informed consent

234 West 44th Street
New York City, 10036
212-764-7900
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www.ksa-pr.com
June 10, 2015
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press contact: Brett Oberman at Keith Sherman & Assoc.,212-764-7900, [email protected]
ANNOUNCES CASTING FOR
INFORMED CONSENT
A NEW YORK CITY PREMIERE BY DEBORAH
ZOE LAUFER
DIRECTED BY LIESL
TOMMY
FEATURING
PUN
BANDHU
ANNIE
PARISSE
JESSE J.
PEREZ
DELANNA
STUDI
MYRA LUCRETIA
TAYLOR
AUG. 4 – SEPT. 13 AT PRIMARY STAGES AT THE DUKE ON 42ND STREET
WWW.PRIMARYSTAGES.ORG
Primary Stages (Casey Childs, Founder & Executive Producer; Andrew Leynse, Artistic Director; Elliot
Fox, Managing Director) and Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Project (William
Carden, Artistic Director; Paul Slee, Executive Director; Doron Weber, Sloan Foundation Vice President of
Programs), announce casting for Informed Consent, a New York City premiere by Deborah Zoe
Laufer (End Days, Leveling Up) and directed by Obie winner Liesl Tommy (Appropriate, The Good
Negro). The limited engagement runs August 4 - September 13, 2015 at Primary Stages at The Duke on
42nd Street – a NEW 42ND STREET® project. Opening night is Tuesday, August 18 at 7PM.
Informed Consent will feature Pun Bandhu (Wit, The Judge), Annie Parisse (“Law & Order,” Clybourne
Park), Jesse J. Perez (Recent Tragic Events, American Splendor), DeLanna Studi (August: Osage
County, Edge of America), and Myra Lucretia Taylor (Nine, “Girls”).
An electrifying new play by one of the most exciting voices in American theater, Informed Consent is an
“urgent, challenging, and of-the-moment” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) drama about one woman’s quest to
answer the mysteries of science and her own life, inspired by a landmark court case between one of the
country’s largest universities and a Native American tribe based in the Grand Canyon.
Informed Consent features scenic design by Wilson Chin, costume design by Jacob A. Climer, lighting
design by Matthew Richards, original music and sound design by Broken Chord, projection design by
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, and casting by Stephanie Klapper Casting.
“In the past year alone, Deborah Zoe Laufer has had over 20 productions of her plays performed
throughout the country,” says Primary Stages Artistic Director Andrew Leynse. “We are thrilled to
present Informed Consent in its Off-Broadway Premiere in a co-production with Ensemble Studio
Theatre as a part of their Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project.”
LISTINGS INFORMATION: Informed Consent plays a limited engagement August 4 - September 13,
2015 at Primary Stages at The Duke on 42nd Street – a NEW 42ND STREET® project. Opening night is
Tuesday, August 18 at 7PM. Performances are Tues-Thurs 7pm, Fri 8pm, Sat 2&8pm, Sun 3pm. There is
an added 2pm performance on Wednesday, September 2. Tickets for Informed Consent are $70 and
can be purchased online at PrimaryStages.org or at Dukeon42.org, by phone at 646-223-3010, or at the
box office. Regular box office hours at The Duke on 42nd Street are: Tues-Fri 4pm-7pm; Saturday 12pm6pm. Box Office hours are extended on performance days. Group Tickets (10+) are $45 each for all
performances and available by calling (212) 840-9705, ext. 204.
For press releases, high-res artwork and photos visit the Primary Stages online press kit,
www.PrimaryStages.org/presskit
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
PUN BANDHU. Broadway: Wit (MTC). Off Broadway: PS 122, Target Margin, Soho Rep,
The Foundry Theatre among others. Many regional theatre world premieres. Awards:
Colorado Theatre Guild’s Best Supporting Actor Henry Award, New Dramatists' Charles
Bowden Award. TV: “Allegiance,” “The Good Wife,” “Without a Trace,” “Nurse Jackie.” Film:
Money Monster, The Judge, Burn After Reading, Michael Clayton.
ANNIE PARISSE. Broadway: Clybourne Park, Prelude to a Kiss. Off-Broadway: All’s Well
that Ends Well/Measure For Measure (NYSF), Becky Shaw (Lortel Nom.), The
Internationalist (Drama Desk Nom.) TV: “The Following,” “Law & Order,” “The Pacific,”
“Rubicon.” Film: Anesthesia, Wild Canaries (SXSW), And So It Goes, Price Check, How to
Lose a Guy…
JESSE J. PEREZ. New York credits; Triple Happiness (Second Stage), Barrio Grrrl
(Summer Play Festival), Recent Tragic Events (Playwrights Horizons), In the Penal Colony
(Classic Stage Company), Up Against the Wind (New York Theatre Workshop), and Lucia
di Lammermoor, (The Metropolitan Opera). Film & Television; “American Splendor,” “Enter
Nowhere,” “Life on Mars,” and “Law & Order.”
