DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA to Play Theater for the New City This Fall

Theater for the New City, Crystal Field, Executive Director presents DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA, an explosive study of alienation and the redemptive power of love by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley (Doubt, Moonstruck). Lissa Moira directs John Talerico and Susan Mitchell*. Twelve performances will be staged at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue (bet. 9th and 10th Streets), New York, NY 10003 from September 24 - October 11, 2015. *Member, Actors' Equity Association. AEA Showcase.

In this early John Patrick Shanley work, the playwright bravely strips bare the soul of a man and woman. Through raw, un-prettified emotion, he reveals the core of what makes us all human. Two damaged people so beaten up by life they are unable to express their own desperation, meet in a desolate bar. He, so filled with anger that his only respite from a rage he cannot understand is to lash out wildly with his fists. She, so eaten up inside by a secret shame she fears to share with anyone that she can find no rest and no escape from herself. The simple beauty of DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA is that we get to watch rapt at the mad sexual apache rhythms of these two incendiary, self-destructive natures, banging up against one another. Will it be fusion or fission? Will the night end in love or death?

Director Lissa Moira intends to follow the direction of the playwright when he subtitled the play 'An Apache Dance.' She and the actors will imbue it with kinetic, sexual rhythm, avoiding the stale, static feel that too many productions of this play take on. Shanley's bar is not a "real bar;" there is no bartender, no money is exchanged for beer, there are no other people. These two explosive beings cannot be contained by the usual constraints of society and four walls. Time is compressed, and the play is touched by magical realism.

Tickets are $18 and can be purchased by visiting Smarttix.com. For more information, visit the show website at TheaterForTheNewCity.net. Performances will be held from September 24-October 11, 2015, Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. The runtime for DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA is approximately 80 minutes with no intermission.

Lissa Moira (director) AEA, SAG, AFTRA is also a playwright, screenwriter, lyricist, poet and artist. Out of 5,000 world-wide submissions, Ms. Moira's play TIME IT IS was chosen as a top ten finalist in the prestigious Chesterfield/Paramount screenwriting competition. Ms. Moira's 2007 play Before God Was Invented was an American nominee for the Susan Brownell-Smith International Playwrights Award. Ms. Moira co-wrote "Dead Canaries," a feature film starring Charles Durning, Dan Lauria, Dee Wallace Stone and Joel Higgins. With co-writer Richard West, Lissa's well known for Sexual Psychobabble and The Best S*x of the XX Century Sale. Both ran over a year and each enjoyed critical and popular success. The Moira/West team's DaDa noir musical, Who Murdered Love? featured Broadway's Luba Mason and Tracy McDowell as well as William Broderick. It originated at Theater for the New City and ran at the Players Theatre as part of the 2012 FringeNYC (Ms. Moira directed as well). Also at Theater for the New City, Lissa has directed a new musical adaption of Nicholas Nickleby with a cast of 35; Out the Window and Rappaccini's Daughter, two one-act operas; and Pride & Prejudice, which she also co-write with composer John Taylor Thomas. Other directing/co-writing credits include Sirens Heart: Norma Jeane and Marilyn in Purgatory (which enjoyed a 14-month Off-Broadway run at The Actor's Temple), and Tom Jones a new musical (Bloomberg Radio declared the directing "beautiful, fine and fresh"). Of her directing work on Cocaine Dreams, a play about Freud at The Kraine Theatre, the New York Post raved "inspired."

John Talerico (Danny) - The oldest of six children in a traditional yet dysfunctional working class Italian American family, John comes to DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA relating to and understanding the play on a very personal level. With a diverse background as a performer, NYC cab driver, NYC deli waiter, and Fulton Fish Market laborer, John brings a unique passion and life experience to the role. Film & Television credits include "Celebrity Ghost Stories" (Dir: Timothy F. Smith), "Everyone but the Cow" (Dir: Carrie Jeann), "Putting Up Ester" (Dir: George Kelman), "Stuck in Brooklyn" (Dir: Helene Angers). THEATER credits include Hurlyburly, How Do You Feel?, Italian American Reconciliation, DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA, Frankie and Johnny and Doubt. John has studied with Bruce Ornstein (Actor, Director, Teacher, Filmmaker); Clyde Baldo (Actor, Director, Coach); George Flowers (Voice of NY1); Nicola Verussi (Voice Coach); and Tony Velella (Writer, Director, Producer, Acting Coach and Theater Critic), to name a few.

Susan Mitchell* (Roberta) is reprising the role she performed 20 years ago at NYC's Stage 22, also directed by Lissa Moira. She has performed in many original plays at TNC including Beauty and the Beat (written/dir. by Lissa Moira); Larry Myers' solo show Katwoman (dir. Lissa Moira); and Frack Up (dir. Benno Haenal). As a lifetime member of The Actors Studio, Susan was the lead in The Queen Ant's Wedding with Arthur Penn, Rasputin with Frank Corsaro, and she played Lorna Moon in Golden Boy. Susan has performed in several plays at Common Basis Theatre, including the lead in Mark Bukowski's Within the Skins of Saints (dir., Robert Haufrecht). AEA regional credits include two season in A Christmas Carol at Bay Street Theatre (dir. Jack Hofsiss), and two productions of Irish & How They Got That Way at 7 Angels Theatre (dir. Semena Delarentis) and Fulton Street Opera House (dir. Marc Robin). Classical theatre roles include Antigone, Hamlet, Salome & State of Siege. Film/TV credits include principal roles in Sidney Lumet films "Q&A," "A Stranger Among Us," and "Also New Jack City." Susan was the female lead in the indie cult hit "Bobby G Can't Swim" (written/dir. by Jon Luke Montias), and has performed in several other indie films, including "Growing Down in Brooklyn," and "Dead Canaries," both of which were written/adapted by Robert Santoli & Lissa Moira. TV: "Third Watch" (recurring), and The Beat (guest star). A professional violinist who has performed on camera and recorded music for many films, TV shows and commercials (Gossip Girl, Alpha House), Susan is a soloist for classical recitals and jazz concerts with the Paul Joseph Jazz Quartet, as well as for rock/pop/cabaret shows. She was the concert mistress of the chamber orchestras for two musical productions at TNC, including Tom Jones and Pride & Prejudice, both written by John Taylor Thomas and directed by Lissa Moira.

Theater for the New City is a Pulitzer Prize winning cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York's most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have found TNC's Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Vin Diesel, Oscar Nuñez, Laurence Holder, Romulus Linney and Academy Award Winners Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, the Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and COBU, the Japanese women's drumming and dance group. TNC also produced the Yangtze Repertory Company's 1997 production of BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, which was the only play ever produced in America by Gao Xingjian before he won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 42 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.

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