| Urban Stages' presents the radio play ELEANOR AND ALICE - conversations between two remarkable Roosevelts - Written by ELLEN ABRAMS March 18 - 23, 2021 | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 03:39 pm EST 02/24/21 | |
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| Urban Stages Presents ELEANOR AND ALICE Conversations Between Two Remarkable Roosevelts Written by ELLEN ABRAMS Directed by FRANCES HILL A RADIO PLAY Starring Tony Award Winner TREZANA BEVERLEY & Drama Desk Winner MARY BACON Thursday, March 18 through March 23, 2021 Available on urbanstages.org New York: Urban Stages' Artistic, Producing Director, Frances Hill, announces Urban Stages' Women's Month selection, Eleanor and Alice by Ellen Abrams, performed as a radio play. The radio play will premiere on March 18 at 7:30 pm with a premiere night benefit exclusive to ticket holders (tickets available on urbanstages.org ). The benefit will include a talkback with the cast, playwright, and director, as well as members of the Roosevelt family and other special guests. The benefit will also give ticket holders a first listen (before the general public) of the radio play itself. From March 19 to March 23, the radio play will be available admission-free (donations suggested) on urbanstages.org . Ellen Abrams' play follows Eleanor and Alice Roosevelt---friends, cousins, and rivals---at eight crucial moments over the course of their lives. They feud, laugh, commiserate, and argue over their husbands, children, the nature of politics, and the state of the world. One a Democrat and one a Republican, throughout 63 years of meetings, they witness a changing world from their own unique vantage points as two of the most influential women of the 20th century. Eleanor and Alice, through their accomplishments, ultimately help build a foundation that benefits women in politics today. Witnessing Eleanor and Alice's journey allows us to experience the political climate of the United States from 1904 to 1962 in a very intimate way---through a family with two first cousins of the same age coming from two opposing political ideologies, one a Democrat and one a Republican. Their conversations and arguments are certainly a reflection of our times. Eleanor Roosevelt will be played by Tony Award winner Trezana Beverley (Broadway: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, My Sister, My Sister. Off Broadway: King Lear (as King Lear), Medea). Alice Roosevelt will be played by Drama Desk's Sam Norkin Award Winner, Mary Bacon (Coal Country, Nothing Gold Can Stay). The play will be directed by Frances Hill with sound direction by David Margolin Lawson, video design by Kim T. Sharp, and Vincent Scott as Associate Producer. The benefit is exclusive to ticket-holders on March 18 at 7:30 pm will be an opening/premiere night event. It will include a special zoom talkback with Harold Holzer, Director of Hunter College's Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt III, Ellen Abrams (playwright), Trezana Beverley (Eleanor Roosevelt), Mary Bacon (Alice Roosevelt), and Frances Hill (director and founder/artistic director of Urban Stages. Benefit tickets will be $100 and tax-deductible. Proceeds will benefit arts and education via Urban Stages' Outreach Program. Outreach tours admission-free plays and workshops libraries throughout NYC in over 300 events in a typical year. Since March 2020, Outreach has provided educational arts programming to over 30,000 virtually (learn more at urbanstages.org ) ELEANOR AND ALICE Conversations Between Two Remarkable Roosevelts By Ellen Abrams Directed by Frances Hill Starring Trezana Beverley and Mary Bacon --------------------- March 18 | 7:30 pm Premiere Night Benefit Exclusive to ticket holders (who receive first listen to the radio play + exclusive access to special talkbacks with the cast, director, playwright, and representatives of the Roosevelt Family) Tickets: $100 (tax-deductible) Proceeds support arts and education programs via Urban Stages' Outreach.Tickets available at urbanstages.org --------------------- March 19 - March 23, 2021 Radio play available to the general public admission-free Donations strongly suggested urbanstages.org For further information, call Urban Stages' office at 212 421-1380. URBAN STAGES is an award-winning, not-for-profit, Off-Broadway Theatre Company founded in 1984 by current Artistic Director Frances Hill. For over 36 years, Urban Stages has produced dozens of world, American, and N.Y. premieres, including Pulitzer Prize Finalist Bulrusher (2007) by Eisa Davis. Urban Stages has been honored with awards, nominations, and recognition from the Drama Desk, Obie Awards, Audelco, Outer Critics Circle, and more. Plays produced at Urban Stages also often move on to larger venues and/or publications . Bars and Measures (2019) was critically acclaimed by The New York Times and nominated for four Audelco awards. Death of a Driver (2019) by Will Snider went on to a regional production at The Salt Lake Acting Company. In our 2017/18 season, A Deal by Zhu Yi (world premiered at Urban