Edgar Oliver's ATTORNEY STREET Makes World Premiere Tonight

Edgar Oliver, the singular storyteller and beloved downtown NYC theater artist, returns to Axis Theatre to perform the world premiere of Attorney Street, the final installment in a trilogy of solo shows, directed by Randy Sharp, charting Oliver's life in New York City.

Following 2014's acclaimed In the Park and, before it, 2009's breakthrough East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House (Edinburgh Fringe First Award; NYT Critic's Pick), Attorney Street follows Oliver as he is forced to leave his longtime home in one of the last East Village SROs, on East 10th Street, and finds his way to his current residence, on Attorney Street on the Lower East Side. Between the two was a circuitous path that held turns and encounters that changed Oliver's life, and opened doors he never thought existed.

Attorney Street will run tonight, October 26, through November 19. Performances will take place October 26-29 and November 2-5, 9-12 and 16-19 at 8pm. Critics are welcome Friday, October 28, and Saturday, October 29, at 8pm for an official opening Tuesday, November 1 at 8pm.

Admission is $35 for adults; $25 for senior and students; $15 for artists and those under 30; and FREE for veterans and active U.S. service members and their families. Tickets can be purchased at 212.807.9300 and www.axiscompany.org. Axis Theatre is located at 1 Sheridan Square in the heart of the West Village.

Edgar Oliver has been a fixture of the downtown New York scene for over three decades, and the trio of solo shows that Attorney Street concludes has brought him a new level of international acclaim. The autobiographical monologues comprising the series are at once poignant and funny, fantastical and keenly attuned to the concrete details of this city and Oliver's life. His writing is both deeply personal and populated by a range of unique characters that inhabit the places Oliver has lived or frequented.

In East 10th Street, Oliver took the audience through the strange rooms of the apartment house where he lived from his first years in New York until he oved into his current home on Attorney Street. Inhabiting the dark, mysterious halls of that East Village tenement building were a dwarf Cabalist, a possible Nazi and the landlord's former wet nurse, among many others. In the final room at the top of the derelict stairs-Oliver's own-lay the secrets of his family and the unbelievable odyssey that brought him there. The second part of the trilogy, In the Park, found Oliver wandering through Prospect Park, guiding his audience to hidden landscapes few have ever seen, while also revealing his innermost longings and regrets. In that most personal of Oliver's monologues, he mapped his deepest childhood memories. Hilton Als of The New Yorker described the show as "so beautiful-so enthralling in its undisguised but never tedious self-absorption, in its command of the spoken word, and in its demand for love."

Attorney Street features set design by Chad Yarborough, lighting design by David Zeffren, costumes by Karl Ruckdeschel, dramaturgy by Marc Palmieri and original music by Paul Carbonara.

Edgar Oliver (Writer, Performer) is an Axis Company member. As a stage actor, he has performed in countless plays including Edward II with Cliplight Theater; Marc Palmieri's Carl the Second; Kestutis Nakas' When Lithuania Ruled the World and numerous productions at Axis including A Glance at New York (Edinburgh Festival Fringe & NYC), Julius Caesar; USS Frankenstein and the Hospital series. He has performed his solo show East 10th Street in Edinburgh (Fringe First Award), Charleston, SC (Spoleto Festival) and in New York City (Axis and PS122). He performed his 2012 one-man show Helen and Edgar (directed by Catherine Burns of The Moth), at Theatre 80 St. Marks, Dartmouth College, Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, CA, and most recently at The Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival. His film roles include That's Beautiful Frank; Henry May Long (directed by Randy Sharp) and Gentlemen Broncos (directed by Jared Hess). Oliver is also the host of the television show Odd Folks Home, on The Science Channel.

Randy Sharp (Director) is Axis Theatre Company's founder and Artistic Director. Her plays include the Drama Desk Award-nominated Last Man Club (published by DPS), Nothing on Earth, Down There, Seven in One Blow (published by DPS and performed every December in NYC and around the country) and the long-running serial Hospital. Sharp wrote and directed The Vast Machine (2015), and co-wrote (with former Blondie member Paul Carbonara) and directed Evening - 1910, which premiered at acclaim at Axis in 2016.Sharp's directing credits also include Last Man Club, Nothing on Earth, Down There, Seven in One Blow, Hospital, Edgar Oliver's East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House (Fringe First Award, Edinburgh Fringe; Spoleto Festival USA 2011) and In the Park, A Glance at New York (Edinburgh Fringe & NYC), Julius Caesar and the U.S premiere of Sarah Kane's Crave, starring Deborah Harry.

Randy Sharp founded Axis Company in 1996. The company acquired a permanent home in 1998 at 1 Sheridan Square in New York City's West Village. Built in 1834 by Samuel Whitmore, the building once housed Café Society, the historic site of performances by Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughn, Art Tatum, Big Joe Turner and other jazz greats; and later was the home of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Axis transformed interior performance space into one where audiences are totally immersed, surrounded by the experience of a theatrical production the moment they enter. Distractions from the material are minimal.

Among the wide variety of works Axis has produced in the theater are Beckett's Play; Benjamin Baker's 1848 vaudeville A Glance at New York (also at the Edinburgh Festival); the U.S. premiere of Sarah Kane's Crave, starring Deborah Harry; the premieres of Edgar Oliver's East 10th Street (New York Times Critic Pick; Fringe First Award at Edinburgh Fringe Festival; Spoleto Festival, USA) and In the Park; David Crabb's Bad Kid (New York Times Critic Pick, now an acclaimed book published by HarperCollins Perennial); Marc Palmieri's The Groundling; and Sharp's The Vast Machine, Last Man Club (Drama Desk-nomination), Solitary Light, Nothing on Earth, Down There, Seven in One Blow and Hospital.

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