KILLING FLOOR Plays Rising Phoenix Repertory's Cino Nights

Rising Phoenix Rep continues their series on January 15th at 7 p.m. with KILLING FLOOR by Dael Orlandersmith. In the play, history catches up with the present when an estranged father and son have to comb through the detritus of their lives…literally. With her characteristically charged, visceral language, Orlandersmith gives us a short sharp shock of a play – two men seeking redemption and truth who will resort to whatever it takes to get it.

The production is directed by Christian Parker and features Jack Gwaltney and Stephen Payne.

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-one 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 six 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 June 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:

January 29th - Keith Reddin

February 12th – Crystal Skillman

March 11th – Jonathan Blitstein

March 25th – Charlotte Miller

April 22nd – Brooke Berman

May 2012 – Melissa Ross

June 10th – Daniel Talbott

June 17th – Cusi Cram

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.

Adam Szymkowicz’s CLOWN BAR premiered on June 19, 2011; directed by Kip Fagan with lyrics by Adam Szymkowicz and Adam Overett, and music by Adam Overett. The cast featured 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’s The Undeniable Sound of Right Now premiered on August 28, 2011; directed by Kirsten Kelly and Laura Eason and featuring Daniel Abeles, Estelle Collins Bajou, Jimmy Davis, Jeff Still, and Lusia Strus.

Daniel Reitz’s BLOOD STROKES premiered on September 25, 2011; directed by Daniel Reitz and featuring Tom Bozell, Joel Johnstone, and Chet Siegel.

Megan Mostyn-Brown's EDIE & ALEXANDER premiered on November 13, 2011; directed by Mia Rovegno and featuring Erin Gann and Molly Ward.

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.

Dael Orlandersmith (Playwright), is the author of the Obie Award-winning Beauty’s Daughter and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in drama, Yellowman, for which she was also nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Best Actress and Best Play. Other works include Stoop Stories, Bones, Liar, Liar, The Gimmick, and Monster. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including most recently the William Inge award for her play HORSEDREAMS [which was produced this season at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater]. She will be doing a solo play in 2012 called Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men, which is a co-production between Berkeley Rep and the Goodman.

Christian Parker (Director) is the Associate Artistic Director at the Atlantic Theater Company, where he has worked since the fall of 2001. In the spring of 2011 he produced 10x25, an all commissioned festival of work by Atlantic-produced playwrights to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the company for that series he directed new plays by Tina Howe, Kevin Heelan, and Kate Moira Ryan. At Atlantic, he has also recently directed the world premiere of Leslie Ayvazian’s Make Me, the New York premiere of Tina Howe’s play Birth and After Birth, Ken Weitzman’s Arrangements and Jeff Whitty’s The Hiding Place. Prior to his tenure at the Atlantic, he spent several seasons as the Literary Manager at Manhattan Theatre Club. Christian has produced, directed or dramaturged over fifty premieres of new American and British plays on, off and off-off Broadway. He is fluent in Russian and was part of the national artistic advisory board for the CITD New Russian Plays initiative. He is currently developing a new musical work about the Romanovs with Kate Moira Ryan and Adam Guettel, and will begin a residency this winter at Joyce Soho with the choreographer Andrea Miller/Gallim Dance. He has worked as well with Sundance Theatre Labs, The Lark Play Development Center, Bread Loaf, and at Perry-Mansfield developing new plays. His is currently the head of the MFA program in Dramaturgy at Columbia University. He holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MFA from Columbia.

2007 Caffe Cino Fellowship and New York Innovative Theatre Award winning Rising Phoenix Repertory was founded in 1999 by Artistic Director Daniel Talbott. The phoenix takes the energy of the old, combines it with the new, and soars into the future. By learning from the traditions of the past and the teachings of the present, we want to rediscover the craft of a raw and vital living theatre. Rising Phoenix Rep started by producing an ongoing reading series of new plays as well as workshops and festivals, and now produces both in the Indie Theatre and Off-Broadway. Upcoming Off-Broadway productions include the world-premieres of 3C by David Adjmi (co-produced with Rattlestick and piece by piece productions) and Analphabet by Martin Moran (co-produced with piece by piece and The Barrow Group). Recent productions include the acclaimed, sold-out Off-Broadway runs of Elective Affinities (co-produced 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 is currently in the middle of a year-and-a-half-long event called Cino Nights, inspired by Joe Cino and his Caffe Cino—one of the original birthplaces of Off-Off-Broadway—for which the company has commissioned twenty-one playwrights to write new, full-length plays to be fully produced in the intimate back room of East Village restaurant Jimmy’s No. 43 on a shoestring budget. 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 the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York and The Dish. www.RisingPhoenixRep.org

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