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Labyrinth Theater Company Announces 2012-2013 Season at the Bank Street Theater

Contact:
Rick Miramontez / Elizabeth Wagner / Chelsea Nachman
rick@oandmco.com / elizabeth@oandmco.com / chelsea@oandmco.com
212-695-7400


FOR  IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE


LABYRINTH THEATER COMPANY
ANNOUNCES 2012-2013 SEASON
AT THE BANK STREET THEATER

21ST SEASON INCLUDES THREE WORLD PREMIERE PLAYS
BY COMPANY MEMBERS CUSI CRAM, BOB GLAUDINI, STEPHEN ADLY GUIRGIS
AND DIRECTION BY PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN


New York, NY – (July 31, 2012) Labyrinth Theater Company (Co-Artistic Directors Stephen Adly Guirgis, Mimi O’Donnell, Yul Vázquez and Managing Director, Danny Feldman), Off-Broadway’s home of groundbreaking and incendiary theater, today announced its 2012-2013 season of new works, including the three World Premiere productions of: Radiance by Cusi Cram, A Family for All Occasions, written by Bob Glaudini, and a new play by Stephen Adly Guirgis.  All three plays will be presented at the Bank Street Theater (155 Bank Street), Labyrinth Theater Company’s new home in New York City’s West Village.

Opening the 2012-2013 Season in the Fall is the new play, Radiance by Cusi Cram, directed by Suzanne Agins. In 1955, at El Gato Negro – a seedy bar just off Hollywood Boulevard – a mysterious stranger arrives and quickly turns the quiet universe of the local watering hole upside down. Radiance spans ten years and thousands of miles, delving into a single moment in time that irrevocably changed the world. It retraces the human fallout of fragile, ordinary people forever caught in the cross-hairs of history.

Up next, in the Spring of 2013, is A Family for All Occasions, written by Bob Glaudini and directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman. The play tells the story of Howard, who just wants to express himself and be lent an ear! But his wife is way past listening, and his teen-aged kids prefer their Dad rarely seen and never heard. So when his promiscuous daughter’s latest suitor drops by with his flair for words and odd devotion to family, Howard’s prayers appear answered — until his home life is thrown dangerously and irrevocable off-course. A Family for All Occasions is a wry, heartfelt comedy from the author of Jack Goes Boating and A View from 151st Street.

Concluding Labryinth’s 21st season in the summer of 2013 is a new play by our Co-Artistic Director, Stephen Adly Guirgis.  Whether it's a few Saints fighting over Judas's fate or a bunch of down-and-outs dreaming of a land in which they'd all be kings, Mr. Guirgis’s plays tackle life’s biggest questions with a streetwise wit and an open heart – always searching for that touch of grace in an ugly, violent world.  This season, Labyrinth is thrilled to present the latest work from the Tony-nominated author of The Motherf**ker With The Hat, Our Lady of 121st Street, and Jesus Hopped The A Train.
Alongside these three World Premiere productions, Labyrinth Theater Company is presenting two full festivals of play readings, free of charge, to their audiences. NEWYORKNEWYORK is a week-long tribute to the plays and culture of New York City featuring Labyrinth artists, friends, and special guests. They will be reading plays new and old from all over the five boroughs in order to create a diverse theatrical mosaic of the place we are proud to call home.  It will be a marathon and a party – kind of like living in the city that never sleeps.  

And coming back for its fourteenth consecutive year is the BARN SERIES, the annual festival of brand new plays, featuring the work of Labyrinth Company Members and guest artists engaged in Labyrinth’s unique development process.  The readings, which take place over the course of the entire Season, are the first public presentations of these dynamic new works.  It’s a rare chance for our audiences to participate in shaping plays that are eventually seen fully produced on our stage, as well as on stages across the country – and the world.

In an effort to make great theater accessible to all New Yorkers, Labyrinth offers the Labpass, which gives our audience the chance to see all three shows in our 2012/13 Season for just $99.  Labpass holders are guaranteed the best seats in the house for the performances of their choice and receive front of the line access to all our events, including advance reservation privileges to our NEWYORKNEWYORK festival and the Barn Series.  It’s a chance to get up close and downtown with Labyrinth – all year long. 

