Rising Phoenix Rep Presents CLOWN BAR June 19

Following the sold out performances and overflow crowds at its first eight Cino Nights presentations (of new plays by Gary Sunshine, Mando Alvarado, Courtney Baron, Florencia Lozano, Kristen Palmer, Emily DeVoti, Lucy Thurber, and Jessica Dickey) Rising Phoenix Rep continues the series on June 19th at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. with CLOWN BAR by Adam Szymkowicz. Synopsis: Long ago, Happy left the Clown Bar and the organized clown crime world to work for the good guys. Now his junkie brother Timmy has been murdered, and Happy returns to his old life to ask a few questions. Can he go home again without getting sucked into the seedy clown underbelly of vice and violence? And will he survive the gun-toting clowns who used to be his friends? Or Blinky, the lady clown he left behind?

The production will be directed by Kip Fagan and features lyrics by Adam Szymkowicz and Adam Overett, and music by Adam Overett. The cast features Alex Anfanger, Brett Aresco, Stephen Bel Davies, Sam Breslin Wright, Jamie Effros, Jessy Hodges, Beth Hoyt, Jessica Pohly, Dominic Spillane, and Stephen Stout.
Inspired by Joe Cino and his Caffe Cino-one of the original birthplaces of Off-Off-Broadway theatre and early home to such writers as Doric Wilson, Robert Patrick, John Guare, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, and William M. Hoffman-New York Innovative Theater Award winning company Rising Phoenix Rep has commissioned twenty playwrights to write new, full-length plays for the Seventh

Street Small Stage, the intimate back room space at Jimmy's No. 43 in the East Village, where the company has mounted critically acclaimed and award winning productions of new plays for the past five years.
Rising Phoenix Rep artistic director Daniel Talbott described the series as a place to tap into the raw, inspired, inventive, and pioneering work of the Caffe Cino, where the love of theatre and new work was joined with a scrappy, do-it-yourself work ethic. All shows will be rehearsed for a week and then fully mounted and produced, warts and all, for one night only with free admission.
Cino Nights are currently scheduled through May 2012 and will celebrate the spirit of indie theatre as a home for new plays and theatre artists as well as hopefully honor what has been said of the Caffe Cino: "the first studio of theater where playwrights can experiment as painters and poets have done for a century, free from the tyranny of audience, box-office, church, and criticism." The plays will be fully produced for one night only on a more or less monthly basis. The remaining playwrights, in the order their plays will appear, are:
Adam Szymkowicz's CLOWN BAR will premiere on June 19, 2011; directed by Kip Fagan with lyrics by Adam Szymkowicz and Adam Overett, and music by Adam Overett. The cast features Alex Anfanger, Brett Aresco, Stephen Bel Davies, Sam Breslin Wright, Jamie Effros, Jessy Hodges, Beth Hoyt, Jessica Pohly, Dominic Spillane, and Stephen Stout.

Laura Eason: August 28, 2011
Daniel Reitz: September 25, 2011
Crystal Skillman: October 23, 2011
Cusi Cram: October 2011
Megan Mostyn-Brown: November 13, 2011
Charlotte Miller: December 11, 2011
Keith Reddin: January 2012
Dael Orlandersmith: February 2012
Jonathan Blitstein: March 2012
Daniel Talbott: April 2012
Melissa Ross: May 2012

The previous productions in the series were:
Gary Sunshine's BEST SEX EVER premiered on October 3, 2010. It was directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel and featured Stephen Bel Davies, Cathy Curtin, Jimmy Davis, Mike Doyle and Jeffrey Nauman.

Mando Alvarado's (O)N THE 5:31 premiered on October 24, 2010, directed by Taibi Magar and featuring Jolly Abraham, Sarah Baskin, and Bernardo Cubria.
Courtney Baron's HERE I LIE premiered on November 7, 2010, directed by Daniel Talbott and featuring Denis Butkus and Samantha Soule.
Florencia Lozano's BUSTED premiered December 12, 2010, directed by Portia Krieger and featuring Maggie Bofill, Audrey Esparza, Nate Miller, Puy Navarro, Ana Reeder, and Jeanine Serralles.
Kristen Palmer's THE STRAY DOG premiered on January 23, 2011, directed by Julie Kline and featuring Stephen Brown, Chad Goodridge, Brian Miskell, Laura Ramadei, Jelena Stupljanin, and Haynes Thigpen.