DELANNA STUDI. performed in the first national Broadway tour of August: Osage County
and was a member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Film/television credits include
Edge of America, Dreamkeeper, Shameless, and General Hospital. DeLanna has re-traced
her family’s footsteps along the Trail of Tears, collecting stories for a live theatrical
experience.
MYRA LUCRETIA TAYLOR. Broadway: Nine (Tony Award, Best Revival), Macbeth,
Electra, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, MuleBone, and A Streetcar Named Desire. Off
Broadway: Bethany (Women's Project), Love, Loss, and What I Wore (Westside Theatre),
National Tour: Wicked (Madame Morrible) Regional: Our Town (Long Wharf), International:
The Winter's Tale, Pericles (Royal Shakespeare Company), TV: “Girls”/HBO, "The Bic C"
Film: She's Lost Control, Custody, (upcoming). Myra is a Fox Fellow.
DEBORAH ZOE LAUFER (Informed Consent, playwright) plays have been produced at
Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva Theatre Center, Cincinnati
Playhouse in the Park, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Portland Stage, and eighty other
theaters around the country, in Germany, Russia and Canada. End Days was awarded The
ATCA Steinberg citation and appeared at Ensemble Studio Theatre through an Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation Grant. Informed Consent, which was a Sloan commission will be
produced in 2015 by Primary Stages and EST at the Duke Theatre in NYC. Other plays include Leveling
Up, Sirens, Out of Sterno, The Last Schwartz, Meta, The Three Sisters of Weehawken, Fortune, The Gulf
of Westchester, Miniatures, and Random Acts. Deb is a recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award
and the Lilly Award and grants and commissions from The Edgerton Foundation, the NEA and NNPN. Her
plays have been developed at PlayPenn, The Eugene O’Neill NPC, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ojai,
The Missoula Colony, The Cherry Lane Alternative, The Dramatists Guild, New Georges, The Lark, Asolo
Rep. and the Baltic Playwrights Conference. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School and a member of
the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and The Dramatists Guild. DeborahZoeLaufer.com.
LIESL TOMMY (Informed Consent, director) Off-Broadway: Appropriate (Obie Award;
Signature Theatre, Woolly Mammoth), The Good Negro (The Public Theater, Dallas
Theater Center), Angela’s Mixtape (Synchronicity Performance Group, New Georges), A
Stone’s Throw (Women’s Project). Regional/international: Les Miserables (Dallas Theater
Center), Party People (OSF, Berkeley Rep), The White Man – A Complex Declaration of
Love (DanskDansk Theatre, Denmark), Peggy Picket Sees the Face of God (Luminato Festival/Canadian
Stage), Eclipsed (Yale Rep, Woolly Mammoth), A History of Light (Contemporary American Theatre
Festival), Hamlet (California
Shakespeare), A
Raisin
in
the
Sun,
Ma
Rainey’s
Black
Bottom (Huntington), American Buffalo (Baltimore Centre Stage), He is Here He Says I Say (Sundance
East Africa), The Piano Lesson (Yale Rep), Ruined (OSF, La Jolla, Huntington, Berkeley Rep), Crimes of
the Heart(McCarter), Book of Life (Sundance East Africa), Yankee Tavern, Stick Fly (CATF), A Christmas
Carol (Trinity Rep). Liesl is an Artist Trustee on the Sundance Institute Board, a Program Associate at
Sundance Institute Theatre program and the Associate Director at Berkeley Rep. She was awarded the
inaugural Susan Stroman Directing Award from the Vineyard Theater, tthe Alan Schneider Award from
TCG, the NEA/TCG Directors Grant and the New York Theatre Workshop Casting/Directing Fellowship.
