THE BLUE FLOWER, Featuring Sebastian Arcelus, Marc Kudisch, Teal Wicks, et al., Opens Tonight

THE BLUE FLOWER, written by Jim Bauer andRuth Bauer, with choreography by Chase Brock and direction by Will Pomerantz, began previews on October 12 and officially opens tonight, November 9 at 6:30pm at Second Stage's Tony Kiser Theatre (305 West 43rd street). For tickets or more information, please visit www.2ST.com.

THE BLUE FLOWER features Sebastian Arcelus (Buddy in Elf, Wicked, Jersey Boys), Marc Kudisch (Three-time Tony Award nominee for 9 to 5, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Thoroughly Modern Millie), Meghan McGeary (The Blue Flower at A.R.T.), Joseph Medeiros (Irving Berlin's White Christmas), Julia Osborne (National Tour of South Pacific), Graham Rowat (Guys and Dolls), Aaron Serotsky (August: Osage County), and Teal Wicks (Elphaba in Wicked). 

Spanning two continents and half a century, the new musical, THE BLUE FLOWER, explores the romantic and tumultuous relationships between four young friends - three artists and a scientist - as they create a world of art, revolution, and passion amidst the turbulence and destruction of the World Wars.

THE BLUE FLOWER will feature scenic design by Beowulf Boritt; costume design by Ann Hould-Ward; lighting design by Donald Holder; sound design by Dan Moses Schreier; and projection design by Aaron Rhyne. The production will feature choreography by Chase Brock. The musical director is Dominick Amendum.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Sebastian Arcelus recently created the leading role of Buddy in the Broadway musical Elf. Sebastian's other Broadway credits include Jersey Boys, Wicked, Good Vibrations and Rent. He also recently starred in Lincoln Center Theater's Off-Broadway production of Happiness. Some regional and international credits include the world premiere of William Finn's Songs of Innocence and Experience (Williamstown, MA), Wicked (First National), The Full Monty (NSMT), Hamlet: A Rock Opera (Prague), West Side Story (Latin America), Miss Julie, Floyd Collins and Aida. His voice can also be heard on numerous television commercials and animated programs.

Marc Kudisch has been nominated for three Tony Awards for his performances in 9 to 5 (also Drama Desk nomination), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (also Outer Critics Circle nomination), and Thoroughly Modern Millie (also Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations). Other Broadway credits include The Apple Tree, Assassins (Drama Desk nomination), A Little Night Music (NYC Opera), Bells Are Ringing, The Wild Party, The Scarlet Pimpernel (3.0), High Society, Beauty and the Beast, Joseph...Dreamcoat. He has appeared at NYC Opera in The Pirates of Penzance and A Little Night Music and Off-Broadway in The Glorious Ones, The Minister's Wife, and See What I Wanna See (Drama Desk nomination), among many others. Recent regional work includes The Witches of Eastwick (Signature, Helen Hayes Award), Summer and Smoke (Hartford), Zorba (Reprise!, L.A. Outer Critics, Ovation nominations), A Little Night Music (L.A. Opera). Film/TV: "Sex and the City," "Late Night w/Letterman," "ATWT," "Break In" (Lifetime), "Bye Bye Birdie."

Meghan McGeary is making her Second Stage Theatre debut in a role she originated in previous productions of The Blue Flower (A.R.T., Prospect Theatre Company, NYMF). Meghan and Jim Bauer co-founded the band Dagmar in 2005 (dagmartheband.com), which is the foundation for Exo, a show they are currently writing. Other credits include The Rockae (Prospect), Aspects of Love (Media Theatre, 2006 Barrymore Award nomination).

Joseph Medeiros has appeared on Broadway in West Side Story, Irving Berlin's White Christmas, Guys and Dolls, Grease, Big. His National Tour credits include Wicked and Irving Berlin's White Christmas. Joseph's other credits include works at the Muny, Music Circus, Alley Theatre, Lyric Theatre of OK, San Jose Rep and CCM.

Julia Osborne is making her Second Stage debut. She recently appeared in the First National Tour of Lincoln Center Theater's South Pacific in which she understudied and performed the role of Nellie Forbush. Regional theatre credits include: A Little Night Music at Baltimore Centerstage, Meet Me In St. Louis andf The Baker's Wife at Paper Mill Playhouse, Pirates! at The Huntington, Paper Mill, and Goodspeed. Also at Goodspeed: Half A Sixpence. Other regional performances include works at The Fulton Theatre, PA Centre Stage and T.U.T.S.

