City Lights Theater Company to Stage New Work by NEW GIRL Writer

When you're stuck in a rut, it's time to do something. Anything.

In the quirky comedy Tigers Be Still - by Kim Rosenstock, a writer/producer from TV's New Girl - Sherry Wickman has recently earned a degree in art therapy. Then she gets stuck moving back in with her family, where all the women refuse to get out of bed. Finally, a new job gives her purpose. Now if only her mother would come downstairs, her sister would stop watching Top Gun, and someone would catch the tiger that escaped from the local zoo, everything would be just perfect.

Directed by Virginia Drake, the play runs Jan. 21-Feb. 21 at City Lights, 529 S. Second St., San Jose. For details and tickets, go to cltc.org or call 408-295-4200.

This is the South Bay premiere for Tigers Be Still, which had a successful run at San Francisco Playhouse in 2011. The play originally opened in 2010 Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theatre Company, where it had a sold-out run and earned a New York Times Critics' Pick. Actress / playwright Halley Feiffer played Sherry; film and TV actress Natasha Lyonne played Sherry's lovelorn sister, Grace.

Tigers Be Still playwright Kim Rosenstock has written several plays, as well as conceiving the musical Fly By Night, which she wrote with Will Connolly and Michael Mitnick. In TV, she has been a writer, executive story editor and co-producer of the Zooey Deschanel comedy New Girl. Originally hailing from Long Island, she holds an MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama.

For this production, City Lights is partnering with the Silicon Valley Pet Project, a nonprofit organization of volunteers committed to saving local at-risk shelter pets through rescue, community involvement and education. In honor of the play's subplot involving two plucky chihuahuas, SVPP is planning an "adoption wall" in the theater with photos of pets needing new homes.

Virginia Drake (Director), faculty emerita at West Valley College, recently directed Art and The Language Archive at City Lights, preceded by Smell of the Kill, Hedda Gabler, First Day of School
and August: Osage County. Her directorial efforts at Los Altos Stage Company include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, On Golden Pond and Doubt. Virginia has also directed at TheatreWorks, Santa Clara University, and Renegade Theatre Experiment. A member of Actors' Equity Association, she holds an MFA in Acting from Stanford University, and a BA in Dramatic Art from U.C. Davis. She also records audio books for Books Aloud Inc., based at San Jose's Martin Luther King Library.

Cast: Melissa Weinstein (Sherry), Sean Okuniewicz (Zack), Akemi Okamura (Grace), Keith C. Marshall (Joseph).

Designers and other staff: Jacquelyn Montellato (Assistant Director), Ron Gasparinetti (Scenic), Anna Chase (Costumes), Nick Kumamoto (Lighting), George Psarras (Sound Design), Christina Sturken (Props).

Sponsors and Supporters: These include The Shubert Foundation, Silicon Valley Creates, Applied Materials Foundation, the City of San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and many other individuals, corporations, and foundations.

City Lights' season continues in March with the classic drama The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance, followed by San Francisco playwright Lauren Gunderson's poignant comedy I and You. The rock musical Green Day's AMERICAN IDIOT rounds out the season next summer.

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