To purchase a Labpass, and to find more information on the Season, please visit our dedicated Season website at labtheater.org/upclose.

Labyrinth receives generous, year-round support from the following sponsors: Bank of New York Mellon; and Morgans Hotel Group, the official hospitality partner of Labyrinth Theater Company.  Time Warner is the lead sponsor of new play development at Labyrinth Theater Company.

Additional support is provided by: Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Shubert Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.  Labyrinth acknowledges the generous support of The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; Kate D. Levin, Commissioner.  Labyrinth’s productions are made possible, in part, with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

BIOS______________________________________________________________
Suzanne Agins (Director) is the Director of New Play Development at Dorset Theater Festival.   She made her Off- Broadway debut with the critically acclaimed world premiere of Jailbait by Deirdre O’Connor for the Cherry Lane Theatre.  Ms. Agins served as Artistic Associate for New Plays at Williamstown Theatre Festival from 2005-2007.  Other recent directing projects include:  Alligator by Hilary Bettis (Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference); Fuente Ovejuna: A Disloyal Adaptation by Cusi Cram, inspired by Lope de Vega's play, at Princeton University (developed with Labyrinth Theater Company); The Burden of Not Having a Tail by Carrie Barrett (Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference); Noel Coward's Fallen Angels at Dorset Theater Festival;  Lucy and the Conquest by Cusi Cram (World Premiere, Williamstown Theatre Festival);  Wing It, a new musical inspired by Aristophanes’ The Birds, by Gordon Cox and Kris Kukul (World Premiere, Williamstown Theatre Festival); three Maddy Mann stage shows created with Ryan Migge (Ars Nova, soloNOVA festival at the DR2, Dixon Place); Maddy Mann's webseries QUADS!; The Secret Narrative of the Phone Book by Gordon Cox (World Premiere, Kraine Theater); Lascivious Something by Sheila Callaghan (Cherry Lane Mentor Project).  She holds an MFA in Directing from the University of California, San Diego, is the recipient of a 2006 Princess Grace Directing Fellowship (Robert & Gloria Houseman Theater Award), an adjunct faculty member at Princeton University (her alma mater), and a member of SDC and the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab.

Cusi Cram (Playwright). Plays include: Dusty and the Big Bad World (Denver Theater Center), Lucy and the Conquest (Williamstown Theater Festival), All the Bad Things (LAByrinth Theater Company at the Public Theater), Fuente (Barrington Stage), The End of it All (South Coast Repertory), Landlocked (Miranda Theater), A Lifetime Burning (Primary Stages), and Fuente Ovejuna: A Disloyal Adaptation (Lewis Center for the Arts). She has received commissions from The Atlantic Theater Company, South Coast Repertory, The Actors Theater of Louisville, Princeton University, New Georges, Rising Phoenix Rep, and The Echo Theater Company. Her work has also been produced and developed by: The O’Neill Playwrights Conference, The New Group, New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theater, PS122, and the Dag Hammarskjold Theater at the United Nations, amongst others. She is the recipient of the Herrick Theater Foundation New Play Prize, a Camargo Foundation fellowship in Cassis, France, and was recently a Bogliasco Fellow in Italy. Her work is published by Samuel French, Smith & Kraus, Playscripts, and Broadway Publishing. Cusi has also received three Emmy award nominations for her extensive work in children’s television. She most recently was a story editor on the Showtime series “The Big C”, starring Laura Linney. Her play Dusty and the Big Bad World was optioned by Points West Films (Jon Hamm and Jennifer Westfeldt, producers). She is a founding playwright of The Fulcrum Theater, a member of Labyrinth Theater Company, and sits on New Georges’ Kitchen Cabinet and on the board of Leah’s FEWW (Fund for Emerging Women Writers). She teaches playwriting with Labyrinth and ESPA at
Primary Stages. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Lila Acheson American Playwright’s Program at Juilliard.