Graham Rowat has appeared on Broadway in LoveMusik, Guys and Dolls, Dracula, and Beauty and the Beast and Off-Broadway in The Thing About Men. National Tour credits include Irving Berlin's White Christmas (Bob Wallace; San Francisco, Detroit, Toronto) and Les Misérables (U.S. and China). Television: "Law & Order," "Six Degrees," "As the World Turns."

Aaron Serotsky has appeared on Broadway in August: Osage County and Off-Broadway in Frankenstein. Other credits include Titanic (National Tour), and regional productions at Goodspeed, Sacramento, Denver Center, Seattle Rep, Alliance, George Street, St. Louis, Arizona, Northlight (Jeff Nomination), and others. Television: "Law & Order," "The Unusuals," "The Beautiful Life" (recurring), "Guiding Light," "All My Children," "The Day That Lehman Died" (BBC Radio).

Teal Wicks played the role of Maria in the A.R.T. production of The Blue Flower. She comes directly from Wicked, where she recently made her Broadway as Elphaba, a role she also played in the Los Angeles and San Francisco companies. Other theatre credits include the Encores! production of Stairway to Paradise, as well as Fahrenheit 451 and The $trip. Other credits include Catherine in the national tour of Pippin, Turandot: The Rumble for the Ring (dir. Diane Paulus/Bay St. Theatre), 1776, Pippin (Goodspeed).

ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM

Writer/composer/lyricist Jim Bauer earned a Bachelor's degree in music composition and theory at Haverford College, where he was mentored by composers Harold Boatrite and John Davison. He has composed and produced music scores for film and television while performing as singer/songwriter/guitarist/keyboardist in a variety of bands he periodically assembles. With DAGMAR, his current project with singing partner Meghan McGeary, he performs in the New York City subways under the Music Under New York (MUNY) banner and on the streets of Boston and Cambridge. DAGMAR recently released its third CD, Door No. 3. He has received numerous songwriting and performance awards, including the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award in 2004 with his wife Ruth Bauer for their work on The Blue Flower.

Co-writer/visual artist/videographer Ruth Bauer is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. Her oil paintings, watercolors, collages and monotypes have been shown in group exhibits in museums including Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, The Hudson River Museum, The Tuscon Museum of Art, The DeCordova Museum, The Brockton Museum and the Rose Art Museum, and in solo exhibitions in galleries across the United States. Her work is included in notable private and public collections and has been reviewed in a number of articles in art journals and newspapers, including ArtNews and The Boston Globe. As an illustrator she has created book jacket covers for Hougton Mifflin, Viking, Harvard University Press and Orchard Books. She is a 2004 recipient of a Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award.

Chase Brock's recent choreography includes Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (Foxwoods Theatre), Lost in the Stars (City Center Encores!), Bartlett Sher's acclaimed production of the Gounod opera Roméo et Juliette (Salzburg Festival), and the bestselling video game Dance on Broadway for Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Move. In addition, Brock is artistic director of the Brooklyn-based contemporary dance company The Chase Brock Experience, for which he has commissioned six scores and choreographed 25 dances.

Director Will Pomerantz has directed and developed new plays, musical theater, and opera with such theaters as Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theatre, Hartford Stage, New York Theater Workshop, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Soho Rep, Culture Project, The Signature Theatre, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Studio Theatre, Bard Summerscape and The Guthrie. He has directed world premieres by John Guare, David Auburn, Neil LaBute, Craig Lucas, Kia Corthron, David Lindsay-Abaire, Stephen Belber, Noah Haidle and Linda Cho. His production of The Shape of Things was voted Outstanding Production of the Year in Washington, D.C. by Metro Weekly and received a Helen Hayes Award for outstanding performance, as well as being cited as among the year's best by The Washington Post and The Washington Times. His production Dai (starring Iris Bahr) received a Drama Desk nomination for Best Solo Performance 2006-2007 and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Solo Performance. He received an OOBR Award for Outstanding Production (for A Tale of Two Cities). Pomerantz is Associate Director for Artistic Development for Epic Theatre Ensemble, where he directed the New York premiere of Howard Barker's A Hard Heart (starring Kathleen Chalfant) and Mahida's Extra Key to Heaven. Pomerantz is the first American director ever invited to direct for The National Theatre of Poland, where his production of Cinders, by Janusz Glowacki, was performed as part of the repertory for four years. In addition, he has been the Boris Sagal Fellow in Directing for Williamstown Theatre Festival, Staff Repertory Director for The Acting Company, Director-In-Residence for Culture Project and is an alumnus of the Directors Lab at Lincoln Center, a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop and a member of Ensemble Studio Theater.

