SATC Stages US Premiere of GORILLA at Theatre Row, Now thru 6/16

Scandinavian American Theater Company will present the US Premiere of GORILLA by Rhea Leman. The Danish premiere was just nominated for the 2013 Reumert Award (the Danish equivalent of the Tony Award) for Best Playwrighting. Directed by Ari Edelson, previews begin tonight, May 24 at the Lion Theatre at Theatre Row. Opening is slated for May 30.

In GORILLA, five top male managers meet in their company's country lodge, to complete a series of team building and gender sensitivity workshops run by the company's female coach. When they are confronted with their team's poor financial performance and the threat of being fired, they are forced to see that the greed and personal ambitions have driven some of them to this turning point.

The production stars Drama Desk and Obie Award winner Michael Cullen (Cobb, Bug), Jennifer Dorr White (Sealed For Freshness, Pera Pelas), Alfred Gingold, Albert Bendix, and Tullan Holmqvist. Additional casting and the production team will be announced shortly. GORILLA is sponsored by The Danish Arts Council Committee for Performance Arts, The Consulate General of Denmark in New York and Wilhelm Hansen Fonden.

Playwright Rhea Leman was born in New York City where she studied and performed theater until moving to Denmark in 1981. Since then, she has been working as playwright, director and educator in theater, TV and radio. The Cultural Minister appointed her as Chairman for The Danish Theater and Dance Committee and as a member of The Danish Arts Council (2003-07). In 2008, she was an artist-in-residence at The Shanghai Theatre Academy in China. Five of her plays were produced in Denmark during the 2012-13 theater season including Hitler on the Roof, The Boots of Stalin and Gorilla, which has been nominated for the 2013 Reumert Award for Best Playwrighting.

Ari Edelson is a director and producer who has worked both in the US and internationally, with recent credits including the Obie Award-winning The Attic (Play Company), Mauritius (Dorset Theater Festival), Little Black Dress (Boston Playwrights and The Exchange), The Scariest (Theatres at 45 Bleecker), Vengeance (Cherry Lane), Expats (The New Group), Jump! and Realism (The Exchange), The Atheist (London's Theatre 503), Blood Wedding, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Theatre Project Tokyo), True West and Tape (Tokyo Globe), and Rape of Lucretia (English National Opera, London and Luxembourg). Ari is currently the Artistic Director of Off-Broadway's The Exchange theater company and runs the Orchard Project development center. He has been a guest director at New Dramatists and The National Theatre Studio, a Directing Fellow of the Drama League, and has taught at Northwestern University, Fordham University and in Japan. Ari graduated from Yale University and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

Scandinavian American Theater Company (SATC) is a collective of theater artists founded in 2009 to provide a Scandinavian perspective through the new generation of Scandinavian playwrights and theater artists. SATC presents contemporary plays and inventive takes on the classics from the Nordic region, which includes Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland. Past productions include the US premieres of Pinocchio's Ashes by Jokum Rohde (Denmark), The Fundamentalist by Juha Jokela (Finland) and Home Sweet Home by Andreas Garfield (Denmark). For more information visit www.satcnyc.org.

GORILLA runs tonight, May 24 - June 16 on the following schedule: Thursday - Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm with additional performances Tues. May 28 at 7pm and Wed. May 29 at 8pm. There is no performance on May 26. The Lion Theatre at Theatre Row is located at 410 West 42nd Street at 9th Avenue. Tickets are $18 at 212-239-6200 or www.TeleCharge.com.

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