Jen Danby's SHARON TATE IN HEAVEN Finds New Performance Venue

Sharon Tate in Heaven has a new home in New York City for the August 8-11 run: The White Box Studio C at The Alchemical Theatre Laboratory. Sharon Tate in Heaven, presented by This American Blonde Actress™ and Mississippi Mud Productions, returns for a limited special New York City run this August 8th-11th, followed by two special dates in Lido Beach, New York August 16th and 17th at Theresa Academy for Performing Arts. Student artwork from the Academy will be raffled off each night in NYC and Lido Beach for the Academy's annual summer camp for students.

As covered in The New York Times' Fashion & Style section in an article on Sharon's enduring style, the TV smash Mad Men, the new book "Sharon Tate: Recollection" by her sister, Debra, celebrating Sharon, the "new generation crushing on Sharon Tate" as evident with high school students on Twitter, virtual fan sites on Facebook and Tumblr, and this Sharon Tate in Heaven show are evidence of Sharon Tate's mythos and enduring appeal as style icon. In this new wave of Sharon, Sharon Tate in Heaven, which first premiered in March, and now returns with some new inspiration, is a one woman odyssey about model and actress Sharon Tate. Sharon did some television work and made six films, including playing the doomed aspiring actress Jennifer North in Valley of the Dolls (1967), for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe for Most Promising Female Newcomer, and playing in films in the USA and internationally, including her last film, the comedy 12 +1 Chairs in 1969, with Orson Welles. By 1969, she was ascending into international stardom. By then she was also a wife and mother-to-be living her American Dream. She met director Roman Polanski in London in 1966 when she was hired to play the lead in his film The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), a "Disney" comedy take on vampires as she described it, fell madly in love, and married Roman, who described his years with her at a press conference in 1969 "as the the only time of true happiness in my life." On August 9, 1969, while pregnant with his child, a boy, she and four others were savagely killed by members of the Charles Manson "family" in LA when Manson, a frustrated musician who wanted to get revenge on the Establishment that rejected him, and with paranoid delusions about a Helter Skelter race war he wanted to start, set it in motion. At the home Sharon and Roman rented at 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, Sharon passed before being able to say goodbye to her husband or loved ones.

In this one woman odyssey, written and performed by Jen Danby (The Blonde Bombshell Project: Marilyn Monroe, Nina in SeaGull69, an adaptation by Mississippi Mud of Chekhov's SeaGull set in LA in summer 1969, directed by Austin Pendleton), and inspired by research into books, pictures, interviews, films, virtual explorations, and more, Sharon Tate is interviewed in Heaven TV style to talk about her life, acting, and love, as a Valentine message to her husband. In this special revival this August, looking back at August 1969, we present this tale. At the juncture of an American Tragedy that is cultural memory, this is the story of the actress and woman Sharon Tate, born in Dallas, Texas, with an American Dream and International Appeal, and it is a Love Story. Tickets on sale now for Manhattan and Lido Beach performances at sharontateinheaven.brownpapertickets.com.

Performances from August 8-11 will run at The White Box Studio C at The Alchemical Theatre Laboratory (104 West 14th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY). Performances on Friday August 8th, Saturday August 9th, and Monday August 11th will start at 8pm, while Sunday August 10th's performance will start at 3pm.

Performances on August 16-17 will run at Theresa Academy of Performing Arts (Black Box, 250 Lido Blvd., Lido Beach, NY, 11561). On Saturday August 16th, the performance will begin at 8pm, and on Sunday August 17th, it will begin at 5pm.

Running time: approximately 1 hour 45 minutes.

JEN DANBY ?With Mud: Jane in Vieux Carré, Sharon Tate in Sharon Tate in Heaven, Nina in SeaGull69, Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Marilyn Monroe in her original solo piece The Blonde Bombshell Project, Catharine in Suddenly Last Summer, Vivien in the solo piece Vivien Leigh: The Last Press Conference, Helena in Lust, all under Austin Pendleton's direction; Blanche Dubois, A Streetcar Named Desire at Mud Actors Lab (dir. Mr. Pendleton) and The Cherry Pit (co-directors Brian Lady and Mr. Pendleton), Vivien in Orson's Shadow (dir. Lauren Reinhard), and Blanche DuBois for a charity staged reading of A Streetcar Named Desire with Geoffrey Owens as Stanley Kowalski, directed by Peter Zinn, produced by Mississippi Mud as a fundraising event for the Martin Luther King Center in Long Beach NY. Select stage: Hedda Gabler; Valparaiso; The Rimers of Eldritch (dir. Amy Wright, HB Studio). Film/TV/New Media: The Wooster Group "Dailies" as Paula in Paula and Bad Pictures opposite Jim Fletcher (GATZ); True Hollywood Sitter; Run #3, All My Children, Love Monkey. Directing credits: Vieux Carre (NYC, with Mud, in a new AEA run), What of the Night? by Maria Irene Fornes, HB Studio, and Moony's Kid Don't Cry (Lido Beach). Founder & Artistic Director of Mississippi Mud and founder of This American Blonde Actress™ as actress, director, producer, teacher/acting coach. Ken Park Talent 212.566.8672 - kenparkmgmt@aol.com. AEA, SAG-AFTRA. jendanby.com

AUSTIN PENDLETON has directed SeaGull69, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (AEA Showcase), and Vieux Carre and A Streetcar Named Desire for the Mud Actors Lab. Last June he directed The Blonde Bombshell Project: Marilyn Monroe, a solo project with actress Jen Danby, with Mississippi Mud Productions. He recently directed Tribes at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, where he has acted and directed, as a member of the Ensemble, for many years. In New York, he has directed several Mississippi Mud productions, including Suddenly Last Summer (in which he also appeared). He was most recently seen as Dr. Dorn in SeaGull69 and Choir Boy at the Manhattan Theatre Company. He has directed three Chekhov productions at Classic Stage Company: Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters (for which he won an Obie), and Ivanov, featuring, between them, such actors as Maggie Gylenhall, Peter Sarsgaard, and Ethan Hawke. He has acted in many movies and in recurring roles on such TV series as Homocide and Oz, as well as on Broadway in, most recently, The Diary of Anne Frank, with Natalie Portman and Linda Lavin, in a script revised by Wendy Kesselman, in whose musical, The Black Monk, he played the title role. He has written three plays: Orson's Shadow, produced at Mud after its off-Broadway run which lasted the year of 2005, at the Barrow St. Theatre, directed by David Cromer; Uncle Bob, which has been produced in NY, around the country and internationally; and Booth, which starred Frank Langella in its productions in New York, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven; as well as the libretto for A Minister's Wife, music by Josh Schmidt and lyrics by Jan Tranen, commissioned and produced by Chicago's Writers' Theatre in 2009, and at Lincoln Center in 2011. All these works have been published. He directed Elizabeth Taylor on Broadway in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. He recently directed The Last Will in New York (in which he also appeared), by Robert Brustein, at the Abingdon Theatre. He teaches acting at HB Studio, in New York.

Mississippi Mud Productions is a Made in the USA theatre company, working with artists from around the world. Mississippi Mud Productions is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit 501(c)(3). http://www.mississippimudproductions.com

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