Rising Phoenix Rep to Continue Cino Nights with EAST COLFAX, 1/27

Following the sold out performances and overflow crowds for its original Cino Nights presentations (including new plays by Gary Sunshine, Mando Alvarado, Courtney Baron, Florencia Lozano, Kristen Palmer, Emily DeVoti, Lucy Thurber, Jessica Dickey, Adam Szymkowicz, Laura Eason, Daniel Reitz, Megan Mostyn-Brown, Dael Orlandersmith, Keith Reddin, Crystal Skillman, Charlotte Miller, Brooke Berman, Cusi Cram, and Daniel Talbott), Rising Phoenix Rep continues the series with three new plays, starting on Sunday, January 27th with East Colfax by Diana Stahl.

East Colfax follows two pen pals as they discuss soul mates, Kerouac, Miller, food and marriage in a Colorado basement. East Colfax will be directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh and features Clea Alsip, Joby Earle, Lesley Shires, and Micah Stock.

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 Theatre Award-winning company Rising Phoenix Rep has commissioned twenty-two 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 seven 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 plays was joined with a scrappy, do-it-yourself work ethic. All shows are rehearsed for a week and then fully mounted and produced, warts and all, for one night only with free admission.

The Cino Nights series celebrates the spirit of indie theatre as a home for new plays and theatre artists as well as hopefully honoring 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 two other plays currently scheduled in the series are by Micheline Auger on February 24th and by Halley Feiffer on May 12th.

The New York Theatre Experience has published the first of two volumes of the Cino Nights plays, and they are available on Amazon, local bookstores, and online at Indie Theater Now.

Diana Stahl (Playwright) is from Milpitas, California and moved to New York to write and act in plays. Her play Associations of Hip was developed and produced by the Overturn Theatre Ensemble, directed by Kristy Dodson. Less Talk, More Efficiency performed as part of Rattlestick's Theater Jam III, directed by Melissa Chambers. Recently her play Helping People was read as part of Rattlestick's F*cking Good Plays series and will be performed this summer as part of IRT's 3B series, both directed by Melissa Chambers. She has assisted playwright Heidi Schreck, musician Suzanne Vega, and is a Literary Associate at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. As an actor she's worked with The Lark, New Georges, Rattlestick, MCC, OTE, Half Moon Theatre, StrangeMen & Co., and more. BFA Purchase College.

Pirronne Yousefzadeh (Director) has directed and developed new work at The Public/Joe's Pub, New York Theatre Workshop, Ars Nova, Soho Rep, Playwrights Horizons, The Woodshed Collective (The Tenant: Best of 2011, The L Magazine), Partial Comfort Productions, Noor Theatre, HERE Arts Center, New York Musical Theatre Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Lark Play Development Center, Dixon Place, The Wild Project, The Living Theatre, Atlantic Theater School, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Milwaukee Rep, and Hangar Theatre, among others. She is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop and the Fellowship Coordinator, New Georges Affiliated Artist and member of The Jam, member of the Old Vic/New Voices Network, and an alumna of the Emerging Artist Fellowship at NYTW, Drama League Directors Project, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and Ensemble Studio Theatre's Resident Director Program. Pirronne has been on faculty at Bard High School Early College, and is a directing mentor and guest director at Fordham University, guest director at Ramapo College, and teaching artist at Two River Theater Company. MFA, Columbia University. www.pirronne.com

2007 Caffe Cino Fellowship and New York Innovative Theatre Award winning Rising Phoenix Repertory was founded in 1999 by Artistic Director Daniel Talbott, and produces both in the Indie Theatre and Off-Broadway, in traditional spaces and site-specifically around New York City. Recent productions include the acclaimed, sold-out Off-Broadway runs of Elective Affinities (co-produced site-specifically with piece by piece and Soho Rep), Slipping (produced with piece by piece and Rattlestick), and Too Much Memory (also with piece by piece), which transferred to the New York Theatre Workshop's Fourth Street Theatre after winning the FringeNYC award for Outstanding Play in 2008. RPR produces an ongoing series called Cino Nights, inspired by Joe Cino and his Caffe Cino-one of the original birthplaces of Off-Off-Broadway theatre-for which the company commissioned nineteen playwrights to write new, full-length plays to be fully produced site-specifically in the intimate back room of East Village restaurant Jimmy's No. 43 on a shoestring budget. The first volume of plays from the series, Cino Nights: Plays from Rising Phoenix Rep, was published by The New York Theatre Experience and is available online at Indie Theater Now. 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 (Seventh Street Small Stage); Gift by Mark Schultz and Ponies by Mike Batistick (FringeNYC). Rising Phoenix Rep serves as a home base for a company of theatre professionals that encourages an open exchange of work and ideas within the greater theatre community. The company is a proud member of A.R.T./New York, League of Independent Theaters/NY, and The Dish. www.RisingPhoenixRep.org.

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