Mark Sam Rosenthal's I LIGHT UP MY LIFE Kicks Off Left Out Festival Tonight

Mark Sam Rosenthal is tickled to present I Light Up My Life: The Mark Sam Celebrity Autobiography, an over-the-top multi-media presentation of his 789-page yet to be published homage to his favorite celebrity: himself. The production will be held at Stage Left Studio, 214 W. 30th St., 6th floor, tonight, April 20th at 7:30pm and Friday April 26th at 7:30pm. Todd Parmley directs a cast of one: Mark Sam Rosenthal, a celebrity.

The world's first preemptive celebrity autobiography traces the rise to semi-obscurity of Mark Sam Rosenthal ("one of the city's great comedic storytellers" - Time Out) from his continental origins in the second-grade class French play through an ill-fated onscreen dabbling in the world of adult entertainment to his not-quite-breakout off-Broadway triumph as a cross-dressing, time-traveling Blanche DuBois. Along the way, drugs are taken and delusions are grand. Of his opus, Rosenthal boasts "it's the only show I know of that makes AIDS and 9/11 fun again!" It's no wonder the New York Times shudders "clearly Mr. Rosenthal enjoys going over the line."
I Light Up My Life plays for two performances from tonight, April 20th through 26th.

Director Todd Parmley is A multi-faceted theatre artist: a director, actor, and educator. In New York, he has directed two episodes of Blair Fell's hit live epic series, Burning Habits, a workshop production of the award-winning new play, 99 Degrees, and several productions at Stella Adler Studios (NYU). Todd also directed the world premiere productions of 516 (five sixteen) at FringeNYC, For Love of the Boy at Yale University, and Mark Sam Rosenthal's solo show Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire at FringeNYC, Off Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse, and in Provincetown.

Mark Sam Rosenthal is a writer/producer for Comedy Central in New York. The solo show he wrote and performs, Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire, ran off-Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse in winter 2009 and later that year at the Art House Theater in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Blanche originally premiered at the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival, where it won the Village Voice Audience Award and an overall festival award for Outstanding Solo Show. I Light Up My Life: The Mark Sam Celebrity Autobiography was workshopped at Dixon Place and Ars Nova before appearing in the 2011 New York International Fringe Festival and the 2012 soloNOVA Festival. Mark Sam has studied and performed improv comedy with the Upright Citizens Brigade and People's Improv Theater and acting with the Atlantic Theatre Company and the Barrow Group. Other writing and performing credits include Love Mercy (the PIT), Menage a Trailer (Chicago's Factory Theater), Beyond the Valley of the Switchblade Pussycats (UCBT), and The Indigo Girls vs. George W. Bush (The Cutting Room), which never lived up to the promise of its title. Mark Sam is a seventh-generation Baton Rougean whose greatest comic inspirations are his mother and all the women of the Baton Rouge Junior League.

Tickets $20 ($2 ticketing surcharge will be added) at www.stageleftstudio.net.

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