Liesl has guest directed at Juilliard, Trinity Rep/Brown University’s MFA Directing Program, The Strasberg
Institute, and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Liesl is a proud alum of Trinity Rep Conservatory. She is a
native of Cape Town, South Africa.
is an Off-Broadway not-for-profit theater company dedicated to inspiring,
supporting, and sharing the art of playwriting. We operate on the strongly held belief that the future of
American theater relies on nurturing playwrights and giving them the artistic support needed to create new
work. Since our founding in 1984, we have produced more than 120 new plays, including Donald
Margulies’ The Model Apartment (1995 premiere and 2013 revival); David Ives’ Lives of the Saints and All
in the Timing (original 1993 production and 2013 revival); Billy Porter’s While I Yet Live; Kate Fodor’s Rx;
Charles Busch’s The Tribute Artist and Olive and the Bitter Herbs; A.R. Gurney’s Black Tie; Horton
Foote’s Harrison, TX and Dividing the Estate (Two 2009 Tony Award® nominations); Theresa Rebeck’s
Poor Behavior; Brooke Berman’s Hunting and Gathering; Terrence McNally’s Dedication or the Stuff of
Dreams and The Stendhal Syndrome; Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter’s In the Continuum (which went on
to tour the U.S., Africa, and Scotland); and Conor McPherson’s St. Nicholas (which marked the
playwright’s U.S. debut). Our productions and artists have received critical acclaim, including Tony, Obie,
Lortel, AUDELCO, Outer Critics’ Circle, Drama League, and Drama Desk awards and nominations.
Primary Stages supports playwrights and develops new works through commissions, workshops,
readings, and our education and training programs: The Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group,
the Marvin and Anne Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA), the Fordham/Primary Stages MFA in
Playwriting, and the newly launched Primary Stages Off-Broadway Oral History Project. Through these
programs, Primary Stages advocates for our artists, helping them make important—and often
transformative—connections within the theater community.
The Ensemble Studio Theatre— commonly known as EST— was founded in 1968 by Curt
Demspter on the belief that extraordinary support yields extraordinary work. Now with nearly
600 ensemble artists, EST has been under the artistic direction of William Carden since 2007.
The company received two 2013 Drama Desk Award nominations for Finks by Joe Gilford and one 2014
Drama Desk nomination for Bobby Moreno in Year Of The Rooster by Eric Dufault, who won the 2014 NY
Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award for a new playwright debut. Hand To God, originated at EST,
was nominated for five Tony Awards for its Broadway run. EST received a special Drama Desk Award for
its “unwavering commitment to producing new works” in May of 2015. For more information visit
ESTnyc.org
The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science &
Technology Project is the creative engine behind hundreds of new American plays that challenge and
broaden the public’s understanding of science and technology and their impact in our lives. Plays from the
EST/Sloan Project are produced again and again across the country. This begins at EST’s home base in
Hell’s Kitchen, New York, for forty years a crucial platform for new and unheard voices in the American
theatre. Over the past fifteen years, this reputation has been enhanced by the critically acclaimed
productions presented on the theatre’s Mainstage every season under the banner of the EST/Sloan
Project, including Anna Ziegler's Photograph 51, slated for a London West End production starring Nicole
Kidman in 2016.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, non-profit institution that
awards grants in science, technology, and economic competitiveness. Sloan’s program in the public
understanding of science and technology aims to enhance people’s lives through a keener
comprehension of our increasingly scientific and technological world. The program also strives to convey
the challenges and rewards of scientific and technological enterprise, and of the lives of the men and
women who undertake it.
* * *
About The New 42nd Street
Building on the foundation of seven historic theaters, The New 42nd Street leads the dynamic evolution of
the reinvented 42nd Street, cultivating a unique New York City cultural and entertainment destination
through its three projects: The New Victory Theater, a performing arts theater devoted to kids and
families; the NEW 42ND STREET Studios, a state-of-the-art, 10-story performing arts complex for
rehearsal, performance and arts administration; and The Duke on 42nd Street, an intimate black-box
theater. An independent, nonprofit organization, The New 42nd Street is committed to the transformational
power of the arts.
About The Duke on 42nd Street
The Duke on 42nd Street is an intimate black-box theater available for rental to both domestic and
international nonprofit and commercial organizations. Featuring a gallery along all four walls and a
custom-built, state-of-the-art seating system, the flexible-use space offers full light, sound and support
systems in various configurations. The Duke on 42nd Street is a fully-staffed, full service facility in the
heart of the theater district. Many performing arts companies have called the space their home, including
The Royal Court Theatre, Transport Group, Theatre for a New Audience, Lincoln Center Theater,
Steppenwolf Theater Company, Armitage Gone! Dance, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Naked Angels,
Classical Theater of Harlem, Playwrights Horizons, 92nd Street Y’s Harkness Dance Project, The NYC
Tap Festival and Lincoln Center Great Performers and the National Theater of Great Britain.
P
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WWW. RIMARY TAGES.ORG