Full Productions

Valparaiso

An HB Ensemble Production

Playwright: Don DeLillo Valparaiso - HB Studio

Director: Rasa Allan Kazlas

Cast: Chris Chinn*, Jen Danby*, Elizabeth Grey*, Guenevere Donohue, David Khouri, Philip Kushner*, Daniela Mastropietro*, Marci Occhino, David Smilow, Karen Song, L.B Williams*, Julia Wolfermann, Catherine Zubkow.

*Member of the Actor’s Equity Association

Lighting: John Burkland Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Technical Director: Corrie Beth Shotwell Stage Manager: Sarah Nochenson Costumes: Catherine Siracusa Administrative Support: Shaun Bennet Wilson Office Manager: Tara Webb

Valparaiso was performed June 11th – 28th, 2008

Synopsis: In this play, Michael Majeski boards a plane for Valparaiso, Indiana on a routine business trip, but somehow winds up in Valparaiso, Chile! As coverage of this human interest news byte compounds, Michael is catapulted into celebrity status. He is interviewed endlessly by the media but there are problems with his story – what is Michael really hiding? All is finally revealed during the climactic daytime talk show in which Michael, at the mercy of the TV host Delfina, is caught in the light rays of the TV screen.

 

The Writing on the Wall

An HB Studio Performance

Playwright: Ed Napier The Writing on the Wall - HB Studio

Director: Randal Myler

Cast: Victor Villar-Hauser, Stephen Mailer, Robert Sedgwick, Joseph Urla, Robert Walden

Lighting Design: Brian Nason Stage Manager: Jennifer Campos Assistant Director: Zar Kazemi Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Production Manager: Shiraz Biggie

The Writing on the Wall was performed May 18th – 25th, 2007

Synopsis: It’s said that Hollywood is the only place where your friends don’t stab you in the back… they stab you in the face. And that’s just what happens to TV writer Nelson when his latest work gets tangled up in a power struggle between his boss and the star of the show. A dark comedy about trying to hold on to friendship, loyalty, and honor.

The Master and Margarita

An HB Studio Ensemble Production

Playwrights: Mikhail Bulgakov, Adapted by Aleksey Burago

Director: Aleksey Burago

Cast: Georgina Bates, George Bartenieff*, Snezhana Chernova, Pascal Escriout, Jack Gillespie*, Hanna Hayes, David Khouri, Vadim Krol, Andy McCutcheon*, Danusia Roberts*, Tom Shubert, Nick DeSimonne, David Sochet*, Lana Stimmler, Kenneth Thompson, Thomas Tinelli, Marius Zilberstein*.

*Appearing courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association

Assistant Director: Pamela Wilkinson Dance and Choreography: Gus Solomons, Jr Lighting Design: Shiraz Biggie Production Crew: Mindy Luce, Sandra Roque, Rob Freedman

Master and Margarita was performed July 11th – 15th, 2007

Synopsis: This play is a darkly comedic takedown of Soviet society, an audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, and a thrilling love story. The novel begins with the Devil’s arrival in 1930’s Moscow disguised as the distinguished Professor Woland. Together with his retinue of odd associates, including a talking, vodka-swilling black cat, Woland wreaks havoc on the societal elite. Meanwhile, the Master (an author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate who has been hounded by Soviet censors), languishes in despair in a psychiatric hospital, unable to share his story. His devoted lover, Margarita, agrees to sell her soul to the Devil in an effort to rescue the Master from his fate. The story weaves back and forth between current day Moscow and ancient Jerusalem, studded with sparkling scenes ranging from a dizzying Satanic Ball to the crucifixion of Jesus on Bald Mountain, with the enduring love between the Master and Margarita joining the strands of plot across space and time.

New York

An HB Ensemble Production

Playwright: David Rimmer New York - HB Studio

Director: Laura Esterman

Cast: Stephanie Braxton*, Elizabeth Grey*, Michael Epp, Rachel Benbow Murdy*, David B. Sochet*, Georgina Bates, Kathleen Pierce, Judy Rosenblatt*, Tadhg O’Mordha, Daniela Dakie, Nick DeSimone, Catherine Siracusa, Tom Tinelli, AC Davison.

Production Manager: Shiraz Biggie Assistant Director: Adrian Wattenmaker Stage Manager: Sarah Oswald

*Appearing Courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association

New York was performed November 16th – 21st, 2006

Synopsis: Depicting the reactions of 15 individuals to the events of that day, the characters all speak to a central psychiatrist.

