Photo Flash: LCT3 Presents THE COWARD

LCT3's world premiere production of THE COWARD, a new play by Nick Jones, directed by Sam Gold, opens on Monday, November 22 at 6:45 pm at The Duke on 42nd Street, a NEW 42ND STREET® project, 229 W. 42 Street.   LCT3 is Lincoln Center Theater's programming initiative devoted to producing the work of new artists and developing new audiences. THE COWARD is the first of three LCT3 productions during its 2010-2011 season.
 
THE COWARD features Steven Boyer, Jarlath Conroy, John Patrick Dougherty, Stephen Ellis, Richard Poe, Kristen Schaal, Jeremy Strong, and Christopher Evan Welch, and will have sets by David Zinn, costumes by Gabriel Berry, lighting by Ben Stanton, and sound by Jane Shaw.
 
THE COWARD is a period comedy set in 18th century England.  A cowardly young gentleman named Lucidus, to be played by Jeremy Strong, initiates a pistol duel then finds that he can't go through with it.  So he hires a common criminal to fight in his place, only to have the scoundrel make a bloody mess of things. As duel follows duel with many shots fired, this coward finds his reputation growing beyond his wildest expectations.
 
Playwright Nick Jones is a writer, director, puppet designer and performer.  His show Jollyship the Whiz-Bang originally produced at Ars Nova was recently revived for the Under the Radar Festival at the Public.  He has performed music or theater at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Arts TBA Festival, the Dublin Fringe Festival, The Kitchen, P.S. 122, The Public and the Edinburgh Fringe.  Sam Gold directed the critically acclaimed productions of Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation Playwrights Horizons and The Aliens Rattlestick Theater.  His work has also been seen at the New York Theatre Workshop, Studio Dante, the Cherry Lane and the Ohio Theater.  He has developed plays at many theatres nationally including ACT, MCC, MTC, Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, The Public, Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Yale Repertory Theater.
 
Citing the need to develop strong relationships with new artists and to build new audiences, Lincoln Center Theater under the direction of Andre Bishop, Artistic Director, and Bernard Gersten, Executive Producer created LCT3 to offer these artists fully staged productions.  Later this season, LCT3 will present "WHEN I COME TO DIE," a new play written by Nathan Louis Jackson and directed by Thomas Kail January 31 - February 26, as well as a third production to be announced.  LCT has just begun construction of a new theater, rehearsal and office space complex on the roof of the Vivian Beaumont Theater.  The 131 seat theater, to be named the Claire Tow Theater, is scheduled to open in 2012 and will be the home of LCT3.   Paige Evans is the Artistic Director of LCT3. 
            
This season, in addition to LCT3, Lincoln Center Theater is producing the world premieres of the new musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, based on the film by Pedro Almodóvar, with a book by Jeffrey Lane, music and lyrics by David Yazbek and direction by Bartlett Sher, on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre, John Guare's A Free Man of Color, directed by George C. Wolfe, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater and Jon Robin Baitz' Other Desert Cities, directed by Joe Mantello, beginning Thursday, December 16 in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.  The 2010-2011 season will continue with the American premiere of the National Theatre of Great Britain's critically acclaimed production of War Horse beginning Tuesday, March 15 in the Vivian Beaumont Theater and the New York premiere of A Minister's Wife, a new musical version of Shaw's Candida beginning Thursday, April 7 in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. 
 
Tickets to THE COWARD, priced at $20, are available at The Duke on 42nd StreetSM Box Office, by visiting Dukeon42.org or by calling 646.223.3010.  For additional information on LCT3 please visit www.lct3.org.

 Photo Credit: Erin Baiano