHouse, Emma Rice's Brief Encounter, and Red Velvet,all in association with St Anne's Warehouse. My Name is Rachel Corrie in association with The Royal Court Theatre. Slipping by Daniel Talbott and 3C by David Adjmi, co-produced with Rising Phoenix Repertory and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Elective Affinities, featuring Zoe Caldwell, with Rising Phoenix Repertory and Soho Rep. Since 2010, pbp has been an associate producer on The Lake Lucille Chekhov Project (Ivanov, Seagull) which was created by Brian Mertes + Melissa Kievman, and this past winterpbp co-produced Lee Breuer's La Divina Caricatura in association with St. Ann's Warehouse, LaMaMa ETC, Mabou Mines, and Dovetail Productions, and well as Hundred Days, conceived by The Bengsons in association with Z Space. Film: The Rest I Make Up: Documenting Irene by Michelle Memran (a documentary about the life and work of the playwright Maria Irene Fornes).

Rising Phoenix Repertory received the2007 Caffe Cino Fellowship and New York Innovative Theatre Award. Founded in 1999 by Artistic Director Daniel Talbott, Rising Phoenix Repertory produces both indie theatre and Off-Broadway, in traditional spaces and site-specifically around New York City. Recent productions include the Lucille Lortel Award winning Off-Broadway run of All the Rage (co-produced with piece by piece productions and The Barrow Group), and the acclaimed productions of Elective Affinities (co-produced site-specifically with piece by piece and Soho Rep), Slipping (produced with piece by piece and Rattlestick), and Too Much Memory (also with piece by piece), which transferred to the New York Theatre Workshop's Fourth Street Theatre after winning the FringeNYC award for Outstanding Play in 2008. RPR produces an ongoing series called Cino Nights, inspired by Joe Cino and his Caffe Cino-one of the original birthplaces of Off-Off-Broadway theatre-for which the company has commissioned over twenty playwrights to write new, full-length plays that are fully produced site-specifically in the intimate back room of East Village restaurant Jimmy's No. 43 on a shoestring budget. Other recent productions include Barn, Extraordinary Things, Ceremony, Afterclap, and Birthday (Jimmy's No. 43); 365 Days/365 Plays (Public Theater); What Happened When (HERE); Fall Forward (part of the Sitelines/River to River festival produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council). Rising Phoenix Rep serves as a home base for a company of theatre professionals that encourages an open exchange of work and ideas within the greater theatre community.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is a multi-award-winning company which has produced over sixty world premieres in the past eighteen seasons, and was the recipient of the 2007 Ross Wetzsteon Memorial OBIE Award for developing new and innovative work. Previous plays include Two Boys in a Bed, Message to Michael, Carpool, Volunteer Man, A Trip to the Beach, Ascendancy, Stuck, Vick's Boy, The Messenger, Saved or Destroyed, Neil's Garden, My Special Friend, Faster, Bliss, St. Crispin's Day, Where We're Born, Five Flights, Boise, Finer Noble Gases, That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play, God Hates The Irish: The Ballad of Armless Johnny, Miss Julie, Acts of Mercy: passion-play, Cagelove, It Goes Without Saying, Dark Matters, Stay, American Sligo, Rag and Bone, War, Geometry of Fire, The Amish Project, Killers and Other Family, Post No Bills, Blind, Little Doc, underneathmybed, There Are No More Big Secrets, The Hallway Trilogy, Carson McCullers Talks About Love, The Wood, Asuncion, Horsedreams, Yosemite, Massacre (Sing to Your Children), 3C, Through the Yellow Hour, A Summer Day, The Revisionist starring Vanessa Redgrave and Jesse Eisenberg, Buyer & Cellar (2013 Drama Desk and Outer Critic Circle Awards for Outstanding Solo Performance), Basilica, Charles Ives Take Me Home, The Hill Town Plays, One Night..., How to Make Friends and then Kill Them, The Correspondent, Ode To Joy, the Off-Broadway GLAAD Award-nominated hit The Last Sunday in June, Craig Wright's The Pavilion (Drama Desk nominee-Outstanding Play of 2005) and Lady (Drama Desk nominee-Outstanding Play of 2008), as well as The Aliens by Annie Baker (2010 Obie Award winner for Best New American Play).

A Fable plays Tuesday through Friday at 7pm; Saturday at 2pm and 7pm; and Sunday at 3pm at the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street. There will be an added performance on Monday, May 19 at 7pm; there will be no performance on Friday, May 23. Tickets are $66 and may be purchased by visiting www.OvationTix.com or by phoning 866-811-4111. Tickets for those under 30 and theater artists are $26; student tickets are $21. For more information about A Fable, visit www.piecebypieceproductions.org, www. RisingPhoenixRep.org, or www.rattlestick.org.

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