THE BLUE FLOWER will be performed through November 27 on the following schedule: Tuesday at 7pm, Wednesday - Saturday at 8pm, Wednesday and Saturday at 2pm and Sunday at 3pm.

The following exceptions will be made to the regular performance schedule:

Wednesday, November 9 - 6:30pm performance (opening night)
Thursday, November 10 - no performance
Sunday, November 13 - 2pm and 7pm performances
Monday, November 21 - 8pm performance
Thursday, November 24 - no performance (Thanksgiving)
Friday, November 25 - 2pm and 8pm performances

All evening performances Tuesday - Friday the week of November 14 will begin at 7pm.

Tickets are $80 and may be purchased by phoning 212-246-4422 or 800-766-6048 or online at www.2ST.com.

$30 UNDER 30 YOUTH ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE - patrons age 30 and under may purchase a limited number of specially-priced $30 tickets in advance. Proof of age must be shown at the box office.

A limited number of student rush tickets are $18 and are available one hour prior to curtain.

Group tickets are available by phoning 212-246-4422.

Box-office hours are Monday, 10:00am - 6:00pm, Tuesday 10:00am - 7:00pm, Wednesday through Saturday, 10:00am to 8:00pm, and Sunday, 10:00am to 3:00pm.

Founded in 1979 under the leadership of Artistic Director Carole Rothman, Second Stage Theatre produces a diverse range of premieres and new interpretations of America's best Contemporary Theatre, including Tiny Alice and Peter and Jerry by Edward Albee; The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry; The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane; Little Murders by Jules Feiffer; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin; A Soldier's Play by Charles Fuller; Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo's Greatest Hits by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy; Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo; Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe; Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants and On the Stem by Ricky Jay; Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; Living Out by Lisa Loomer; This Is Our Youth and The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan; Some Men by Terrence McNally; eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; Everyday Rapture by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott; Let Me Down Easy by Anna Deavere Smith; Saturday Night by Stephen Sondheim; Crowns by ReGina Taylor; Uncommon Women and Others by Wendy Wasserstein; Spoils of War by Michael Weller; Before It Hits Home, Jar the Floor and Birdie Blue by Cheryl L. West; Jitney by August Wilson; Lemon Sky, Serenading Louie and Sympathetic Magic by Lanford Wilson; and Metamorphoses and The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci by Mary Zimmerman.

The company's more than 130 citations include the 2010 Pulitzer prize for Next to Normal, the 2009 Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Orchestrations, and Best Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley) for Next to Normal, the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed), 2005 Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical (Rachel Sheinkin, ...Spelling Bee) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Dan Fogler, ...Spelling Bee), 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play (Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses), the 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, 27 Obie Awards, six Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Clarence Derwent Awards, 12 Drama Desk Awards, nine Theatre World Awards, 12 Lucille Lortel Awards, the Drama Critics Circle Award and 15 AUDELCO Awards.

In 1999, Second Stage Theatre opened The Tony Kiser Theatre, its state-of-the-art, 296-seat theatre, designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. In 2002, Second Stage launched "Second Stage Theatre Uptown" series to showcase the work of up and coming artists at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre. The Theatre supports artists through several programs that include residencies, fellowships and commissions, and engages students and community members through education and outreach programs.

Second Stage Theatre has acquired the right to purchase the historic Helen Hayes Theatre, located at 240 W. 44th Street. With this new home, Second Stage will be the only theatre company on Broadway dedicated exclusively to the development and presentation of contemporary American theatrical productions. Second Stage will also become one of only four non-profit theatre companies that own and operate theatres on Broadway. The company will continue to lease and operate their original theatres on the city's Upper West Side and in Midtown Manhattan.

 

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