Directed by Eliza Beckwith and written by Richard Willett, this production tells four interwoven stories set in the World Trade Center on the night before September 11, 2
New Directions Theater will present the world premiere Richard Willett's (TRIPTYCH, RANDOM HARVEST, THE FLID SHOW, TINY BUBBLES, A TERMINAL EVENT), 9/10, which tells four interwoven stories set in the World Trade Center on the night before September 11, 2001.
The production begins previews on August 24, and opens on August 28.
Directed by Eliza Beckwith, the cast features Jessie Barnes Jr., Sean Gordon, Royce Thomas Johnson, Kimberly Prentice, Chandini Prakash, Vincent Rame, Alexandra Salter, and Milai Taguchi.
Watch co-artistic directors of New Directions Theater Eliza Beckwith and playwright Richard Willett talk about "9/10" below:
New Directions Theater began life as a collective of actors, directors, and writers under the aegis of Interborough Repertory Theatre and was one of the longest-running companies of its kind in New York theater, producing such memorable productions as the New York premiere of Michael Weller's Ghost on Fire, the first New York revival of Don Rifkin's acclaimed The Delusion of Angels, and the world premieres of John Attanas's Hermione:Tales of Sexual Frustration and Richard Willett's The Godsend, which won New Directions an OOBR as one of the outstanding productions of its season. The team of director Eliza Beckwith and playwright Richard Willett burst on the scene with the critically acclaimed Triptych (1999), which sold out its first run and came back for another (2000).
The company followed Triptych with highly praised productions of Olga Humphrey's F-Stop (2000) and Richard Willett's Random Harvest (2001). In 2003, NDT premiered Richard Willett's The Flid Show starring able-bodied television star Laurence Lau in the role of a nightclub singer born without arms as a result of the drug thalidomide. In 2005, fortuitous circumstances allowed NDT to stage a slightly rewritten version of the play starring Mat Fraser, an actual thalidomide survivor from England. Frustrated by the lack of press coverage for the superb Laurence Lau production, the company more than made up for it when the new Flid Show and Mat Fraser became the talk of the town. NDT has also recently produced two student workshops on college campuses -- The Flid Show was developed at Alfred University in New York, and 9/10 was workshopped at Prince George's Community College in Maryland -- and Eliza and Richard both hope to continue this work with students.
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