Photo Flash: In Rehearsal With Rising Sun Performance Company FRIENDLY'S FIRE

Award-winning Rising Sun Performance Company (RSPC), opens John Patrick Bray's critically acclaimed new play, Friendly's Fire. tomorrow night. The limited run plays May 3 - 19 at the Theater at the 14th Street Y. Associate Artistic Director Anna Hogan directs.

In a cabin in Alaska, Guy Friendly, a Gulf War veteran and bee-herder, has just had a tooth stolen during casual sex. His best friend Todd, a pawn-shop owner dressed as an astronaut, finds Friendly in a fevered state. Trapped by the snow, Todd has little choice but enter Friendly's fevered dream, to unravel the events of the night before - and the events of the Gulf War that led Friendly to becoming a shut-in. An homage to Western movies, He-Man action figures, and the playwright's belief as a child that the Sesame Street Muppet Guy Smiley was in fact God, Friendly's Fire shows us to what lengths one man will go to preserve the sanity of his fri! end - a veteran who lost his brother in service to our country.

Friendly's Fire had its World Premiere at Barter Theatre's Barter II in 2017 and was directed by Producing Artistic Director Richard Rose. The play has been nominated and won numerous awards including the 2015 Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights (Barter Theatre), Semifinalist for nuVoices (The Actors Theatre of Charlotte), Semifinalist for Generations (Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company), Semifinalist for the Princess Grace Foundation Playwriting Award, and a Finalist for the Kernodle Playwriting Award at the University of Arkansas. A monologue from the play is published in The Best Men's Stage Monologues 2018 with Smith and Kraus (ed. Lawrence Harbison).

Rising Sun Performance Company has produced a number of John Patrick Bray's works over the past fifteen year, starting with a night of his one acts at the 78th St. Theatre Lab in 2004. Bray's play ! Goodnight Lovin' Trail has been produced numerous times with RSPC, including productions with FRIGID NY, Fringe Wilmington, 2005 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, among others. Additional plays with RSPC include Donkey (2014 Planet Connections Theatre Festivity), and Erik: A Play About a Puppet (2015 FRIGID NY).

The cast features Adeyinka Adebola (Our Father/Secret Theater's Unfringed Festival), Johnny Blaze Leavitt (Love Is A Bad Neighborhood/Theater 54), Ita Korenzecher (Éléphant/Planet Connections), Desiree Pinol (Wolf at the Door/New Jersey Rep), Kyle Porter (Crested Butte/NYC Winterfest), William Serri (Èlèphant/Planet Connections Best Actor Nominee), Hannah Taylor (Playwright's Horizon), and Matthew Weitz (88 Cents/Independent Short).

The creative team includes scenic design Daniel Hogan, costume design Janet Mervin, sound design by Janet Bentley, projection design by Taylor Edelle Stuart, lighting design & technical director Zac Goin, stage management by Callie Stribling, dialect coach & fight director Monica Blaze Leavitt. Assistant director & associate producer Chris Goodrich, production Interns Xiaoyu Meng and Sarah Manzo.

Performances take place at The Theater at the 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), New York, NY 10003. Subway: L train to 1st Avenue. Tickets are $15 (students/seniors/veterans/active military), general admission $25 (online in advance), $30 (at door) and are available at www.14StreetY.org/friendlysfire. Running time: 95 minutes.

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