Stages) toured China, and Dogs of Rwanda by Sean Christopher Lewis (New York premiered at Urban Stages) toured regionally. Other notable productions include the world premiere of the musical Langston In Harlem by Walter Marks (music and book). Kent Gash (book and direction) garnered a Drama Desk Nomination, a Joe A. Calloway award, and 4 Audelco awards, including Best Musical Production of 2010. Critically acclaimed hits Mabel Madness by Tony-winner Trezana Beverley (2016), Communion by Daniel MacIvor (2016), and Angry Young Man by Ben Woolf (2017), which transferred to the John Drew Theatre at Guild Hall in East Hampton, have premiered at Urban Stages. Also, Unseamly, by Oren Safdie (2015), was an N.Y. Times Critics' Pick. Jim Brochu's Character Man (2014) was nominated for a Drama Desk and an Outer Critics Circle award for Best Solo Performance and Honky (2013) by Greg Kalleres saw a regional run at San Diego Rep. It was televised nationally on PBS in late 2015. 1996's Men on The Verge Of A Hispanic Breakdown by Guillermo Reyes and Minor Demons by Bruce Graham moved to commercial theatres. Chili Queen, a play by newscaster Jim Lehrer, transferred to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (1989). My Occasion of Sin (2012) by Monica Bauer won critical acclaim when it moved to Detroit Rep. Bill Bowers has toured regionally and internationally with his two Urban Stages' premieres blending mime and theatre - Beyond Words (2012) and Under A Montana Moon (2002)! Some Urban Stages premieres have even been developed into film and television projects, such as Scar by Murray Mednick, Conversations with The Goddesses by Agapi Stassinopoulos, and Cotton Mary by Alexandra Viets. In addition to plays and musicals, annually, we hold a music festival - Winter Rhythms - that features famous and up-and-coming Cabaret, musicians, lyricists, and other music artists. In 2016, Winter Rhythms was honored with the Bistro Award for Outstanding Series. In 2015, it received the Ruth Kurtzman Benefit Series M.A.C. Award from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs. In light of the pandemic, much of Urban Stages' programming has moved online, including free family-friendly and educational programming through Outreach at Home, short play opportunities for playwrights, virtual concerts, special interviews, virtual play performances, and more. ELLEN ABRAMS (playwright) writes contemporary and historical plays, in both long- and short-form: Bernie and Carlo Play Canasta, about Bernie Madoff and Carlo Ponzi-the 20th-century's two most notorious financial fraudsters, Handsome, about Rock Hudson's brief marriage in the 1950s, as well as Lizzie Borden Gets Engaged, Hamlet Investigations, Inc., Metonym Or the Almost Completely False Story Behind the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus, as well as, Murder at a Good Address, based on the Lord Lucan scandal. Contemporary works include a family comedy inspired by the classic O. Henry short story, "The Ransom of Red Chief," titled The Ransom of Rona, and the dramas Intentions, Six Weddings Five Wives, and Giving. FRANCES HILL (Director & Urban Stages Founding/Artistic Director) began her theatrical career in California as an actress. Since 1983, Ms. Hill has overseen more than 600 staged readings/workshops and 90 productions of new works for the stage. She has directed over 30 workshops and productions. Her favorite directing credits include Gino DiIorio's Apostasy , Roma Greth's Our Summer Days, Jim Lehrer's Chili Queen (directed at Urban Stages and Kennedy Center), John Picardi's Seven Rabbits on a Pole, and The Sweepers (directed at Urban Stages and Capital Rep); Comfort Women by Chungmi Kim (Urban Stages 2004), 27 Rue De Fleurs, My Occasion of Sin, Mabel Madness and Dogs of Rwanda. Two of her plays have been produced, Our Bench and Life Lines. Under the guidance of Ms. Hill, Playwrights' Preview Productions/Urban Stages have moved two plays into commercial Off-Broadway successes. Minor Demons opened the new Century Center Theater, and Men on the Verge of His-Panic Breakdown won an Outer Critic's Circle Award while playing to capacity audiences at the 47th Street Theater. Urban Stages' African American Poets as Playwrights won eight Audelco Nominations, and Coyote On a Fence received two Drama Desk nominations and a Pilgrim's Project Award. Eisa Davis's Bulrusher was one of three nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. 