Bay at Nice

An HB Ensemble Production

Playwright: David Hare

Director: Amy Wright

Cast: Stephanie Braxton, Michael Epp, Elizabeth Grey, Austin Pendleton

Bay at Nice was performed April 14th – 23rd

Synopsis: This play is set in a room in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad in 1956. An ageing Valentina, once a young student (and possibly lover) of Henri Matisse is accompanied by her daughter Sophia, a teacher but also an artist, desperate to be free of her marriage and to start a new life, for which she needs her mother’s approval and financial assistance. The result is a battle of wills between the two women, one an ex-bohemian, who left the freedom of Paris to raise her fatherless child in a repressive Russia, and the daughter, now a stifled woman in her thirties eager to taste the freedom her mother once enjoyed. ‘The Bay of Nice’ was first performed at the National Theatre, London, in September 1986.

Between Two Worlds

An HB Studio Production

Playwright: Marcia Jean Kurtz Postcard_Between Two Worlds

Director: Marcia Jean Kurtz

Cast: Anushka Paris Carter, Georgia Kate Cohen, Nick DeSimone, George Guidall, Alexander Napier, Ean Sheehy, Franny Silverman, Jacob Gartt White

Set Design: Ray Recht Costume Design: Christine Field Lighting Design: Matthew McCarthy Sound Design: Aural Fixation Stage Manager: Carol A. Sullivan Assistant Director: Bill Oliver Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Production Manager: Shiraz Biggie

Between Two Worlds was performed March 15th – 29th

Caged Visions

An HB Ensemble Production

Playwright: Rasa Allan Kazlas Caged Visions - HB Studio

Director: Rasa Allan Kazlas

Cast: Darien (Michael) Blake*, Carlton Byrd, A.C. Davison, Nick DeSimone, Christian Hogarth, Genc Jakupi, Paul Pryce, David Shih*, David B. Sochet

*Appearing Courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association

Lighting Designer: Diana Kesselschmidt Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Production Manager: Shiraz Biggie Stage Manager: Faith Uyetake Music and Percussion: Nick DeSimone

Caged Visions was performed January 18th – February 5th, 2007

Synopsis: Caged Visions is an evening of dramatized poetry using material written by inmates in the NYC prisons as its text. Some of the poets are serving life sentences upstate, others have been released, still others have died in prison of AIDS.

The American Clock

An HB Ensemble Production

Playwright: Arthur Miller

Director: Austin Pendleton

Lightning: Chris Dallos Stage Manager: Shiraz Biggie Musical Director: Anne Phillips Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Costume Design: Patricia Adshead, Catherine Siracusa

The American Clock was performed September 27th – October 15th, 2007

Synopsis: The play employs a series of vignettes and short scenes, with the actors portraying some fifty-two characters, to capture the sense and substance of America in the throes of the Great Depression. The central figures are the Baums, a wealthy family whose fortune has vanished in the stock market crash, but their story is amplified and illuminated by brief glimpses of other lives; a farmer who has lost all in the dust bowl; a prostitute who exchanges her favors for dental work; a white Southern sheriff in thrall to a black short-order cook; a young man who dreams of success on Tin Pan Alley, etc. Moving deftly from scene to scene, some funny, some movingly poignant, the play becomes a deeply affecting evocation both of a tortured time in American history and of the indomitable spirit of the people who survived and prevailed in the face of unaccustomed adversity.

Paula, Paulinka

An HB Studio Performance

Playwright: David Bridel, Penny Kreitzer, Jonathan Rest Paula, Paulinka - HB Studio

Director: Jonathan Rest

Cast: Penny Kreitzer

Lighting by: John Burkland Sound Technicians: Giovanni Villari, Karen Song Technical Director: Corrie Beth Shotwell Managing Director: Marlene Mancini Office Manager: Tara Webb

Paula, Paulinka was performed March 10th – 22nd, 2008

Synopsis: Young actress, Penny portrays many different key events of Paula’s life in a rehearsal hall of Jerusalem in 1982. Overcomed by such presentation, Paula criticizes Penny in some scenes but Penny explains that in the play artist, Charlotte Salomon painted her in a way that she never could’ve imagined. Charlotte Salomon left behind over 1,300 paintings, the product of the last two years of her life each one containing meaning.

Lillian Yuralia

Playwright: Barbara Eda-Young Lillian Yuralia - HB Studio

Director: Austin Pendleton

Cast: Ezra Miller, George Morfogen*, Barbara Eda-Young*

*Appears courtesy of the Actor’s Equity Association

Lighting: Brian Nason Costume: Patricia Adshead, Catherine Siracusa Casting: Stephanie Klapper Managing: Marlene Mancini Technical Director: Corrie Beth Allen Office Manager: Tara Webb

Lillian Yuralia was performed January 18th – February 4th, 2008

Synopsis: An afternoon in late Autumn in 1930 Levy sits at his table sewing, on the other side of the divided apartment is Lillian with her fourteen year-old son, Yidl who is silent throughout their whole “conversation.” Moments later, a sudden incident with Lillian drives her to the other side of her apartment to Levy’s room where she and Yidl meet him. Lillian attempts to engage in several different conversations with Levy about his past including having a family and his solitude from the world. In the end, Yidl gains the courage to finally speak, but what does he talk about?