TOYS: A DARK FAIRY TALE Makes NYC Premiere Tonight at 59E59 Theaters

59E59 Theaters presents the NYC premiere of Toys: A Dark Fairy Tale, written by Saviana Stanescu and directed by Gabor Tompa.

Produced by J.U.S.T. Toys Productions, Toys: A Dark Fairy Tale began performances on Wednesday, November 8 for a limited engagement through Sunday, November 26. Press Opening is tonight, November 14, at 7:15 PM.

Shari was born in a war-torn country, alone and fending for herself. Clara grew up in New York with the best of everything. These two very different women - who led two very different lives - meet in an explosive encounter and discover a shared secret from their past.

Tunde Skovran and Julia Ubrankovics star in this intricate mystery from celebrated Romanian playwright Saviana Stanescu.

The design team includes Gabor Tompa (production design) and Elisa Benzoni (costume design).

The performance schedule is Tuesday - Thursday at 7:15 PM, Friday at 8:15 PM; Saturday at 8:15 PM; and Sunday at 3:15 PM. Please note, there are no performances on Wednesday, November 22 and Thursday, November 23; there is an additional performance on Saturday, November 18 at 2:15 PM. Performances are at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues). Single tickets are $25 ($20 for 59E59 Members). To purchase tickets, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or visit www.59e59.org.

Saviana Stanescu (playwright) is a Romanian-born award-winning playwright and one of the most exciting voices to emerge in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Her work has been widely presented in the US and internationally. US productions include Aliens with Extraordinary Skills (published by Samuel French) at Women's Project; Useless at IRT Theatre; Ants at New Jersey Rep; For a Barbarian Woman, a co-production Fordham/EST; Polanski Polanski at HERE Arts Center; and Waxing West (2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Full-length Script) at La MaMa Theatre. Recent Romanian productions of Saviana's plays include Organic at the National Theatre in Bucharest; and Viza de Clown at Odeon Theatre. Aliens with Extraordinary Skills (Inmigrantes con Habilidades Extraordinarias) and Final Countdown (Cuenta Regresiva) ran for two years in Mexico City at Teatro La Capilla, Teatro El Milagro, and Foro La Gruta. Bucharest Underground won the 2007 Marulic Prize for Best European Radio-Drama, while The Inflatable Apocalypse won the Best Play of the Year Uniter Award in Romania. In Stockholm, Sweden, White Embers, produced by Dramalabbet, made it to the TOP 3 of Best Plays in 2008. In the US, it is published by Samuel French and is one of their 2010 OOB festival winners. Saviana was named a 2011 nytheatre.com 'Person of the Year' and is inducted in the Indie Theatre Hall Of Fame.

Her published books of poetry and drama include The New York Plays, Aliens with Extraordinary Skills, Waxing West, Google Me!, Diary of a Clone, Aurolac Blues, and Black Milk. Monologues from her plays have been published in various Best Monologues anthologies, while Hurt is part of The Best American Short Plays 2012-2013 (published by Applause). Saviana has been the Director of Eastern European Exchange for The Lark Play Development Center, the curator of playgroundzero and New York with an Accent, and the founder of Immigrant Artists and Scholars in New York (IASNY). She holds an MA in Performance Studies (Fulbright fellow) and an MFA in Dramatic Writing (John Golden Award for excellence in Playwriting) from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, as well as a PhD in Theatre from the National University of Theatre & Film in Bucharest, Romania. She has taught Playwriting and Theatre/Performance Studies at NYU - Tisch (2004-2012), Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, Fordham University, ESPA Primary Stages, Lark Transylvania Playwriting Camp, Centro Cultural Helénico - Mexico City, etc. Currently she is on tenure-track as a professor of Playwriting and Contemporary Theatre at Ithaca College.

Gabor Tompa (director) received his training at the Theatre and Film Academy in Bucharest, Romania and began working as a professional director in 1981. Since then, he has directed more than 100 productions worldwide including plays by Shakespeare, Moliere, Chekhov, Beckett, Bulgakhov, Büchner, Camus and Ionesco. In 1990 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Hungarian Theatre in Cluj, Romania, a post he has held up to the present time. He served as Head of Directing at the Theatre Academy in Tirgu Mures, Romania and has been a guest teacher at the State University of Cluj, Academie Theatrale de L'Union, Limoges, Schauspielschule Freiburg, Brunel University, London, National University of Seoul and Institut del Teatre Barcelona. Professor Tompa is the recipient of many awards and has received widespread recognition in Europe for his physically adventurous and conceptually audacious productions of classic plays. He has directed worldwide including France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Canada, South Korea, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Serbia. He received the 2002 UNITER Award for Excellence for his many career achievements. His film, Chinese Defense, won the Best First Feature Award at the International Film Festival in Salerno, Italy in 1999 and was an official selection of the 1999 Berlin Festival. Four-time recipient of Best Director of the Year in Romania, he received the Best Performance of the Year Award in 2009 for Three Sisters. His production of Born for Never was a Critics' Choice at the 2009 Avignon Festival. Mr. Tompa is also the author of several volumes of poetry and essays on the theater. His book, Label Curtain, has been published in English by Bookart and has been presented at the BookExpo America in New York, 2015.

This presentation is made possible through the generous support of the Romanian Culture Institute in New York.