2010 production of Langston in Harlem won several drama desk nominations, a John Calloway award, and several Audelco nominations, including a win for best music production of the year (2010), along with several other awards. Recently Character Man by Jim Brochu (2014) was nominated for a Drama Desk and Outer Critic's Circle award, and Mabel Madness by Trezana Beverley (2016) was nominated for an Audelco Award. TREZANA BEVERLEY (Eleanor Roosevelt) is an actress, director, writer, educator, and singer. Winner of the coveted Tony Award for her acting work in the Broadway show 'For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf', Trezana Beverley has created a unique signature in the American theater. She is a graduate of NYU Tish School for The Arts. Among her esteemed teachers were Lloyd Richards, Peter Kass, Kristin Linkletter, and Omar Shapli. She was also selected to join a special workshop with the famous Polish director Jersey Grotowsky, who later wrote about her acting talent in his book 'Towards A Poor Theater' (Simon and Shuster). ACTING HIGHLIGHTS: Broadway and Regional theater include My Sister My Sister; Mother Courage; A Raisin In The Sun; Peer Gynt; All's Well That Ends Well; Medea; Constant Star; King Lear (performed as a man), and Mabel Madness (a one-woman show about the life of Mabel Mercer). FILM HIGHLIGHTS: Margaret and The Saturday Night Ladies; Resurrection; Carolina Skeletons and Beloved staring, Oprah Winfrey. DIRECTOR HIGHLIGHTS: Spell #7; Native Son. The Bluest Eye; Yellow Man; Solome; The Trojan Woman; Under the Bridge. And the artist in residence at PlayMakers Theater Co. Chapel Hill, NC. EDUCATOR: The Juilliard School- guest faculty director ten years; Mason Gross Rutgers University-guest director; NUY Tish School for The Arts-guest director; Morgan State University-guest director and Brandeis University-guest director. She is currently on the teaching faculty of The Conservatory of Performing Arts at The State University of New York at Purchase. WRITER: The Spirit Moves; Mabel Madness; A Song for Mara, the story of a homeless woman. And many prose and poetry. Ms. Beverley is also the founder and artistic director of THE TREZANA PROJECT, a theater company that features Dance-Acting. AWARDS: Tony Award; Mademoiselle Woman of the Year; Adulco Award; Theater World Award; work cited in 'Towards A Poor Theater' author, Jersey Grotowsky (Simon and Shuster); two Citizen Citations for her distinguished contribution to the American Stage ( Baltimore, Md); "Trezana Beverley Recognition Day" in the Borough of Manhattan. Tuesday, Feburary19th 2008. Ms. Beverley is a spiritually minded artist who also speaks before civic and church organizations. MARY BACON (Alice Roosevelt) won the 2020 Sam Norkin Drama Desk Award for her work in the world premieres of Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank's Coal Country at the Public Theater in NYC, and in Nothing Gold Can Stay at Partial Comfort Productions, as well as for the span of her career appearing on and off-Broadway, and regionally in world premieres, and in television and film. Favorites include: at Primary Stages Kate Hammill's Little Women, Horton Foote's Harrison, TX with Hallie Foote and Jayne Houdyshell, and Foote's The Roads To Home with Hallie Foote and Harriet Harris, Charles Busch's The Tribute Artist with Charles Busch and Julie Halston, Happy Now? at Yale Rep and Primary Stages; on Broadway in Tom Stoppard's Rock n Roll and Arcadia; the Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel nominated Women Without Men at The Mint at NY City Center and as Alma Winemiller in Eccentricities of a Nightingale at TACT, one of the NY Times top ten productions of the year; Becky Shaw at Second Stage, and The Public's production of Michael John LaChiusa and Sybille Pearson's musical Giant directed by Michael Greif, for which she was featured in The NY Times top ten moments of the year in the theater. Regional theatre includes Hartford Stage, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown Theater Festival, Westport Playhouse, The McCarter, Yale Rep, Seattle Rep, The Long Wharf, Old Globe, Dorset Theatre Festival, Denver Center, Cincinnati Playhouse, Chautauqua Theater Festival, The Ford's Theatre and others. TV/Film includes the 2020 release of Lost Girls with Amy Ryan, and "Bluebloods," The Blacklist," "FBI Most Wanted," "The Mist," "Boardwalk Empire," "Mildred Pierce," "Elementary," "Madame Secretary," "The Good Wife," "Donny!" and recurring on "Law and Order," "SVU," and "SVU Criminal Intent," and varied commercials and voice-overs, including Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway and wherever it goes. She is a member of the Actors Center Workshop Company, holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon Drama, and is a co-founding member of the Dorset Theater Festival's Women Artists Writing Group, dtfwaw. DAVID MARGOLIN LAWSON (Sound Designer) is a New York-based sound designer and recording engineer. He has worked with, recorded, and designed for many New York area performing arts organizations, including Urban Stages, BAM, Signature Theater, Repertorio Espanol, The Juilliard School, La MaMa E.T.C., HERE Arts Center, New World Stages, and others. Recent works include: Oliver Twist (The New School), Barrabas (TFNC), Dance Africa (BAM), The Producers (Argyle), A Letter to Harvey Milk (Acorn Theater), Angry Young Man (Urban Stages), A Star Has Burnt My Eye (BAM Next Wave). David teaches courses in sound design at Pace University, NYC. www.dmlsoundny.com |
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| Link | http://urbanstages.org |
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