Mac Rogers' UNIVERSAL ROBOTS Begins at The Sheen Center Today

Gideon Productions presenst at The Sheen Center (18 Bleecker Street between Bowery and Lafayette) - UNIVERSAL ROBOTS, a science fiction epic from acclaimed playwright Mac Rogers inspired by Karel Capek's seminal 1921 play R.U.R.

The production, directed by Jordana Williams, begins today, June 3 and continues through June 26 with performances Thursday through Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 2pm, and Monday at 8pm with additional performances on Wednesday, June 15 & 22 at 8pm. Tickets ($25) are available online at web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/957321 or by calling OvationTix at 866-811-4111. The cast and creative team will be announced in April.

The Great War has just ended. The fledgling Republic of Czechoslovakia boasts a thriving artistic community. At the center of that community is Karel Capek, a celebrated playwright and a passionate advocate for all his newborn nation can achieve. But this brave new world arrives faster than Karel could have ever expected when a young woman walks into his life with a strange mannequin in a wheelchair... a mannequin that gets up and walks all by itself.

UNIVERSAL ROBOTS offers a compelling alternate history of the Twentieth Century, imagining the invention of the robot in 1921 Czechosolvakia and chronicling the shocking consequences of that invention right up to the present day.

Part science fiction thriller, part love story, part political allegory, UNIVERSAL ROBOTS is a fast-paced, riveting story of war, faith, art and technology that culminates, in the words of NYTheatre's Martin Denton, in an "edge-of-your-seat finish equal to the best storytelling of stage and screen."

William Spencer Reilly, Executive Director of The Sheen Center remarked, "Universal Robots is right on the money for us, both in content and quality and is exactly the kind of work that we want to do more of at the Sheen Center. We're delighted to provide a part-time home to nomadic companies like Gideon Productions - companies whose intelligent work grapples with big, human issues. It's a good match for our mission as a center for 'thought and culture.' Universal Robots deserves a beautiful new space like ours."

MAC ROGERS (Playwright) is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and audio dramatist based in New York City. His sci-fi serial podcast The Message earned raves in The Atlantic andVanity Fair and was downloaded over 4 million times. His plays include The Honeycomb Trilogy (3-time New York Times Critic's Pick, Time Out New York Critic's Pick, Backstage Critic's Pick, one of The Guardian's top 10 New York shows of 2015, and winner of the New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Premiere Production), Frankenstein Upstairs (featured in the New York Magazine Approval Matrix and nominated for the NYIT Award for Best Premier Production), Ligature Marks (CityBeat Critic's Pick), Asymmetric (Time Out New York Critic's Pick), Viral (winner of Outstanding Play at FringeNYC 2009 and Best Off-Off Broadway Play from the New York Independent Theater Bloggers), Universal Robots (nominated for four New York Innovative Theatre awards and winner of Best Off-Off Broadway Play from the New York Independent Theater Bloggers), Hail Satan (Outstanding Playwriting Winner at FringeNYC 2007), and Fleet Week: The Musical (co-written with Sean and Jordana Williams; winner of Outstanding Musical at FringeNYC 2005). Mac's plays have appeared on stages in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Cincinnati, and Edmonton, and have earned acclaim from The New York Times, The Guardian, Backstage, The Wall Street Journal, Time Out New York, New York Post, Flavorpill, io9.com(Gawker Media's science fiction site), Fangoria, Tor.com, Show Business Weekly, New York Press, Den of Geek, BroadwayWorld.com, NYTheatre.com, Show Showdown, and many others. OfSovereign, the concluding installment of Mac's ambitious Honeycomb Trilogy, Flavorpill writes, "Mac Rogers' Sovereign is a gripping and satisfying ending to his epic alien invasion tale, The Honeycomb Trilogy, proving that the work as a whole is one of the most intelligent and complex theatrical events of the year."

JORDANA WILLIAMS (Director) directing credits for Gideon Productions The Honeycomb Trilogy at The Gym at Judson (New York Times and Time Out NY Critics' Picks, The Guardian "Top Ten New York Theatre of 2015"), Asymmetric at 59E59 (Time Out NY Critics' Pick), Kill Shakespeare at HERE and NY Comic Con, Frankenstein Upstairs at The Secret Theatre (NY Magazine Approval Matrix: "Highbrow/Brilliant"), Ligature Marks at The Brick and Fringe Festival tour, Viral at SoHo Playhouse (FringeNYC Outstanding Production of a Play), Hail Satan at the Culture Project, The First Annual St. Ignatius Chanukah Pageant (Theatre Row), and three seasons with the Vampire Cowboys' genre-bending Saturday Night Saloon. Member, Indie Theater Hall of Fame. Co-Artistic Director, Gideon Productions.

GIDEON PRODUCTIONS crafts gripping plays that explore human grace and darkness, through the kaleidoscope of popular genre forms and other cultural touchstones. We reject the notion that thrills are cheap or that big ideas are boring. We explore what's strange about being human and what's human about being strange, using thrilling entertainment as a delivery system for challenging stories that take on religion, sexuality, politics, compulsion, popular culture, and the often strange bonds that tie people together in a rapidly changing world. We honor the time our audiences and collaborators devote to our productions and seek to deliver the utmost quality in experience and content.

THE SHEEN CENTER Named after the late archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, best known for his popular radio and TV ministry in the 1950s and 60s, The Sheen Center is a project of the Archdiocese of New York and showcases work that affirm the highest values of the human spirit through the performing and visual arts, lectures and exhibits. The state-of-the-art complex has a 270-seat proscenium theater equipped with five-camera high-definition livestream capability and a multi-track recording studio with thirty-two onstage inputs; an 80-seat black box theater; four rehearsal studios; and an art gallery.

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