Emily DeVoti's THE UPSTART premiered on February 13, 2011; directed by Taibi Magar and featuring Edward Carnevale, Julie Kline, and Anne O'Sullivan.
Lucy Thurber's NAMED premiered on February 27, 2011; directed by Jenna Worsham and featuring Lila Dupree, Ronete Levenson, Katie Meister, and Sarah Tolan-Mee.
Jessica Dickey's ROW AFTER ROW premiered on May 22, 2011; directed by Stephen Brackett and featuring Sevrin Anne Mason, Michael Kingsbaker, and Bjorn Thorstad.
Reservations will be available one week before the performance each month. Seating is extremely limited. For reservations please call 212-946-5198; for more information please visit www.RisingPhoenixRep.org.

Playwright Adam Szymkowicz's plays have been produced throughout the U.S., and in Canada, England, The Netherlands, Germany and Lithuania. His work has been presented or developed at such places as MCC Theater, Ars Nova, South Coast Rep, Playwrights Horizons, LAByrinth Theater Company, Primary Stages, The New Group, Southern Rep, The Lark, Kitchen Dog, Theatre of Note, Naked Stage, Azuka Theater and Studio Dante among others. Plays include Deflowering Waldo, Open Minds, Anne, The Art Machine, Pretty Theft, Food For Fish, Hearts Like Fists, My Base and Scurvy Heart, Herbie, Incendiary, Old Fashioned Cold Fusion, Bee Eater, Temporary Everything, Susan Gets Some Play, Clown Bar, Fat Cat Killers, The Why Overhead, Elsewhere, Where You Can't Follow, The Artist and Nerve. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Samuel French. He received a Playwright's Diploma from The Juilliard School's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program and an MFA from Columbia University where he was the Dean's Fellow. Szymkowicz is a two-time Lecomte du Nouy Prize winner, a member of the Dramatists Guild, Writer's Guild of America, Primary Stages' Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer's Group, the MCC Playwright's Coalition and was a founding member of the Ars Nova Play Group. He served as Playwright in Residence at the William Inge Center, received a grant from the CT Commission on Culture & Tourism, and was commissioned by South Coast Rep. He is the premiere Resident Playwright at The Chance Theater in Anaheim, CA and the first playwright to participate in Bloomington Playwrights Projects' Square One Series. For more, go to www.adamszymkowicz.com.

Director Kip Fagan last worked with Adam Szymkowicz on his play Incendiary at the Juilliard School. He has directed new plays by Reggie Watts, Tommy Smith, Heidi Schreck, JorDan Harrison, Sam Hunter, Sheila Callaghan, Zayd Dohrn, Greg Keller, Cory Hinkle, Sam Marks, Christopher Durang, Rachel Hoeffel, Jennifer Haley, and Craig Lucas, among others. He has directed and developed new work with Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theatre, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, P73, The Flea, SPF, Cherry Lane, Partial Comfort, Naked Angels, New Dramatists, Ars Nova, Young Playwrights Festival, The Lark, Dixon Place, Huntington Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, McCarter Theatre, Hartford Stage, Portland Center Stage, Playwrights Center, William Inge Festival, and Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Upcoming: Jesse Eisenberg's Asuncion at Rattlestick.

Founded in 1999 by Artistic Director Daniel Talbott, Rising Phoenix Repertory began by producing an ongoing reading series of new plays and has continued to add workshops, festivals, and highly praised productions of new plays. Recent productions include the acclaimed, sold-out Off-Broadway runs of Slipping, produced with Piece by Piece Productions and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and Too Much Memory (also with Piece by Piece Productions) which transferred to the New York Theatre Workshop's Fourth Street Theatre after winning the FringeNYC award for Outstanding Play in 2008. Other recent productions include Ceremony, Afterclap, Birthday and Don't Pet the Zookeeper (Seventh Street Small Stage); 365 Days/365 Plays (Jimmy's No. 43 and The Public Theater); What Happened When (HERE Arts Center); Fall Forward (part of the Sitelines/River to River festival produced by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council); The Telling Trilogy (including The Ride, 2006 NYIT Award Nominee - Outstanding Original Short Script- Crystal Skillman), Rules of the Universe (Winner, 2007 NYIT Awards for Outstanding Original Short Script - Daniel Reitz and Director - Daniel Talbott), and Three Sisters (both at the Seventh Street Small Stage); Gift by Mark Schultz and Ponies by Mike Batistick (FringeNYC). For more information please visit www.RisingPhoenixRep.org.

 

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