Bob Glaudini (Playwright). Labyrinth Company Member since 2004. Plays include A View From 151st Street, Jack Goes Boating, Dutch Heart of Man (Labyrinth); The Identical Same Temptation (Theater for a New City); On Borrowed Time, Against the Sun (Theater Genesis), and The Claiming Race, Sickness of Youth, and The Poison Tree (Mark Taper Forum). He also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of “Jack Goes Boating.” Acting credits include the World Premieres of Guinea Pig Solo and Ninth and Joanie by Brett C. Leonard.

Stephen Adly Guirgis (Playwright is a Co-Artistic Director and proud Member of Labyrinth Theater Company.  His plays have been performed on five continents and throughout the United States.  Jesus Hopped The A Train, Our Lady of 121st Street, In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and The Little Flower of East Orange were all produced by Labyrinth and directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Judas and Little Flower were co-productions with the Public Theater, and his Tony-Nominated Broadway debut The Motherf**ker With The Hat, directed by Anna D. Shapiro, was a co-production between Labyrinth, The Public Theater, and Scott Rudin.  Other plays include Den of Thieves (Labyrinth, dir. Max Daniels), Race Religion Politics (Labyrinth, dir. Charles Goforth), Dominica: The Fat Ugly Ho (EST Marathon, dir. Adam Rapp).  UK and regional premieres at the Donmar Warehouse (Olivier Nom.), the Almeida (dir. Rupert Goold), the Arts, the Hampstead, Edinburgh (Fringe First Award) and two Midwest premieres at Steppenwolf.  New Dramatists alumnus, MCC Playwrights and Ojai Playwrights member.  TV writing credits include NBC's “UC: Undercover,” David Milch's CBS Drama “Big Apple,” “NYPD Blue,” and “The Sopranos.” 

Philip Seymour Hoffman (Director) Labyrinth Company Member since 1995. Former LAByrinth Co-Artistic Director (1999-2009). Directing credits for Labyrinth include The Little Flower of East Orange, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Our Lady of 121st Street, Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train and In Arabia, We’d All Be Kings all by Stephen Adly Guirgis. Other directing credits include: Andrew Upton’s play Riflemind (Sydney Theatre Company), Rebecca Gilman’s The Glory of Living (MCC Theater), Brett C. Leonard’s The Long Red Road (Chicago’s Goodman Theatre) and True West (Sydney Theatre Company). As an actor, his stage credits include Death of a Salesman, Othello, Jack Goes Boating, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Seagull, True West, Defying Gravity, The Merchant of Venice, Shopping and F**king and The Author’s Voice. His film credits include Ides of March, Moneyball, Jack Goes Boating (feature film directorial debut), Pirate Radio, Doubt, Synecdoche NY, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Savages, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Mission Impossible III, Capote, Cold Mountain, Love Liza, Punch-Drunk Love, 25th Hour, Almost Famous, State and Main, Flawless, Magnolia, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Boogie Nights, Happiness, The Big Lebowski, and Scent of a Woman.

Labyrinth Theater Company (Stephen Adly Guirgis, Mimi O'Donnell, Yul Vázquez, Artistic Directors; Danny Feldman, Managing Director) is a diverse, award-winning ensemble of artists who have changed the face of American theater through groundbreaking productions of provocative new plays.  Founded in 1992 by a group of actors who wanted to push their artistic limits and tell new, more inclusive stories that expanded the boundaries of mainstream theater, Labyrinth has grown into a nationally renowned company of actors, directors, playwrights and designers from a wide array of cultural perspectives. Over the past 20 years, Labyrinth has developed hundreds of original works and premiered 57 new American plays here in New York including Guinea Pig Solo, Jack Goes Boating, Jesus Hopped The A Train, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Our Lady of 121st Street, Sailor’s Song, Sistah Supreme, and the Company’s multi-Tony nominated Broadway debut, The Motherf**ker With The Hat.


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