Access Theater and The Dirty Blondes Present PASSING THROUGH: ROOM 603, Now thru 4/14

Access Theater & The Dirty Blondes' present award-winning director Alexandra Siladi (Outstanding Director, Planet Connections Festivity 2012) and actor/filmmaker Shane Jensen's production of PASSING THROUGH: Room 603, tonight, April 10-14. The show features the theatrical premiere of plays from Hotel Room (a miniseries produced by David Lynch & Monty Montgomery) including two works by Barry Gifford and a third developed from Jay McInerney's teleplay. This year marks the 20th anniversary of its original air date.

PASSING THROUGH: Room 603 weaves together three stories of temporary pleasure and pain. The evening of plays are all set in one NYC hotel room on three different dates in three different years. It begins with the tale of a prostitute, played by Safdie Brothers regular Dakota Goldhor, who unknowingly becomes part of a game played out between two old friends. The time then jumps to 1993 with group of high society debutantes working out their morbid love affairs and culminates with a married couple from Oklahoma searching for answers during a blackout.

This new production will explore how the intimate, surreal, desolate, mystifying, and seductive vignettes conceived by David Lynch & Gifford translate to the stage, illuminating the theatricality of the televised works. Like the park bench in Waiting for Godot, the hotel room provides a setting once remote and identifiable for transient characters. ­­A mirror for the theater itself, where we see stories and moments created for us only while passing through.

This work is presented with the permission of author, poet, and screenwriter Barry Gifford.

Starring: Dakota Goldhor as Darlene, Film Credits: Thumbsucker (2005), Daddy Longlegs (2009); Hannah Gross as Maid, Film Credits: I Used to Be Darker (Sundance Film Festival 2013); Alex Grubbs as Danny, Theater Credits: These Seven Sicknesses (Drama Desk Award nominated, dir. Ed Sylvanus Iskandar,The Flea Theater), #serials @TheFlea (producer); and Isabelle Boulton, Jimmy Dailey, Shane Jensen, BranDon Johnson, Rachel Lin, Tyler McClain, Michelangelo Milano and Rachel Napoleon.

Associate Producers for Access Theater: Jacqueline Christy (Artistic Director) & Jean Marie McKee (Managing Director). Directed, Produced, & Set Designed by Alexandra Siladi & Shane Jensen. Written by Barry Gifford. Lighting Design by John Wilder. Music by Canelle Boughton. For more about the production, go to www.thedirtyblondes.org/passing-through.html.

The production runs tonight, April 10-14, 2013. Ticket price: $18. Purchase at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/357538. Performances play at Access Theater, 380 Broadway @ White St (2 blocks South of Canal).

Barry Gifford (Author, Tricks and Blackout) -- Barry Gifford's fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published in twenty-eight languages. His novel Night People was awarded the Premio Brancati, established by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Albertor Moravia, in Italy, and he has been the recipient of awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His books Sailor's Holiday and The Phantom Father were each named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, and his book Wyoming was named a Novel of the Year by the Los Angeles Times. He has written librettos for operas by the composers Toru Takemitsu, Ichiro Nodaira, and Olga Neuwirth. Gifford's work has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Punch, Esquire, La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, El Pais, La Republica, Rolling Stone, Brick, Film Comment, El Universal, Projections, and the New York Times. His film credits include: Wild at Heart, Perdita Durango, Lost Highway, City of Ghosts, Ball Lightining and The Phantom Father. Barry Gifford's most recent books are Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels, and Sad Stories of the Death of Kings. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. http://www.barrygifford.com/

The Dirty Blondes create multimedia theatrical events that are dark, refined, and provocative, proving appearances are deceptive. Founded in 2011 by Brooklyn residents Elizabeth Sarkady, Alexandra Siladi and Ashley Jacobson, The Dirty Blondes have presented sold-out works at Galapagos Art Space, The Collapsable Hole, The Bleecker Street Theater, and The Brick Theater. Their latest one­ day play festival SIN IN THE CITY was an L Magazine Editor's Pick. Winners of Outstanding Lighting, Outstanding Director, and Outstanding Production of a New Play for The American Play at The Planet Connections Theater Festivity (2012). Productions by The Dirty Blondes have been declared "Pinter-esque" (Karen Brooks Hopkins, BAM President), "chilling, dark and bitingly funny", and "stunning from the first moment to the last," (Karen Tortara-Lee, The Happiest Medium). www.thedirtyblondes.org

Alexandra T. Siladi (Director/Designer) is director/co-founder of The Dirty Blondes. Other plays include: She's Gone Serious (a night of Tennessee Wiliams one -acts), The American Play (Bleecker Street Theater), and Revelations 12:19 (JACK NYC). A graduate of UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television she has directed works including Mac Wellman's Swoop (The People's Theater, Santa Monica) and Kenneth Rexroth's Beyond the Mountains (Fowler Museum). In NYC, she has worked on productions with Theater for a New Audience, The Wooster Group, Incubator Arts Project, and The Westport Country Playhouse. She currently works in the President's Office at BAM. She also creates the art for her company's productions and had collage & video works shown at the Pen & Brush Gallery (NYC). www.tajlisiladi.com

Shane Jensen (Director/Designer) is an independent filmmaker and actor from Minnesota. He gained a BA in Philosophy and Theatre from Gustavus Adolphus College and studied with the Atlantic Theater Company in NYC. Recent film credits include: I Can't Dance (director/writer/producer), Beta Fish (director/producer), We Are The Tongues (actor/director/producer), A Trip To Jersey (lead). Theater: Invisible Art (dir: David Rysdahl), Platanov (dir: Sina Heiss), and The American Play (dir: Alexandra Siladi). Shane Jensen - Previous Work

ACCESS THEATER is one of New York's premier producers of new works and innovative voices in the Off-Off Broadway scene. Under Founding Artistic Director Jacqueline Christy, its nineteen-year history is rich with the early works of then-unknown theater artists, artists now recognized and respected for the contributions they have made to modern theater.

Since 1992, Access Theater has served as a cost-effective rental alternative to New York's Off-Off and Independent Theater scene. The volunteer staff defers salaries and fees, diverting revenue into its mission of offering a well-maintained, subsidized and therefore affordable, downtown venue for the showcasing of emerging artists and their efforts. Access prides itself on its reputation as one of the most affordable, lovingly maintained theater houses in New York and has joined forces with organizations big (Scholastic Publishing) and not-as-big (Manhattan Children's Theatre, Battery Dance) to create programming geared outward, toward our community and its families. Access continues to seek ways to create resources for others, with subsidized, sometimes free, rehearsal and performance space for not-for-profit organizations in need of our resources.

Access Theater has produced hundreds of new plays, many of which have gone on to Off-Broadway productions, regional theaters, British theaters, and feature film development. Recent successes include: Josh Lefkowitz's HELP WANTED: A PERSONAL SEARCH FOR MEANINGFUL EMPLOYMENT AT THE START OF THE 21ST CENTURY, which moved to the regional theater circuit following its initial run at Access; co-productions with Blue Coyote Theater Group of David Johnston's ORESTEIA (one of TIME OUT NEW YORK'S Best of 2007), and BUSTED JESUS COMIX (2005 GLAAD award nominee for Outstanding Off-Off Broadway Theatre). Stephen Belber's TAPE, which premiered at Access, went on to be presented at the Humana Festival of New American Plays and became a feature film starring Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. www.accesstheater.com/accesstheater

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